School starts up again. Darren and Bella are both skipping straight into twelfth grade. (Bella looked into just starting college early, but while she does technically have the sort of resume that can lead to that kind of thing, she can't exactly write an essay about how she saved the life of another person and this caused her to have Moral Character, let alone about how she started a small business - so skipping one grade it is.)
They apply to colleges. They both get into University of Washington and get sufficient scholarships to accommodate both going there.
Summer ensues again.
One afternoon, Bella is over at Darren's, and has fallen asleep - in purring fullform - across his lap on the couch.
"Yeah, that's - hmm. It's almost like there's two modes? One where you do it yourself and stay conscious and another one where you don't but pass out."
She heals all the objects intended for healing - then, thoughtful, cuts along part of the hem of Darren's supplied shirt, lines the edges up, and stares them down.
She manages to reunite them with a sort of chevron pattern in the visible stitching.
Her boyfriend watches with fascination. "You know, if not-Hogwarts fails you can always take up tailoring," he deadpans.
"Where in there do I get my beauty sleep?" she snorts. "Do you want the embroidery on the shirt or should I put it back?"
"Obviously you will run entirely off of coffee. And magic. Don't worry about the shirt, it's not my favorite one in the world, feel free to embroider it."
"Cool." She cuts a stripe entirely out of the left sleeve, and very slowly manages to turn that sleeve into a swath of embroidered whitework attached to its original location. It's not especially pretty embroidery - she is not, despite fairy princesshood, a seamstress - but it is sort of visually interesting, and, of course, magic.
"I like it," pronounces Darren. "I declare this to be test subject shirt, do whatever you'd like with it."
Darren grins madly when he sees this. "That means - you can probably do designs, too. Or, more practically, runes. Do you want to try runes? We can pick a simple spell and see if you can use magic fairy princess magic to do even more magic?"
She manages to "draw" a line on it in black.
Her boyfriend hugs her, grinning. "It could be useful, if you're being sneaky," he points out.
"That's true," she acknowledges. "Okay, good harmless simple spells..." She starts rummaging through her notes.
Then she incants it.
"So I can do mending, and drawing, and I'm sort of tempted to start giving myself papercuts to see if I can do small healing without passing out."
"Do you want me to sell my finger for science? Because I can, a paper cut's not a huge deal."
"It might be easier to concentrate on if it's not me, but I'll want to try on myself eventually anyway," she says.
He goes about trying to make this happen. After a few attempts: "Ow! Okay, got it."
Bella is presented his wounded finger. Look at it, bleeding just a little from a tiny paper cut.
She looks dizzy for a second - but doesn't fall unconscious - and lo - Darren is healed.