Yvette has been in and out of consciousness, occasionally waking up to blast any mal that offends her, and offer words of.... encouragement...? They're mostly phrased as criticisms and insults, but there is a level of affection to the tone. Less bite, maybe.

"Good morning, sunshine," she says wryly, sitting up with a bit of a wince. "I see my room is mostly intact! Well done."

"Thank you, although," he gestures at the door—it is still attached to its hinges, mostly, but the recently-replaced lock is definitely a goner, and it's hanging open. "Sorry, a kvenlik came over and very vehemently refused to get stabbed by your door wards, I had to dismember it."

She gives a heavy sigh, and then (painfully) stands to go croon at her door.

"My poor porte. I'm sorry I didn't listen well enough when you warned me. This is my fault, not yours," she says, patting it. "You are a good and loyal door and did nothing wrong."

"You're nicer to that door than to anyone else," Scorpius grumbles, but if a grumble can sound affectionate his does.

"Nonsense! I'm perfectly nice to Yi Liu."

"It's really hard to not be nice to Yi Liu, she has one of those faces."

"You'd think! And yet," sighs Yvette, sad. She gets to putting various defensive spells on her things, because once again! She's lacking a lock on her door. (Her poor door.)

And that's long enough for it to be the Russians' wake-up time...

And Alexei is right next door and sees her door and can't help but notice the evidence of the overnight fight and Scorpius Lake is standing right there and uh.

Uh?????

"Morning, Yahontov!" He sticks his head out to raise a hand in greeting to the other two Russian juniors. "Levitskaya, Artyomova," he says in a greeting.

Oh, hell. She might as well play into this ridiculous situation. At least this way the rumors will be entertaining.

"Good morning!" she calls, poking her head out behind him. "Westing's dead, he snapped and tried to murder me. And this one," she motions to Scorpius, "got my door broken again. Are you willing to fix it this time, Alexei, if I get you materials and payment?"

Alexei is an artificer, and would frankly do a better job than she.

    "He what," asks Sofia.

"Westing killed Luisa," and she and Nat draw in a breath at the same time at the, "and I told him he had to toe the line or else. He decided to go for the 'else'."

    "...but. He. She?" She turns to Yvette. "You?"

"Yvette's not a maleficer," says Scorpius for what must be the hundredth time, "Westing was."

Alexei takes a few seconds to process this but then, "What is it worth to you?" he asks Yvette.

"I'll let you have the drill for it and four new Sanguine Blossom crystals."

She expects him to haggle down to three. To neatly replace the ones that have been broken by Scorpius.

"—you give me drill. And I fix your door and make you three crystals?"

"Fiiiine," she agrees, a little amused. "And I play fetch for all materials involved, including the irritating bleeding bits. Deal?"

"Deal," he says, nodding. "Breakfast?"

"Go on ahead, I need to change."

Her dress might be black, but the hole and bloodstains are probably a bit much. She would like to change. And generally clean up and refresh herself and whatnot.

He hums, looks at Lake, looks at Sofia and Natalya and—

    "We can wait," says Natalya.

Gee, how thoughtful.

"Your consideration is appreciated." She makes a shooing motion with her hand, at Scorpius. "Oh Scorpius! I think a bathroom trip is in your future! Might as well use the time wisely, no? One does not rush a lady when she's getting ready."

Scorpius rolls his eyes but shrugs. "Fine, fine, whatever you say."

The Russians get a Scorpius Lake-shaped escort to the bathroom, then, which in their opinion is a great idea. Just Lake, no Villain, that's great in their opinion.

(Maybe not all of their opinions.)

Alexei is a sweetie, much as he feigns business-like detachment. And lack of fluency in English.

(Damn, that was another tell that it wasn't him, wasn't it? She'd been too out of it to even notice. Why would Alexei speak to her in English? No matter, Westing is dead now.)

"I'll get you the drill now so nobody steals the thing while my poor door's under the weather, hm?" offers Yvette, to Alexei.

"I'll grab it when we come back," he says, because they are coming back.

"Fine, fine. Now shoo, or we'll lose our chance of getting a decent table."

They shoo, and as soon as they're out far enough the girls are asking about every detail on what the hell happened last night.

That's about what she expected, really.

Then she returns to her room and gets to trying to look like she wasn't recently stabbed. Because that's the sort of weakness it doesn't pay to show. At least she hasn't permanently damaged a set of clothes with her misadventure. Blood removal is fortunately one of the few practical spells the school deigned to give her, and mending the dress with a hole in it is fairly easy from there. Mending is a spell everyone gets, affinity or no. She changes, then washes the newly repaired and exsanguinated dress and hangs it up. Uses the void, casts her hygiene spells, reties her hair, reapplies the poison detecting lipstick, the usual. Well, and inspecting her stab wound. It looks... well, like she was recently stabbed, but it seems to be healing well enough. For the first day after being stabbed. Maybe she can buy a proper healing potion off someone, or one of those little healing cookies everyone seems to be hoarding.

And by then, her entourage has returned, Alexei's drill is handed over, and away she goes. Totally fine. Barely a wince when walking, even. (Ow.)

Scorpius would offer to help her walk but... the hit to her image would probably be worse.

...right? He's hovering a bit, perhaps.

She's sure she has no idea why he might be doing that! And see, she's walking fine. The cafeteria is a long goddamned way away from the junior dormitories and there are far, far too many stairs and she is in fact a touch slower than normal, but. She's fine. Totally. Totally fine.

... but she does have dibs on holding the cafeteria table. Because. Doing more walking to acquire food and then playing the 'is it poisoned or is it murderous' game sounds even less fun.

Yeah they don't even discuss it, even Sofia looks sympathetic by the time they get there. They're late enough their usual table has already been taken by a group of Italian juniors but when they spot the Russians and Yvette and, most importantly, Scorpius, they're more than happy to share the space.

Which means that Yvette doesn't need to hold the table, so it's extra meaningful that the other four let her do it anyway.

She'll take it. It bothers her a bit, that she's probably only getting such royal treatment because Scorpius is around, but. She'll nonetheless take it. Because ow.

Not belonging to any of the major language student clusters, the Italian kids mostly hang around Spanish- and English-speaking groups. Yvette could go for either, being French, but what they do instead is talk to each other—in English, it could be considered attempted murder to speak a minority language in public given the school's tendency to give you material in any language you know an iota of, so they only speak Italian amongst themselves—and completely ignore her.

Yeah, that's about what she expected. She will not go so far as to think that she is allowed to join in on any of their conversations. That would be silly.

Table sitting: kind of lonely even when she's surrounded by people! Hooray.

The others return soon enough, Scorpius having actually filled a whole-ass second tray for Yvette. He carefully places it in front of her before taking a seat next to her, between her and the Italians.

Natalya and Sofia sit across the table from her, but Alexei sits on her other side. The girls were talking (in English, probably for Lake's benefit) about some gossip involving a New York junior called Jermaine who seems to be in a competitive love triangle with Geoff from Atlanta, both of them vying for attentions of one of the top alchemists in their year, a girl called Theodosia.

Alexei does not comment on the goss, though, and just starts eating his breakfast quietly.

Scorpius showing up with an entire extra tray (how the hell is he managing to balance two of them?) earns a smile and a snort. And also a somewhat shy, "Thank you."

