"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."

Huh. Welsh is a focus area he hasn't seen before, but maybe it makes sense for someone growing up in...Britain, by the accent? "Sadly no overlap there. I do have a handful of English self-healing spells too, but they're for minor injuries or illnesses. Anything you like in there?"

"Say on about the stimulants?"

"One is a simple cheap cup-of-coffee-equivalent. The other is more complex and fiddly but you can get anywhere from 'slightly perky' to 'cocaine' by varying the mana trickle." 

"How good's the speed?"

"It's on the lower end of the generic move-faster spells. Modest chunk of mana for a freshman, gives about a ten percent boost." Enough to not be the last out of a room, maybe. 

"Does it cast fast?"

"Couple lines." Not ideal, not crippling.