wilbur's induction (repost from main scholomance continuity w/ minor edits)
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There's no hesitation in Wilbur's answer. "Enjolras."

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"And... which one's that, again?"

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"The leader of the rebellion! A charming young man who was capable of being terrible. That's a Hugo quote, it's his introduction. He really believes in it, you know? Even when he knows he's going to die, he still stays, because he wants to, to make a point even if it kills him. I'm sort of the Enjolras of the Scholomance, I'd say." Grin. "Except hopefully with a different ending."

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"Hey, heaven's not too bad."

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"If it were real, maybe. No offense if you believe."

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"I don't."

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"Well, there you go."

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"--I appreciate the, uh, performance, but I have Latin homework, do you mind if I work on that for a while?"

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"Of course not! I'm pretty good at Latin, let me see--"

And they can work on conjugations for a while.

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Time passes. It gets harder, after the first few days; there are more mals, and the anxious-excited newness of everything is replaced by day-to-day drudgery.

He loves his history classes and his geography class and his literature classes; he stays up late reading Chénier and Hugo and Milton. He loves Eret and Niki, loves singing and laughing and joking, loves writing spells that come together just so.

He doesn't love algebra, but it's fine; he's not terrible at it, he can keep up.

He hates shop. He doesn't cry trying to make something for mana storage, but it's a close thing, and he does cry later, alone in his room, trying to use it. It's hard and it's frustrating and it doesn't work right and nothing works and there are more mals now and he's going to die, he's going to die, and everyone who can see him can tell, they're all fucking laughing at him, he knows it, and it is so hard to not throw it on the floor and stomp on it because it's awful but if he does that then he actually will die and he hates it and he hates himself and he punches his thigh over and over until he can breathe again.

Niki's working on antidotes for poison, in case one of them eats cafeteria food that they shouldn't have. Eret's working on an artifact that can serve as a less mana-intensive alarm than the normal wards.

And Wilbur writes spells that he doesn't have enough mana to cast and cries himself to sleep because he's gotten away with it for a little bit but it's going to be obvious, soon, that he's falling behind, that he's not storing any mana, that he's barely making enough to live day-to-day in here, and once they find out, everything will fall apart.

He can't let that happen. Not yet. Not until he's gotten more people to join, at least.

(He misses home, misses Terrence and Tommy and Toby, misses his mom's cooking and the background noise of his dad's crows. It's stupid and childish and he tries to focus that energy into work, into making everything a little better for when Tommy and Toby come in next year, but he finds himself wiping away tears more often than he'd like to admit.)

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