"That makes sense. We might want to do a structural comparison first, that should help get us thinking clearly about the differences and we can work out which are plausible spells from there. I see the intro, the two sections, and how they are bridged - or how they aren't, from the second passage."

Marcy will draw a diagram and annotate it! Look, she has relatively abundant paper and will spend it in a good cause and is good at drawing diagrams. Is Julian still looking bothered? She doesn't want him to be bothered; he's contributing a lot and she wants him to want to come back.

Riley does not get to Boston and Philadelphia's reading room early. He's having a bad morning.

He knocks on the door, hoping it's not about to get worse.

"It's Riley Finn. From Minnesang to Goethe?"

"Hey, Riley, come in. We started without you, we're analyzing the three passages."

"Here's what we have so far," she says, holding out the notes. Hopefully he is better at German poetry analysis than he is at punctuality. Or maybe he had an emergency come up; that happens more than enough in here.

"Oh, hello again Riley!" A fellow nonclaver. She's somewhat cheered. "I will help you write these notes again. Repetition is good for remembering."

"Thank you," he says quietly, though he smiles at Wendy. Riley will need to get all their names again without making it obvious he only remembers Marcy's and Wendy's.

Among his languages, German stands out as one of the stronger ones. He's much better at discussing language change than he is at how to translate the poetic elements. He considers the three passages they have to examine, while taking some time to look at the rest of his study group. Hmm. It looks like Marcy is a hard worker. Hard to read the kid from Philadelphia, but he's got the strongest German skills. Curious, intelligent? He's not sure about Wendy or the Asian kid yet- Wendy is an indie, too, but that doesn't give him much insight into her personality, and the Asian kid seems quiet.

Riley looks up from Marcy's notes, brows furrowed.

"Look at the last lines. There's some kind of pattern, there, they're longer than the first three- if they are spells, the last line of each stanza should tell us what they were for."

Julian has recovered a bit now that everyone is talking about the technical details of spell composition. At this point he has a pretty good idea what his own paper is going to look like and has started on outlining it while occasionally contributing to the discussion. 

Wendy is pretty lost but trying not look like it and copying down what everyone else is saying even though it hardly makes any sense.

"Looks like this one means 'forces' or 'following', this one is 'king', and this one is 'mien' or 'demeanor', so it could be something related to leadership or charisma? Again, assuming it's a spell."

Marcy has a sketch of her own essay but is focusing on accumulating enough content before she assembles it into a reasonable structure.

"I mean, it's going to be very hard to figure out what they might have done without the full context. I do hope we get some real spells soon." 

Theun's still looking mostly at the floor, but you can probably hear the scowl in his voice. "I like the logic. The second one seems to have picked words with a tighter spread of meaning, first one a broader one. I guess that's taking the third one as a base, which we don't know..." 

He flips a couple pages back, looking for dates for the passages.

Probably better not pick at the guy with a bad mood. There's lots of reasons to have a bad mood.

"Is this even a spell-giving class, or more of a history class?"

Oh, right, she wouldn't know.

"Generally, all classes are spell-giving classes. Or something-giving, some classes will give you alchemy recipes or artificing designs."

"Right. Thank you. Fast question, how often should I ask for another spell book? I am having trouble with my first because of vocabulary."

Okay, something is clearly off with Philadelphia kid. He seems to have a handle on the assignment, so that's not it. Maybe there's some Boston/Philadelphia power struggle over the room? But Marcy doesn't seem bothered. Did Julian offend him? He has been focusing more on Marcy, since Malak and Annisa spoke so highly of her. Or maybe he's just unhappy about being trapped in the horrible death school for doomed children, that might do it. 

He has no idea what's up with the redhead. "Did your parents not go to the Scholomance?" It's not impossible, especially in the places that don't have enough spots – but this girl sounds American. Weird. 

"If you're having trouble with your spellbook, you need help translating it sooner rather than later. German?"

"If you're stuck on one you can maybe try one more time but if you get a second German one you'll need to work through them. I can help in exchange for a look at the spells? I'm going to be drilling vocabulary a lot anyway."

Also, what's bothering Theun? They're making decent progress on the assignment and she can't recall anyone saying anything rude, and he invited everyone here as much as she did so if he's acquired beef with one of them it was yesterday evening or early this morning.

"Yeah, no. I'm not going to bother hiding it, I'm - people are saying 'mundie'. Muggleborn from the Chicago slums. I think I'm paranoid enough to have a shot at not dying anyway but you be the judge. Yes, German. It's the vocabulary mostly, I can sort of guess what words mean and I speak it well enough but not reading, and not so many words. I've got about half the spells though."

She's kind of incredibly stressed about putting all that in the open but candid is her default state and if they're going to fuss about it better now than later.

Julian observes that a) this girl is doomed, and b) that Marcy is being fairly generous with her anyway, which suggests that c) any advice he offers won't make him look totally pathetic, so d) he can go ahead and be helpful, because e) he is the absolute worst kind of grasping hagfish but dammit he's going to live. 

"If the school thinks you need to learn a language, it'll generally keep offering you books in that language. If you can't keep up, you might get spellblocked – you'll only get spells you won't be able to use. If you're planning on keeping the spellbook, you should at least make an effort to read through all the spells. It's more respectful, and spellbooks tend to get very opinionated." 

"It's fuzzy, but yeah, pretty much like they said. If you get through this semester, you'll be roughly up to an indie level on languages, but it's going to be painful until then. Sorry, on behalf of this whole f-  On behalf of the whole stupid system."

"It is what it is. And- yes, definitely. It's a very helpful spellbook! I like it! I have metal spells, it's fun! I am just not good enough to learn what it has so fast. I need to be fast."

She pulls out the book, a black-fronted journal titled in German, practical incantations of manipulation and defense, M. Madsen. "Everyone here is welcome to copy a few when we study. So you are not angry for being less good at the homework probably."

"If you show us spells we should show you some too." Knowledge doesn't cost anything and if Wendy's going to have any chance whatsoever she should learn to charge for stuff. Besides, if people had to pay for being less good than the room average at German she'd be in trouble.

Julian doesn't see what there is to apologize for. This girl practically fell headfirst into a Scholomance slot. Of course she's still going to die, but it's the principle of the thing. 

"You're very lucky, you know. You have a better chance in here than you did out there." 

And then, to the spellbook – "Oh, you look so useful! You know, I was just thinking about how badly I needed new defense spells. I'm so glad to have met you!" 

"Hum. Spell for spell unless it's a spectacular spell seems generally fair and generally a good idea, yes?" She pats the spellbook gently and dusts it off. "I'm going to make good book covers for all my spellbooks, they deserve that much."