This girl is frowning at the Hindi section, drawing pictures of the spines of the books adjacent to the one she has tucked under her arm.

Well, that sure is a creepy vibe she's giving off, isn't it. It's not quite like maleficer vibes - he's seen, like, six of those in the freshman class alone, what a mess - but it's close enough. 

Hanging out with an obvious maleficer in the stacks as a freshman: not wise. 

On the other hand, maleficers who kill people don't have evil vibes. They look sweet and friendly and kind like Granny Lola. So this girl's probably of the hamster-a-week persuasion, and he can't exactly fault her for wanting to survive the Scholomance. And if she does decide to graduate to freshmen-eating, Alexius is better-prepared to resist than most other possible targets. Might even get to take her stuff if he survives the inevitable stab-fest. And he does need an edge that isn't potion-selling, now. 

He glances at the notebook. "That's a good idea." 

"That'd be why I'm doing it."

He snags an introductory Hindi text, fixing its location in his memory. If he's going to aim to learn Hindi next, might as well start soon. 

"Looking for spells, or to learn the language?" It'd be nice to know someone else fluent in Hindi, or working on it, if she doesn't plan on killing him. 

"Well, I was hoping to start on some French and Spanish this year, but apparently our lovely institution of secondary education wants me to be advised that there are some 48 dialects of Hindi in current circulation, on top of the language being some seventeen centuries old, and it was silly of me to think it was going to settle for modern standard, so now I'm going to spend all year on those and, if I'm lucky, Urdu. And how is your week going?"

Well if it's going to be a contest..."Came in with a plan to sell memory potions to get an edge. Turns out they're broken in a way that wasn't caught by two years of personal use or ten other testers." Also he started at the Scholomance, but he can't exactly claim exclusive suckage on that one. "Wish I could blame the school for that one, but I think it's just my affinity screwing with my brewing." 

"Didn't scratch off the right circles in the affinity lotto?"

"Eh, it's more like one of those tickets that gives you like five matching numbers but you don't know if it's worth ten bucks or ten thousand till you check." Who knew the contents of Florida gas station convenience counters would be so useful in the Scholomance.

"And you stuck without a radio, huh." She finishes her drawing and looks for another likely Hindi book.

He checks the next row for mals, then for more intro Hindi material. "Till I can piece one together, so to speak." They're really beating this metaphor into the ground, huh. 

"Good luck with that. If you find a beating-your-affinity-into-submission spell I will trade you for it even if I have to learn both Vietnamese and Finnish."

"There's a thought. Even if I did, it would probably go horribly wrong...my affinity is myself, see." 

"Reflexive pronouns, that's a new one."

"I confess I'm attached to it, in all its weirdness. What did yours do to deserve a beating?"

"Maybe I just don't like its face."

Was that an I don't want to talk about it, or just more banter? Augh, he sucks at this. "Odd reason to dislike an abstract magical concept." 

"You say that but you haven't seen its face."

Well, that wasn't vaguely threatening. Not at all. 

...she seems sincere about it, though. Weird. Okay, Alexius. A riddle. What kind of affinity earns the hatred of its owner? Not mild annoyance, but actually willing-to-learn-two-crazy-hard-languages in the Scholomance to mess with it? "Maleficing" jumps to mind, he supposes, if you are sane and want to stay that way. It is also not the sort of thing one wants to talk about with strangers. 

Oddly enough, "sane and want to stay that way" is a point in Library Girl's favor, at least given a pile of assumptions. Why the vibes, though? Maybe she's doing just enough maleficing to not die? 

"My, uh, condolences, I suppose. For that and the Hindi debacle. I'm just starting the language, myself." Hindi seems a safer topic than affinity-bashing. Affinicism? Affinitivism? 

"Well, make sure you're very clear with the language lab that you are content with modern standard and do not also need..." She flips to a page of her book. "Asamiya, Bengali, Bhili, Bihari, Dogri..."

"I will take that under advisement, thank you!" He should probably ask Hira when they study together. If she isn't shunning him for his potion fuckup, ugh. The thought makes his stomach clench. 

"Anytime."

"Do you have any interest in spell trades? I'm Alexius, by the way." 

"El. What've you got?"

"Personal spells, mostly. Stimulants, gut microbiome tweaks, wake-up ward, ice spike projectile, cold resistance, minor boosts to reflexes or speed. Others depend on what languages you have, those are in English." 

"Welsh, Marathi, Modern bloody Standard Hindi."