This is kind of weird? But nice. Weird but nice. ... Where's Liu, Yvette wants her here too, can she leverage her shiny new Scorpius influence to get everyone to tolerate Liu?

Liu steps out of the junior queue five minutes after the others have sat down, and when she looks at their table she clearly decides they won't want her and starts looking for the losers in the Mandarin-speaking group—

But Scorpius himself catches her eye and waves her over with a smile.

Oh. Okay. She's doing that, then, she guesses? She can sit next to Sofia, across the table from Alexei, and say a shy, "Hi," to everyone. She also does not have Russian so it seems this table is now an English-speaking table.

And the Italian kids now want to talk to Scorpius about something so they can properly integrate into the rest of the table (well, no, so they can have Scorpius's attention, but clearly they're a package deal right now, so).

Nkoyo, Cora, and Jowani see the little group of losers-except-for-Scorpius and honestly this is a golden opportunity so they'll go sit there, too.

Honestly Nkoyo, Cora, and Jowani taking advantage of the situation is pretty fair, really. And... she's glad Scorpius noticed that Yvette would like to have Liu. Good Scorpius, she is slightly less wary of your extreme knowledge of everyone around you.

"So Westing snapped and tried to do another murder," says Yvette, to Liu and also the trio who will totally have to tolerate her haunting them later for this. "This did not go well for him, and he's dead now and will not be missed."

"Another?" says Liu immediately before deciding that words suck and she should instead stuff her face.

    "Was that what your little scene with him the other day was about?" wonders Nkoyo, directing the question at Scorpius.

Who is currently talking to the Italians so this is kinda rude but he knows Nkoyo is doing it on purpose to coast off on his popularity. To the extent there is a cross-language-cluster pecking order, Nkoyo is absolutely above these specific Italian kids.

He turns to look at her and says, "Yeah, pretty much, but Yvette has all the details," before turning back to his conversation.

Oh, boy. Okay. She can do the talking thing. Sure.

"He was responsible for Luisa," she says, somberly. "And then when this had consequences, and somehow did not make all of his problems go away, he was very upset at the apparent unfairness of the world. Naturally he decided to solve his problems by attempting to kill me. So now he is dead."

    "Luisa... the mundane girl who vanished a couple of weeks ago?" asks Nkoyo.

Liu nods to her silently as a response, then looks down at her plate and says, "I'd thought it was him but..."

    "But you don't accuse people of maleficing like that, of course, that's just smart," she nods, looking for all the world like she's oblivious about her company. It's probably on purpose. "So, he tried to kill you and Lake saved you?" she asks Yvette.

That's a reasonable assumption to make, but also kind of insulting? She purses her lips.

"... No. He tried to kill me, I killed him first, and Scorpius helped with the aftermath. Which I admittedly might not have been able to live through without the help, but Westing sealed his fate all on his own."

    Nkoyo's eyebrows shoot up. "Oh? Good job, then, sounds like he needed the killing."

        "Not a very nice thing to say," comments Sofia, her tea about the love triangle clearly less hot than Westing's death is about to be, if her instincts for these things are right.

"But it is true," Alexei says quietly.

"It is. And he did." She sniffs with distaste. "I think he thought he was being romantic. Madman."

"—trying to kill you was romance?"

"To him," she repeats, a little wryly. "I don't entirely get it either, and I was there. But he did seem to think that, somehow, stabbing me was an important stepping stone on the path to a grand maleficer future." Snort. "But we see how that went for Westing."

"And then Lake decided to spend the night with you," finishes Sofia, which is not itself an argument or anything but it sounds like she considers it to mean Yvette must be a maleficer who has bewitched Scorpius. Or something. Who knows.

    "Wait, he did what? And you're still alive?" gasps Cora.

Sofia, why. They had been getting along so well. Could you not be horribly petty and bitchy for like, five minutes after someone literally tried to kill her last night? No? All sympathy evaporated? Charming.

"I told him to leave at curfew," she sighs, giving Scorpius a look that says this is all your fault. "But no. I think he was put out because he didn't get the chance to be properly heroic and had to show me up."

There was a lull in the conversation with the Italians and they were mostly paying attention to what Yvette was saying anyway, so it's not rude for Scorpius to grin and say, "Absolutely. Nothing to do with the stab wound in your gut and the way you would have absolutely become mal food overnight, shields or no shields, if you'd been on your own."

"Your presence past curfew attracted more of them than the smell of blood would have, you just wanted to get the chance to kill as many mals as possible, and you're using being heroic as your excuse."

    "Is that how thankful you are that he saved your life?" wonders Cora.

"She's just bitter she didn't get the chance to show off having killed the mals that would have come for her anyway. Because of the stab wound. Which she keeps ignoring." He is glaring pointedly at her but it is... clearly filled with affection.

"It's irrelevant in the grand scheme of things, and the only major life change that came about from it is that I might want to keep away from bikinis in the future," she sniffs.

Chloe, from the New York enclave, arrives looking frazzled. Not to sit, just to interrogate, apparently.

"Scorpius," she interrupts, plaintively. "What happened? Westing's burnt shoes are outside of her," she points at Yvette, "broken door, again, and now you're sitting with her???"

"Gossip's slow today, it seems," he mutters mostly to himself with a half smile. "Westing was a maleficer, killed Luisa, I told him to shape up or else, he decided to go for 'or else' and try to kill Yvette. She killed him, but he stabbed her, so we spent the night together cosily killing maleficaria all night. Absolutely nothing untoward has happened, you can rest easy."

"Wh—Scorpius I'm not worried about you sleeping with her I'm worried about—!" she begins, and then she actually feels a bit bad saying all of this in front of Yvette herself, and stops. "... Look I'm sorry he tried to kill you," this is at Yvette, "but, but. Scorpius please be careful."

She doesn't say it, but she clearly means 'She's dangerous!'

Sigh.

"I'm nothing but careful," he says, placing a hand on his heart, and he can't hold it there for a full second before breaking into a grin. "Seriously, Chloe, I'm fine. It's fine. She's fine."

".... Okay," says Chloe, hesitantly. She will go back to the New York table. She guesses. While clearly still worried about him and not very reassured.

And someone else is looking less chipper!

Would whispering some jokey thing not be welcome? Probably, they're not that close yet. But he wants to do it.

Anyway, now that Chloe knows about it he's sure the whole school will know about it by lunch period at the latest, so that bit of gossip does not need any more flame fanning. "How are you healing up, by the way?" Scorpius asks instead.

“Well enough, for only having been stabbed yesterday,” she says, attempting to cheer back up again. “No gushing blood, or anything, so I’ll thank you to not attempt a repeat of last night.”

    Natalya looks between the two of them and raises an eyebrow. "Nothing untoward, huh?"

"I'm sure she just means the part where we fought many mals all night long."

“I do,” she snorts. “Gut wounds are not very conducive to canoodling. Besides, we see how well the last person to flirt with me went.”

Which is to say: Westing, and also sort of Scorpius himself, pushing her out of her comfort zone. But mostly she’s thinking of Westing.

"No mal hunting for you today," Scorpius agrees, and this time he is being a hypocrite because last time he got stabbed he absolutely went off hunting mals again the next day. It was not a great idea at the time but he would do it again, he knows himself well enough to know that.

“My heart! It breaks.” It doesn’t, really, mostly she just wants to sleep. But she has classes, homework, and monsters trying to kill her, so not going mal hunting is about the best break she’ll get.

