"Well, I already know it's not infallible.  I modified it from an old design, and that was the cost of making it freshman-cheap, it's an hour with some powdered silver and I can enchant it from reserves, but any senior could "force the lock". I can also do the old design, if you'd rather not take the chance, but it takes more of everything. I have one of each for my spellbooks - weak for personal, strong for enclave."

"Would forcing the lock be obvious afterwards?"

"Brute force the easy way, yes, definitely visible. If a good artificer or someone with a useful affinity - yours, maybe - tried to do it carefully? That, I'm not sure."

"Well, I suppose it's still better not to be a soft target."

"Practically the motto of the whole school. Especially if you ask enclavers."

"If everybody were a hard target maybe the mals would chip a tooth now and again, it's not completely zero-sum, though I admit it's close."

"Yeah, I just... We're a crowd running from a tiger, drafting other people to run next to us because they're a little slower."

"My extracurricular project is going to be tiger-poisoning, although I'm not terribly optimistic since probably if methods used by mundane pest control were effective someone might have noticed before me. But I'm going to build an agglo terrarium and do horrible things to them."

"Good for you! I have less useful things that eat up my spare energy, unfortunately."

Like not offending people by telling them they're throwing people to tigers, but that went okay this time.

"Well, if you find any agglos that fit in your pocket I will want them in a couple weeks if it's convenient." She picks up her tray to bus, following in the footsteps of a senior who lingered over lunch. "My room is in that section," she says, once her tray is put.

"I'd be happy to walk there with you, once we have the room number for our careless merchant friend. I'm one section over, lower half of the outer ring."

"Cool. Where's he gotten to..." There he is. Wow he looks stressed out, poor guy. "Alexius! Where should we find you after stopping off at my void?"

Angie has been watching Alexius run about, her expression slowly softening a little throughout, and she sighs as he returns and glances down at the two at the table, "I would be willing to trade you notes," she tells Theun, "Angie Starr, Montréal," she adds, "I was in Accelerated Algebra with you this morning - I didn't take the potion, my brother and clavemate did." 

"Thought I was coming with," he calls back, "escort and Chinese and mana?" 

And now Alexius is getting shouted at by Jacksonville juniors, who have apparently forgotten about petty things like "solidarity" in their excitement. 

Oh, if he's coming with she'll just wait then. Continue the irksome process of condensing her notes when she remembers them wrong.

Right, that's where he saw her before.* "Thanks, Angie. I'll pay you back in kind, if I see you're out some morning? After this burns off, obviously."

(*Theun's schedule has been retconned so he was not in that class. Please ignore the discrepancy.)

Nod, "That's fair. Do either of you happen to know anyone who had Roman History or History of Magical Conflicts this morning? Those were Alexei and Zed's classes, they'll need notes." 

"Sorry, I don't know."

"I also had Roman History, I'll get back to you."

"Thank you. May I also come with you while you ask the void about that counterspell?" She asks Bella. 

"If you like."

"Thank you - if you need anything from Montréal, we'll be happy to return the favour," she adds. 

"If you consider it a favor to Montréal I won't contradict you." She makes a small note in a different section of her notebook.

Nod, and waiting for Alexius to return. 

And eventually, return he does, sporting a slowly purpling bruise on his jaw where one of the upperclassmen decided to Teach Him a Lesson. 

"That's everyone."