Hee hee. "Good!" He makes for the cupboards for supplies. "I'm Alexius," he says to Ribo while liberating a bottle of rubbing alcohol, "affinity: me." 

"Ribo, wire for me."

"How flexible!" And pause, the better to appreciate a good pun. "Think you could do wire mesh covers for room vents?"

"Does your vent not have its grille? I guess an artifice grille on top wouldn't hurt."

"I think so, I got some barbed wire in shop that I think will have a good resonance with protective enchantments. I haven't tried it yet though."

"That, and grilles break, and wire mesh has smaller gaps. Also it can go just about anywhere, needn't be limited to vents. I have a full seal for when I'm not in the room to make it harder for mals to sneak in, but, uh, have not yet come up with a spell to not asphyxiate." Wards: not remotely his specialty. "Barbed wire sounds very ward-friendly indeed." 

"Ooh, how's the full seal work...?"

"It's mostly just a rubber cover that's enchanted to be very discouraging to mals. I'll probably trade it to a freshman enclaver once I've got enough magic to be confident of killing most mals that would reasonably sneak through a vent grille. Got a nice little under-door seal too." They were a significant fraction of his weight allowance, but the mana savings in room wards are huge. 

"Oh, I thought it was a spell. Clever idea anyway."

"I wish. Sadly, wards are not my specialty. Hence the substitutes. Thanks, though." 

"I wonder how often rubber shows up in the shop. I didn't see any yesterday. Actually, is there anything you're offering for trade or looking for? I don't have first pick of the shop but I'm not far off."

"Not immediately but - short term, help with shop assignments and materials, I have Friday shop and it sucks. Also I'm always open to trading spells or tutoring or homework help." 

"Do you speak Russian?"

"I do!" 

"That's the thing I'm most likely to trade for tutoring on at the moment. I'm trying to pick it up as quickly as possible because I need it for a class. I spent a good chunk of my weekend reading part of an intro textbook. The other thing is if you have any experience with spell translation. I have a lot of spells that are too expensive for me to cast in a language almost nobody knows and someone I expect to be willing to trade for anything I can translate since they're healing spells."

"I can absolutely do Russian tutoring! I can maybe do spell translation if the spells are caster-only, but, uh, recent experience suggests my affinity likes tweaking things so they work really well on me and not so well for others. If I tried to translate a spell, ah, unselfishly, it might turn out subtly problematic. I would totally trade for them though." 

"The reason I need to translate them is because they require too much mana for me to use. Maybe someone with a good affinity could stretch them but some are probably beyond even that. I'll probably trade for Russian tutoring though what would you want in exchange?"

"Eh, if they're upperclassman-level spells they'll still be good to have when I'm an upperclassman. Offer stands. For tutoring - probably shop materials, alchemical ingredients, or mana depending on what I need in a given week. Mana is the simplest of those." He will cheerfully haggle to a mutually agreeable price while he starts laying out ingredients. 

Ribo really doesn't know what things are worth but she'll take a wishlist of shop materials. Mana is not something she really wants to trade away. She's also noncommittal on trading the upperclassmen spells.

(Ghassan shows up fashionably late- it looks like there's at least been some attempt to clear out the room. He makes a beeline for Lysander, happy to see a familiar face. And there's Orion Lake again, like some kind of mal-sniffing dog clearing the room for everyone else. He wonders what kind of parents would turn out a kid that recklessly stupid, no matter how convenient his affinity. Eventually, it'll catch up to him. Until then, though, he's a great help to those in the class who want to get their work done without constant mal interruption.)