They don't really get sick days, here, anyway. Staying in sick is just begging to have mals decide you're easy pickings and come knocking. They can almost literally smell weakness. And that's not to mention that they are in fact taught the very tools for survival they need in class, even History class teaches some spells you can't get anywhere else, so skipping them is not recommended unless you are very sure of what you're doing and have a very good reason for it.

The juniors finish eating at approximately the same time, as they've been training to do since at least induction nearly three years ago, and start getting up at approximately the same time. Scorpius offers Yvette a hand, because dignity or no dignity she has in fact been stabbed as he would like her to not forget.

"I'll be okay," she assures, but... yes okay, she'll accept the hand. She guesses. Grumpily. "Stop fussing," she adds, to preserve her dignity.

"It's not fussing, I told you I was going to help you with what you needed at least for today and so I'm gonna."

"It's absolutely fussing. I'll be fine."

"Maybe my bar is higher than that."

Class though right they need to stop flirting to get to class.

Yes. Yvette just was not looking forward to the long walk to class, though, so she was distracting herself. But yes, class. And it shouldn't even be hard to find people to walk with like this. Right?

...is she under the impression Scorpius is not helping her with that, too, regardless of what actual class he has?

...

Fine. But she'll glare at him about it.

Whyyyyy is Yvette glaring at Scorpius Lake that is such a bad idea.

...she thinks. Or thought. Scorpius Lake seems to be reacting the opposite of how Liu expected him to react, it's almost like he likes it, maybe that's why he likes mals so much and she will stop speculating about what Scorpius Lake is into right this second yep.

It does seem to be a friendly kind of glaring? Performative grumpiness, not actually hostile.

But yes, it's kind of weird.

Regardless! Class! (Ow.)

Scorpius drops them off, waves, and skips away, looking far too chipper for—anyone—at this place.

This is weird and she feels weird about it, but. ... Okay???

He's going to show up again after class to escort her some more, isn't he. She feels even weirder about that. He might be pushing her comfort levels again??? She has no idea, how does... friendship work. Probably he's traumatized by his last friend dying in front of him and wants Specifically Not That?

This is hard. She's just... going to focus on class. Okay? Okay.

At the end of class, before the bell actually rings and the doors actually open, one of the Paris enclavers who has never given her the time of day walks up to her trying to look casual. "Hey," she says in French. "Yvette, right? I'm Evelynne." She offers a hand for Yvette to shake.

What could possibly be motivating this!

She looks down at the offered hand, considers it for long enough to really hammer in her (underground) opinion of it, and doesn’t take it. She then looks back up at Evelynne.

“So I am, and so you are. What is it?”

—that almost breaks her stride but she was told to expect hostilities. "So, um, we have a French group of spell-trading and revision on Sunday afternoons," she says, lowering her hand. "And you're French, too, right? So I was wondering if you'd want to come."

“I worry that three years of catching up would be too much of a burden to ask of anyone.” Her smile is sharp. “So I will not. No thank you.”

Doors open and Scorpius is just turning around the corner to be visible. He gives them a wave from a distance and trots over to say, "Hey Ev, hi Liu, hi Yvette," as if this is just a friendly encounter.

"Hi," says Liu, still looking wary and very definitely not looking between Lake and Yvette because that would be rude even if they're totally dating.

    Evelynne herself jumps at the address and switches to English. "Lake, hi! Euh, didn't know you'd come here—"

"Oh yeah I skipped my last class and was just around and decided to come over to say hi to people. Glad to see you're recovering okay, Yvette," he adds, with an amount of casualness that suggests all Yvette did was break a toe or something and definitely not get stabbed. He doesn't linger overmuch, though, and switches to Liu. "We both got math now, right? Want company upstairs?"

"—sure. Uh, you skipped—"

"It was just shop and I got my end-of-term project done already, it's fine."

Evelynne... looks very unsure what to do now, between Yvette's cold glare and Scorpius's... whirlwind... and just stands there in silence for a moment.

Yvette was all prepared to puff up like a cat and hiss at Scorpius for his fussing, because she can take care of herself, thank you, but. Turns out he's not here to babysit her. Just check on her? While pretending to be here for unrelated reasons and confusing the shit out of Evelynne, which is admittedly kind of funny? ... Acceptable. It's more than she's used to, but fine on principle. She'll take it. And despite herself, she's. Glad? That he's checking on her, as long as he doesn't... fuss too overtly and try to baby her?

Feelings are confusing.

She's just going to see about getting to her next class. Maybe finding someone to walk with won't even be difficult, today, if apparently even Paris is talking to her.

Scorpius offers them a cheerful wave 'bye and Liu has to practically trot, herself, to keep up with him as he leads the way to maths. Evelynne, meanwhile, is left there with Yvette and increasingly aware of how undesired her presence is—Yvette's omnipresent aura of doom is useful like that—and after mumbling a half excuse scurries away as fast as she can without looking too undignified.

But that said, she's right that other people are in fact more willing to walk with her. Even if Lake's infatuations are as flimsy as the wind, they are still numbered and finite, and the fact that she's the current target gets her something.

That, or maybe actually it had something to do with the hot tea. Everyone knows now that Jack Westing was actually maleficer who'd gone as far as killing someone else, here, and it did tug at people's heartstrings that he picked on the poor mundane girl (even if no one had actually lifted a finger to help her when she was still alive). And they now also know that he's tried to kill Yvette, and not only failed but also was killed himself for his trouble. Which implies she is pretty cold blooded, but that's a quality not a flaw in here, and everyone agrees that self-defense is entirely justified. It also implies she is probably not a maleficer? And has rid the world of one?

A mixture, actually, of all of the above is what's going on. Whatever it is, she gets people to walk with to her next class, and they don't even actually exclude her from the small talk, even if they don't go as far as actively requesting her input.

This is deeply weird. She's too weirded out for small talk, even, and doesn't have much practice at it besides. Everyone that she's walking with probably thinks her silence is haughty or doom flavored or something, but actually it's a mix of social anxiety and still being in a great deal of pain, what with having been stabbed. She will attempt a friendly smile though?? See? She isn't completely mean all the time, it's just the only practice she has is at being mean? Help??

It's... nice?? She guesses?? This is a good time for people to be weirdly not excluding her, anyway, safety in numbers has always been true of Scholomance, and she's injured. Fortunately, ever since about mid sophomore year her strategy's been less 'running away' and more 'kill the fuckers trying to kill her,' so her ability to stay alive isn't that impacted. Just, you know. A bit. But if there are any mals on the way she will happily participate in making them cease existing.

A small desperate thing does try to take a stab at them—probably its last chance at doing so before some bigger mal ran into it by chance and ate it—but the other kids are in fact slower than Yvette at dealing with it, and look genuinely thankful for her help.

Huh!

"Happy to kill those murderous little fuckers," she says, genuinely brightly. Wait was that creepy? That might have been creepy. Shit she doesn't know how to not be creepy!

Ha ha ha yeah those uh little um sure anyway.

To class.

Shit.

Well. She's trying??

To class. (Sigh.)

And everyone has lunch after class so they move as a whole nice block that way. Scorpius doesn't show up this time either.

Good. That'd be a bit much.

But convenient blocks of students dissipate when exposed to the cafeteria, so. What are her seating arrangements looking like today?

A bit too early to tell when she gets into the queue, but after going through it (and having to dodge the rice pud again and also the eggs are definitely looking a bit too blue) there are, in fact... several people trying to catch her eye, some more hopeful than others.

To wit: kids from the London enclave, including one who seems to be actively waving; kids from the Paris enclave; some loser hopefuls that came with her to the cafeteria from class; and Alexei's group with the Russians and the other Slavic and Germanic kids, although they are still trying to be somewhat standoffish and Alexei is the only one who is really actively also waving. In a subdued Alexei fashion, but still.

… this is deeply weird.

She’ll go… sit with Alexei? Because he tolerated her before she caught Scorpius’s eye, and she knows what loyalty is? But this is so weird, she has no idea how to navigate cafeteria politics when she’s actually a participant instead of a weird outcast girl looking on from afar.

They give her space to sit and none of them give her disgusted looks.

Alexei looks down at her general stomach area before looking back up at her face, raising an eyebrow very slightly in a wordless "How are you feeling?" question.

They also mysteriously have one extra seat open too, right near her. How strange and unexpected.

The concern gets a very slight (and only a little pained) smile, and a tiny shrug. Which is to say: yeah she’s still recovering from a stab wound, and it hurts like a bitch (especially now, after the long trek to the cafeteria) but she’s handling it well enough. She’ll be fine. Probably. She’ll probably be fine. And having people be weirdly welcoming to her is… useful? While injured?

He nods and turns back to look at the people who were already at the table.

    But Natalya looks at her and asks, "Hey, would you swap for milk? The lower tray was looking weird, I steered clear," while gesturing at an untouched spring roll on her plate.

(And here's Liu, coming out of the queue and looking for somewhere to sit.)

“Yeah, sure,” says Yvette, who is unaccustomed to actually having trade offers. This is a strange time.

But she might as well use it, right? She gives Liu a welcoming wave and a smile. Look, there’s an open seat and everything! Not at all saved for someone else!

...isn't it? Saved for someone else?

But, well, Alexei seems to be fine with it, himself, and, well...

..........

She likes Yvette.

So she'll go over there and ask, "Is this seat taken?" in English.

"No," he says, also in English, before anyone else can say anything.

And if you're paying really close attention the corner of his mouth is twitching a tad.

And so she sits, to the visible dismay of everyone else (except Natalya, who maybe looks only very slightly guilty for some reason).

(Why is Yvette great, he has no idea, but she is, and he wants more of her in his life.)

Scorpius, who's been kind of lowkey watching this exchange from afar, is gonna sit with some Argentinian kids and even try valiantly to do a little bit of Spanish in their direction rather than force them to speak English for his sake, which when the school is always looking for the first opportunity to dump you with five classes of a new language is not just corteous it is downright friendly, even if at least one of English or Mandarin is pretty much mandatory to get in anyway.

Yvette isn’t dismayed. In fact, she’s the opposite of dismayed. She’s downright bubbly, even, though not really sure how to… engage with most of the people at this table. Instead she can gently entice Liu into small talk about classes, because they’ve ever actually conversed before Yvette drew the attention of the school hero.

Sure, they can do that.

"Have you finished your artificing project?" she asks, after she's gotten going enough to not really be shy. "What was it anyway?"

"I have not," she sighs. "It's, um." Incredibly risky and likely to turn evil? "... a dagger."

"A dagger?" Alexei asks, his first words this afternoon. "Even artificers stay away from it." He remembers belatedly to make his accent thicker then asks, "Why did you choose it?"

"My other options were significantly worse," she says wryly. And they were, the other available artificing projects were 'cup that poisons any liquid in it' and 'literal bomb,' but the literal bomb could be used against a bunch of mals all bundled together and be safe, and the dagger is, well. A dagger. Technically speaking, it's an athame, meant to stay eternally sharp, cut through many materials daggers shouldn't be able to, to keep the things it cuts fresh for longer than it should, steer itself a bit to find the perfect weak point, and enhance the power of things she uses from, that sort of thing. And, if she pulls it off correctly, cut through magic warding. Which, for the record, she wants to use for cutting through mals, which also sometimes have magic warding, but obviously when it comes to her, everyone will think the worst. A sharp knife is an ordinary Freshman project, like mana batteries, and for her to go for a dagger now, at the end of Junior year, putting actual power and knowledge into it instead of just 'stay sharp,' well. It implies things, about how she will intend to use it for more than just self defense. A knife made by a Junior could do some real damage, and everyone with a brain here knows it. So, sort of alarming to mention as one's end-of-term project. This is kind of why she kept a lid on what she was doing.

But it's bound to get out eventually, and this is the best time for it to do so, so soon after she killed a literal maleficer in self defense and everyone's feeling sympathetic for her. It's not that bad to make a murder implement her Junior year? Right? ... Right???

"And... I could really use something for self defense, if something gets too close to me. Incanter track. You know."

    "Going to join your new boy on his adventures?" asks Sofia.

Alexei is still frowning, though. "So if you're Incanter Track, then..."

"I expect I'll need an artificer's help, yes." She gives Sofia's comment the attention it deserves, which is none at all. "And possibly also an alchemist's, but I might be able to manage that myself."

"And do you have an artificer?"

"Not... currently, no."

"Hmm." Chew chew om nom food. "What's it worth to you?"

Which, on the one hand, yes is still framed as a trade, but on the other hand is still an actual offer, clear as day.

"Well it is my end of term artificing project," she points out wryly, "So quite a lot."

Which is to say: nothing she's going to offer here in the middle of the cafeteria! It helps that furthermore she doesn't actually know!

"Hmm," he repeats, and doesn't continue pursuing this line of inquiry. They can discuss price later.

"Do you know any alchemy-track kids who would want to help?"

She's trying to be casual but she knows people don't really......... like........ Yvette, the recent bout of attention caused by Lake notwithstanding. It's probably related to the way being around her feels like everything is about to go wrong, like you were expecting a package in the mail that you were really excited about but when you answer the door there is someone wearing black looking somber instead, and they have a letter, and you're not sure what the letter is but it's not your package and it's probably way way way worse than your package. Like that.

And Liu is sympathetic, or she would be? This kind of aura is what maleficers get after a while, she's been bracing herself for years, but recent stuff indicates Yvette is actually not a maleficer, not at all, and so nothing makes sense anymore.

"At least one," she says, in a perfect deadpan that does not involve her looking at Scorpius at all, nope. "But the alchemy side of things is pretty straightforward, it's primarily an artificing and incanting job."

"Okay. Good luck."

"Thanks! So what about you, are all of your projects on track?"

"Yeah. I got my shop assignment in English for language credit this time, too, and it's going okay, and my alchemy assignment should be done next week."

"Oh, well done. Let me know if you need help?"

She blinks a couple of times then nods slowly. "Sure. But I think I'm fine."

Read: she doesn't really have anything to trade for it right now.

Yvette gives a sad smile and nods. She hates that the school works like this! She hates it so much!

"Okay," she agrees, anyway.

Lunch proceeds apace, and the kids around them eventually get over the fact that Yvette didn't bring Scorpius and they don't even try to finish eating before she does.

This is so deeply weird!!! Does she even have to do any kind of footwork to have company to get to her next class?

Well, yes, but that may just be because her next class is shop, which everyone who has already completed their end of term project can just skip, Liu included. She will probably need to find the handful of kids who have shop at the same time as her and also still need to work on their projects.

Oh, good. Blessed normality. She knows what to do with this. Fortunately for her, she keeps somewhat obsessive tabs on who has classes when she does and whether they might plausibly need to go to it or not, because that is how one gets by when one is a ghost haunting the hallways. Natalya is one such person, but Yvette did just mention she was going to shop to make a dagger, as her end of term project, so she should use someone else as her in for getting into the handful of kids. Make it too awkward for people to kick her out after she's already managed to get in, for fear of earning her wrath or whatever it is people fear her for. Ibrahim, maybe? He's probably more likely to tolerate her with her... whatever it is that she has... with Scorpius. She might have to pay in telling him Scorpius gossip, but, well. That's a price she'll pay for (relative) safety to shop class. Even if she'll hate him, and also herself, and the entire world and everyone in it. Okay, this plan decided, so she'll then need to look for an opening to execute it, where is he sitting, has he already started mingling, who are his likely buddies to go along to shop with...?

Before she can spot Ibrahim, though, Natalya calls her attention and says, "Hey, you're going to shop for your project, right? Do you want company?"

... what.

There's an awkward pause as she processes this insanity of an invitation. What????

"I," she stutters, off guard, "I would appreciate that, thank you."

"Ibrahim has shop now, too, and I think Cora?"

"...yeah."

"Right. He does." Uh. Um. Well, she did manage to actually find Ibrahim, so, she can in fact assist with this attempt to gather people for a necessary trip. With... her included. As the first person Natalya asked. ????? "I, think I saw him over," and she motions towards the table she spotted him at.

"Villeneuve!" he says to her once he's joined them, more cheerful than she's probably ever seen him. "I heard about last night. Awful, terrible."

And people say she's a sadist. ... Admittedly she kind of is, but, look, she points it at mals instead of her peers, that's clearly much better.

Natalya inviting her along early makes some sense this way, because clearly she can be used as a bribe, and it is her job to placate the fanboy. Joy.

"You want a complete play by play of everything that happened, don't you."

"You know how it is, you just can't trust these rumors. Why don't you tell me all about it on our way to shop?"

"Fine," she sighs, and then, yes. She will, in fact, give him (and everyone else in their group) the rundown of what happened. While sounding just a fraction dead inside and like she'd rather chew off her own arm. She wouldn't, but it's more about the tactical loss of losing an arm than anything else. If she could avoid this indignity and then also have both arms at the end of it, well. That'd be different. And at least the taste would be a nice change from the transmuted nutrient slurry of the cafeteria.

It's always great when people have positive-sum trades like these! They are a sufficiently large group of sufficiently powerful people that they don't have any issues with the pair of mals that try to attack them.

And then they get to the shop room and...

"Did someone set this room on fire or something?"

One member of the pair of mals gets very firmly stomped on, over and over again, until it is paste, no magic necessary. Her? Getting out latent aggression?? What a silly thing to think, ha ha, she's just being thorough.

..... this is totally the work room that she torched with Mortal Flame, isn't it. Yeah, uh. Yeah it is. Um. She'll just... pretend she has no idea how that happened, how about.

"Probably gives us better odds of slightly less mal ambushes?"

"Unless whatever did set the room on fire was one of the mals..."

"Is that... a melted chair? Aren't these chairs fireproof?"

"True, but that's a pretty terrible ambush, isn't it? Setting the place on fire before we even get here? ... I guess it might have eaten someone else."

She is just resolutely ignoring the comment about the melted chair. Resolutely.

"Um."

"Nothing to it. Let's get to work."

"Yeah." She'll just, uh, get to doing that. She's got a billet to get together; she'd worked out the tricky and finicky alloy ratio and painstakingly gathered the necessary materials, it's just forging all of them together and getting a solid basis to work from. Which of course means that if she messes up here, she'll be screwed and working from a disadvantage from then on. And also Alexei would absolutely notice, and probably be disappointed in her, which is admittedly more motivating than just having a subpar knife.

Out of everyone in there, Natalya is the one who seems... the least unfriendly. Even maybe a bit friendly, it's unclear. Certainly she's the only one who found no good reason to not sit at a table next to Yvette's.

Huh. That's strange. But it's fine, and anyway she doesn't care about the petty intricacies of adolescent wizard social drama. She has a billet to very carefully get right. A proper artificer would know how to cheat, or where it'd be okay to cut corners, but since she is not one of those, well. She will have to make up for it with careful measurement and double checking and being very, very, very sure that her alloy is the same composition all the way through.

And also keep a general eye out for mal ambushes. For herself, and also, she guesses, for Natalya, since she's, you know. Right there. Not that she cares.

No mals attack them this time either. Maybe she managed to burn the mals in the vents, too, or something.

She had been absolutely aiming to also burn the mals in the vents, because she's nothing if not thorough, so: good. But almost three years in this hellish place has firmly entrenched her paranoia, so even if she theoretically handled it in advance, she will check again.

By the end of shop, she has a billet that she deems acceptable, shaped and flattened into the proper dimensions. It even actually looks like a dagger, now, but there are some finishing touches before the quenching process that she doesn't think she could pull off alone. What with needing to sing to it in Latin, while the thing is getting shaped, and at the same time, do the final preparations for the very specific alchemical oil that the blade will be quenched in. Two things she could plausibly juggle, maybe, but three? Yeah, no. Not if she wants the result to be any good, which she does.

Oh, and while she's here she grabs the materials she needs for her door to be fixed, again, and to make the Sanguine Blossom crystals. Just for efficiency.

Next up: Maleficaria Studies! This one is shared by every junior so they all have to go.

Yaaaaaaay.

This does involve taking a massive bag of stuff to Maleficaria Studies, but such is life. At least they have a large group on the way to the class, so she presumably doesn't need to have her hands free in case of ambush.

Natalya joins the other Russians when they get there.

And Cora joins Jowani and Nkoyo.

And Ibrahim joins Yaakov.

And Liu joins the Mandarin speakers.

And Yvette...?

Is in a bit too much pain from the trip to give a shit about the social maneuvering, and has long resigned herself to always being stuck in the front. So, she doesn’t even make an attempt to try to figure out where she might want to sit if she were not a pariah. She will be sitting at the front, near the door, so she doesn’t have to walk very far.

And oh look someone else is sitting at the front next to her.

Of course he is. Of course.

“…. Hi,” she says, too cranky to manage anything witty. Gut wounds: do not mix well with fucking gigantic schools, nor carrying things in them.

"Hello, dear. How did shop go?"

“I am not your dear,” she sniffs immediately, but yes, fine, she’ll answer the question. “Well enough. The hunk of metal I worked over for ages is nearly indistinguishable from other hunks of metal of similar size, but such is artificing. It will likely do for my purposes.”

"And you need it for your new blade, yes? An athame?"

“Has the rumor mill already been busy, or are you just fond of dropping eaves, hm?”

"Yes."

“Mhmm. Well, Scorpius, I know neither of us are typical examples, but I am nonetheless quite sure that in ordinary human interactions this goes a bit more like,” and she puts on a fake American accent, closer to Scorpius’s than her earlier mockery of Jack’s, “‘Hello, Yvette! How has your day been? What project are you working on?’ or something.”

"Hello, Yvette! How has your day been? What project are you working on?" he says, imitating her imitation of his accent.

“I’ve a half healed gut wound and I go to school here, how do you think my day has gone? And it’s too late now to pretend ignorance, you’ve already played your hand.”

"I have, yes. And I think at this point we're quite past me pretending that I'm as monomaniacally focused on equivalent trades and everyone else, so, would you like my help as potions-track? I won't be offended or mad or anything if you say no, just..." Shrug.

"...... Fine," she sighs, long sufferingly. If nothing else, she can make him carry her grab bag of heavy materials for this shit. And she does, admittedly, probably need the help. Instead of doing two jobs at once like a crazy person. Grumble.

"Cool. After class, if you've got someone to help with the artifice?"

"Yeah. I'll need to get some things from my room, though, but we can do that mostly on the way." Pause. "..... Thanks."

"You're welcome, Yvette."

Great, excellent, the necessary social niceties have been completed now she is going to be paying so much attention to class. And also not being ambushed while paying attention to class. She will not be relaxing just because Scorpius is here, that would be stupid, and furthermore train bad habits.

Unfortunately this may be the single most useless class for Scorpius because it teaches all the myriad specific ways individual mals can be killed and Scorpius 1. gets given various mal-murdering spells on the daily by the school and 2. has a very good instinct for what does and doesn't work, courtesy of his affinity. Not perfect, he does pay any attention in class, but it's not the same kind of extremely-important know-this-or-die situation other students have got going on.

Poor, poor Scorpius. Maybe he can have himself a nap or something.

Actually, has that occurred to him. Person who carries the weight of the whole school on his shoulders by himself, not even getting help from his damned enclave?

"...... if you want to nap I'll cover you," she says, sounding very annoyed about it.

"...I can deal, but thank you," he says, sounding genuinely touched.

Fine, then she will just go back to actually paying attention in class like a good student, and pretend like there are no feelings here and she is not making any kind of friend or, or, or something!!!!

There are no f-friends here, b-baka!!!

The mal animatronics don't try to upgrade this time, either, which is downright nice of them, and soon enough it is the end of class.

Excellent. Then she needs to find Alexei and see if he's up for some before-dinner workshop work, payment to him pending. Oh Alexeeeeeeei, where are youuuu?

In the same classroom as her, over there. When she catches his eye he tilts his head in curiosity and walks over to her.

It's so convenient that he doesn't try to flee from her the minute she looks at him. People haven't been doing that much today, but this is a trait she can reliably trust him to have, long term. Look! He even willingly comes over to her! Alexei, she treasures you so.

"Have you thought about what you want from me for my end of term project? Because I have absolutely conned Scorpius into assisting, and now will probably be the best time to get everything sorted."

...he peers at Lake.

Who gives him a winning smile.

Weird.

Back to Yvette. "Do you have an offer?"

...oh wow Alexei is head over heels for her, huh. That's interesting.

"Not here in this crowded classroom with lots of eager and gossiping ears!" she says, cheerfully. "We can talk about it on the way to fix my poor door, for the drill?"

"Hmm. Acceptable."

Natalya and Sofia tagged along with Alexei and were just over there in the corner eavesdropping but when he mentions he'll be going to the workshop they look at each other and then Sofia walks over to Alexei. "Are you coming to the library afterwards?" she asks in her even-more-thickly-accented English.

"I do not know. You do not need to save me a seat."

"...okay."

"Excellent," says Yvette, who immediately grabs her heavy bag of crap and shoves it in Scorpius's direction. What? He's involving himself, so he might as well carry things. She's not going to make Alexei carry things, see, she likes him.

And off they can go!

Sure, he can take—

No. Alexei's taking it.

?

"Your hands are more useful than mine."

"Most of what's in there is yours anyway," says Yvette, agreeably. "Fine if you want to be the one to carry it."

And as a bonus he gets to do Yvette a favor. Scorpius is starting to feel like a third wheel.

But, well, Yvette does need the alchemy-track help, so, to her room they go.

And once they are away from eager ears, safely in the gigantic goddamned hallways filled with just the creeping monsters that want to eat them:

"So I don't have particular payment in mind, but you know my capabilities and resources. Mana and the crystals to store it are easy, if you want them. Herbs and plants from my room as well. Incanting assistance of various kinds, having me pick up your maintenance shifts for the next year or assisting with your next major project, a favor hanging over my head..." Why is she suddenly embarrassed to be having this conversation, why is this a thing. She shrugs, awkwardly. "You have options."

It's not quite a blank check, but. ... It's a little bit of a blank check. Or a lot of one.

"I will think about it. And choose a fair option."

Or he'll conveniently forget about it, one of those.

Except somebody probably won't let him, actually.

"I know. And I'm good for it." Which is to say: if he doesn't choose a fair option she will forcibly show up with one and shove it down his throat.

"Hmm. Your door, then?"

"Yes, please!"

They get to her room soon enough, and as promised: here is her door, in the terrible state Scorpius left it. Poor thing. At least no one tried to take advantage and break into her room, from what she can see of her wards.

And Alexei gets to work with it without another word, all cold efficiency.

That's kinda hot, he's not going to lie.

Alexei is pretty great!!

Yvette is a pretty good helper, too, and seems to understand the process well enough to set his materials out and hand him the things he needs before he needs them. Also without another word.

Yeah he's definitely third wheeling here, he's gonna turn around and make a show of watching for mals to give these two a little bit of space.

Alexei had honestly been expecting Lake to be more... well, more. They haven't actually hung around each other very often and what little he's seen of the boy over the past couple of days left him with an impression that Scorpius is a lot more wont to butt into things and make noise than he's being right now.

Not that Alexei is complaining, of course. They can finish this work in record time, after he looks over his shoulder and confirms that Scorpius is being useful.

This completed, Alexei can have his drill. The crystals he'll make for her are pending for her being up for bleeding. Sometime in the future. Because she's not up for it now. She kind of needs her blood on the inside right now.

She gathers the rest of the materials she needs for her project, and they can head off to the workshop.

"That was very good work, there, with the door," Scorpius says, leading the way to the stairs.

"Mm."

"Take the compliment. You're a talented artificer. What's your affinity?"

"...unimportant."

"Hokay, sorry for asking, didn't mean to pry."

"It's fine."

"You see why I make him carry things," says Yvette, amused.

He looks at Yvette from the corners of his eyes, a small smile tugging at his lips, but doesn't reply.

"Fine, fine, I'll stop talking," he says, sullenly.

"You can talk, it's just..." she trails off. "... go less for the throat? Maybe tell him about, hm, mal statistics. Alexei do you want the mal hunter to ramble about mal statistics and how he's changed the magic evil critter ecosystem, from his perspective?"

"Asking about people's affinities is normal small talk!" he protests, but he can't hide the fact that her suggested topic is more interesting than small talk.

...well, he could, but he doesn't want to.

Alexei looks between the two of them. "Statistics?"

"...I actually am not sure what she means by that either," he admits.

"... there's... there's less little ones? Because less people are getting eaten to feed them. Consequently, the larger ones are getting more desperate, and they're not able to eat as many of the little ones because there aren't enough of them. So they're getting creative. That's what I mean."

"Oh. That. Yeah. It is not quite that there are less little ones? I don't really know how it usually goes without me around, really, but... there was a change over time. Right after graduation there's a lot fewer mals around in general, right, because the mortal flame cleanses the school proper and the seniors tear through the mals in the graduation hall, and then over the year the mals eat, um, each other, and people, and grow stronger, and by the end of the year only the ones that managed to survive the year are still around so they're all more dangerous, right? But the overall power levels have increased, I think. I can speculate on why but the fact is that Yvette's door was destroyed by a kvenlik and that was the first time I'd seen one in person, I'm pretty sure they just don't show up at all normally?

"Also, uh, there are, um..." Awkward pause. "Seven hundred more kids alive now than a typical June used to go. Before us."

Alexei looks at Lake with a strange expression on his face.

"Yeah. Très bien fait for that, by the way. I've noticed less eggs and cocoons to squish, personally." Because she's always been just a little bit psycho about killing them all, okay.

"You have... kept track of this all?"

"...I mean, I'm not doing it for the numbers. But, yes, I've been keeping track of the numbers."

"Mm."

"Mhmm. There, see, he likes you much better now. You're welcome."

Alexei blinks at her.

Stairs: are lit! Much better than last time they went to the workshop, really, it's almost like doing this in the middle of the day isn't bad or anything.

"I shall follow you wherever you lead when it comes to the matters of Alexei's affections, then."

Now he blinks at Lake.

Scorpius had never met someone who could blink so communicatively before. It's kind of fascinating.

"Seduce him on your own time, Lake, I'm not holding your hand through your attempts to... what was the word that was used earlier. Canoodle? Canoodle."

Okay now Alexei is just looking alarmed. Is Lake trying to seduce him???? He doesn't want to be seduced!!!!!!!

"I was not trying to seduce you," Scorpius says, trying to sound reassuring. And it wouldn't be reassuring to preface the next sentence with "You're very pretty but" so he doesn't and he just says, "For one we're busy and for two I am very recently reminded of how trying to flirt with people can cross their boundaries and at least while that memory's fresh I'm gonna try being more careful."

Oh.

...okay?

"Lake is a bit garbage at proper mutual human connection and is accustomed to filling the void with shallow friendships and flirtations," agrees Yvette, cheerfully. "He doesn't know what else to do, really."

"Do any of us?"

"Hm! True."

"You're going to ruin my image, you know," Scorpius says with the same tone of voice one might use to comment on the weather, were one not in the Scholomance and actually able to perceive said weather.

"My heart. It breaks. Truly."

She's not even a little bit sorry.

"Yours won't, Ibrahim's might."

Oh we're rapid fire psychoanalysing everyone now okay.

"And that's your problem how? It'll probably be good for him."

"If I didn't think my image was useful I wouldn't have cultivated it, now, would I?" Here's the workshops, now to find somewhere to do the work.

"Ah, yes. Peace of mind. Surely this is a worthy altar for human sacrifice, no? Be this thing, always, for someone else, and make no attempt to find an alternative or help him grow as a person."

Finding a place to work isn't too difficult, it's finding a safe (as can be expected) place to work that's a bit more so. Still, she has practice at this sort of thing, and she'll carefully pick out a work station that is far away from the vents, the door, and has a lot of open space around it to let them easily spot anything trying to get them. From there it's the typical check to make sure there's nothing under the table, nothing under the chairs, so on, so forth, nothing will be sneaking up on any of them if she has anything to say about it. And she does.

"Who has the time to help four thousand kids grow as people," Scorpius mumbles but yeah he'll help with that.

...are they dating or are they not? This really looks like they're dating.

Alexei does not know why this makes him feel kind of sad.

He has never been one to let his emotions show or stop him from doing anything, though, so while the other two do their obligatory mal-checking procedures Alexei will start cleaning the surface and laying out the materials and instruments.

"Nobody, sometimes you need to give people space to grow themselves," is her reply, but then yeah they really need to get properly set up, they have a lot to do.

Because this is smithing, that 'a lot to do' is mostly to heat the metal up and then let it cool down again, several times, occasionally beating it into the correct shape. But it's all got to be done properly, see, the timing is a bit tricky and she will be incanting over it at certain parts and meanwhile there's a quenching oil to brew,. Inconveniently, the instructions are a bit jumbled together, not neatly written out for each person doing their part, instead written for what should be done first. And in her handwriting. Sort of like she had been expecting to do all three complicated parts of this by herself.

... Damn, she really should have thought to rewrite the instructions to cover that a bit, she's about to get yelled at for being stupid, isn't she.

...no? He's mostly just... concerned... that she was planning to do that on her own but now he's here and he can help her so.

Yeah, no. He kind of wants to be sarcastic about it because of fucking course but also she clearly felt like there was no one she could ask and besides it's not useful to be sarcastic and she'll get defensive. So no yelling.

Scorpius is not really an incredibly competent alchemist, he's passable, but passable alchemy track is still more alchemy practice than what incanter tracks get, and he's pretty diligent. In practice this means he needs to pay more attention to and think more about his job than Alexei does but he executes it well.

Huh. Okay. This is going pretty well, then? He's mildly surprised.

Oh. Okay. Well, good. Alexei's a better smith than she is, so it's also going quicker than she'd expected it to, and soon enough she's crooning to the nascent dagger in Old French, about how it'll be such a good athame, yes it will. The actual lyrics are more impressive than that, but that is essentially what she's doing.

Just as Scorpius gets done with the requisite brewing of the quenching oil, he might notice that some kind of web is being carefully woven around them.

He doesn't notice the web.

He does notice the soft clinking like windchimes as a sirenspider mostly-quietly drops down onto one of the metal tables behind him. He starts turning around with a "Motherfucker" on his lips but he doesn't get past "Motherf" before they can hear a second set of wind chimes. Two sirenspiders. Just their luck.

"Take over for me," he says, grabbing a sledgehammer and turning around to go to town on them.

.....shit?????? Sirenspiders are bad?????? If they complete their song all three of them will be paralysed and incapable of taking any actions while they become living nests for their eggs and—

They are really extremely bad, but fucking up a project midway through right when they're about to quench the damn blade that she's reaching a crescendo in her song for is also really extremely bad, so. She'll trust Scorpius to be good at his real area of expertise, and fill in for him. She already knows how this part goes, anyway. It's pretty straightforward.

Blade gets to go into oil at the same time she finishes her spellsong, and now she can see if Scorpius needs some kind of backup or something. Is he fine? He's fine, right.

Well, there's a whole cacophony sounding like six pipe organs collapsing and he's dancing around the enormous metallic maleficaria's sharp appendages with a manic grin on his face, which is definitely loads better than a non-cacophonous chime-song and a petrified Scorpius, so probably?

Yeah, he's fine. Instead she gets to checking for a third one. There is not a third one, but there could have been, and it causes her to spot the web they'd set to catch them if they'd tried to do the sensible thing and run. Sneaky little fuckers, aren't they. Well, that's fine, she can murmur something (in Old German, this time) that sets it alight in brilliant violet flame, bright and then gone shortly after.

"Those were two sirenspiders. Large ones."

Yes, brilliant observation.

No, he shouldn't be mean. It is pretty surprising to see them this late, usually after their third or fourth molting earlier in the year they settle down in the graduation hall to eat smaller mals and escaping seniors. "Worse mals all around, yeah."

"A lot worse."

"Yep."

"Bright side, though," says Yvette, observing the bits of dead sirenspider impassively, "Bits of larger than we usually get sirenspider that could probably be made into something. You just beat them to death, Scorpius?"

"Mmhm."

Alexei blinks and looks at the metallic maleficaria pieces and...

...it would not be unfair to describe the look on his face as greedy.

"...I'm not gonna charge you for them, Yahontov, you can grab as many pieces as you like."

"...they sell for very high prices. Hard to work with. But good quality."

"Yvette, can you convince him that I'm not trying to, to, to do whatever it is people think I'm doing when I'm not being a cutthroat bargain hunter or something?"

"It would be a good payment for coming down here at all," she points out, reasonably, "and Scorpius needs people that treat him as an actual person and tell him when he's being a dumbass more than he needs favors to buy a bigger chance to stay alive, you know."

Alexei narrows his eyes.

"I get mana from killing mals," Scorpius offers.

And now he widens his eyes.

"So, yeah, let's pretend I already collected payment and you can just take the expensive materials and do your artificing with them and have a lark."

"Okay."

He gets to collecting, then, he supposes.

And to Yvette: "Did you do it? I'm going to be really irritated with these spiders if they ruined your project."

"What are you going to do, kill them twice? Go down to graduation hall early to find and hunt down their families?" she snorts, but yes, fine, she'll get to pulling her blade out of the concoction it was quenched in and inspecting it.

It is a black so deep it looks a bit like it eats light itself. Normally, this is where it'd need to be finished; sanding it and sharpening it, for sure, maybe trying to make up for any warping that might have happened in the temper if one's particularly unlucky, but. ... This is clearly a magic blade. It does not need sanding, and it does not need polishing. It possibly doesn't even need sharpening, but she's sure as hell not going to test that and give it a taste for its wielder's blood right out of the gate. It needs a handle, and she will make one for it, but otherwise, it looks perfectly deadly. Also, kind of pretty.

"Awww, look at you," she says, cooing over it like it's a child, "aren't you lovely, a perfect shard of midnight..."

"Oh, she's gorgeous," he breathes, trying not to crowd but looking clearly fascinated.

"I will absolutely need to make a handle just as gorgeous," she agrees. "And a sheath! You are already so pretty, and you deserve to be dressed up to match, don't you, darling."

For now, she'll carefully wrap it up in dark silk that she absolutely packed for this occasion. What? Start off the spoiling early, all right, and she had it going spare from one of her projects from last year.

He hesitates for a second then reaches under his shirt for the dagger he has attached to a harness he wears, to show it to Yvette. It's not magical, it's "just" a dagger, but it's clearly been as loved as it could be; the blade is almost mirrorlike in reflectiveness, and an intricate pattern in the shape of snaking vines is etched onto it. It's sharp enough to suggest frequent sharpenings and clean enough to suggest even more frequent cleaning, perhaps as often as daily. The handle is mother-of-pearl and the guard has a single small black gemstone encrusted onto it.

"I have a sharpening and oiling kit," he says, "and could acquire some choice leather for the sheath, if you'd like."

Alexei's returned from his scavenging trip by now and his breath caught when he saw Yvette's dagger and then caught again when he saw Lake's. Now he's just kind of... hovering. He's not even sure what face he's making, because he has no idea what he's feeling, but he is very very much feeling it very strongly.

"Mmmm, no, I think I need to find the proper leather myself, you do not get to seduce my athame, thank you. And I can get a whetstone and oil easily enough. But I appreciate the offer." She pats her new dagger, fondly. Oh, Alexei hasn't seen her properly yet, has he, she will shuffle the silk out of the way and show her off to the artificer. What a pretty blade!!!!! Without a handle or a sheath yet, but all of the structure is there, which is what really matters!

"You will need to be very careful. That will turn on you, if you are not." Then he looks at Lake. "Yours... hasn't?"

"Of course not. I've had her since I was twelve and I will have her until the day I die if it's up to me."

"...surprising."

"Alexei, I packed silk to wrap her in, and didn't want to pick out any kind of handle or sheath material before she was properly put together! Cut me some credit, here. We will get along fantastically, and if we don't it will be entirely my fault, and I will be heartbroken about it."

"...I know you will."

"He's worried about you."

Was he?

..........was he?

Maybe he was.

How did Lake know, he didn't know.

He really should not be worried about her. Or care about her. Caring about people is a terrible idea in this school. Therefore He Will Not.

It is such a terrible idea in this school, yeah.

But it's very, very sweet.

She doesn't want to lie to him and say something obviously false like 'I'll be okay,' or something, but. ... But.

"Thank you," she says, very softly, with absolute sincerity, because she doesn't know what else to say to him. Um. Um. ".... Let me know if you need help with the sirenspider bits? I have, you know. Arms. If you'd like help carrying some of them back."

Oh he was third wheeling even harder than he thought he was. Also that recontextualizes a bunch the way she rejected him so hard. Yyyyeah okay um. To be fair to him he didn't know these two were doing a protracted mating dance. It's very subtle. Well, now he feels bad. He... feels worse than he'd expected, actually. Well, than he'd have expected. He thinks.

Time to bury those feelings just like every other, resheathe his athame, and get ready to get going, then.

He looks between Lake and Yvette and shakes his head. "I can carry them if you two make sure I don't die."

"Not to worry! I won't carry anything in my mouth, which you might have noticed is my main avenue of offense anyway. At least until my pretty athame gets her new handle..."

Which is to say: he does not get a choice in the matter, she's helping him carry his stuff.

Fine. Sure. They can do that.

And this whole thing took long enough that after they drop Alexei's brand new sirenspider body parts back in his room it'll be dinnertime and they should go to the cafeteria. Scorpius will keep an eye on Yvette, though, because she was still stabbed and here she is offering to carry shit for Alexei she does not have a drop of selfcare in her body and he can't keep going with that line of thought because the hypocrisy might backlash and kill him.

He doesn't try to make conversation on the way, though.

She's clearly still not okay, and is also just as clearly still in some degree of pain, but sirenspider bits are actually pretty light! Compared to the, uh, gigantic bag of shit she attempted to shuffle to Scorpius earlier. Which she'd carried from shop, up the stairs, and to the lecture hall for mal studies in the first place. Look, it's, it's better. She's fine. She's fine!

.... But yes she'll, uh, hold the table for them. If it's all the same to them. Yvette doesn't whine, but she does look like she sort of wants to.

Yeah, that's absolutely fine by them.

But you know whom it's not fine by?

"Lake," says Magnus Tebow, joining the queue right after Scorpius and Alexei did.

Chloe follows, looking a little bit nervous, and manages a "Hello," before she immediately gets distracted by another New Yorker asking her a direct question that's rather tricky, actually.

(Is this perfectly timed to give an opening to someone else? Yes. Is Chloe aware of this? Absolutely not.)

"Hello to you, too. Alexei, this is Magnus Tebow from New York. Magnus, this is Alexei Yahontov, Russian indie. That over there is Chloe but she seems distracted."

...okay?

"It's nice to meet you," Alexei says neutrally, which is the thing you say, he supposes.

Magnus looks—honestly kind of confused for a second, but he just gives Alexei a nod then turns to Scorpius again. "Spent the day with your girlfriend again?"

...girlfriend?

"Not my girlfriend."

Not his girlfriend.

Magnus waves a dismissive hand. "Terminology."

"Can we not do this here?" Scorpius sighs.

"Do what? I'm just making small talk with my enclave mate."

"Oh, are you missing me, is that what this is about?"

"You spent the night with her. And then you didn't deign to show up at the New York table for breakfast or for lunch, and you didn't go to the library, and now you come to the cafeteria with her again."