"It doesn't really support a commute."

"In what sense?"

"The only time anyone goes in or out is when we're inducted, when we're fourteen, and when we graduate, four years later."

"And graduation is dangerous, even in teams. Brr."

"A while ago they modified the school to kidnap a mundie school nurse every year but they had no exit plan for those. They usually last about a month."

"I sent a stern letter out about that with a graduating team but I don't know if they lived to deliver."

"It sure would be nice if nobody ever committed a nonconsensual human sacrifice."

"Amen." Having demolished two sandwiches she sets in on a pack of snack cakes.

"If there's anything in particular you want, Melody has decided to go grocery shopping."

"- ice cream?"

"A pomegranate."

"Cheese."

"Got it," he says, definitely not getting out a phone or anything to legibly send this message. 

"You guys have some kind of comm spell running?"

"Sending is rank zero, which means it's pretty much trivial."

"Do you guys even have affinities?"

"--Yes but given the givens I suspect we mean different things by that." 

"Affinities for wizards are an area of spell that comes more easily and intuitively and cheaply. Everybody learns to cast out of affinity, too, but most actually useful things aren't trivial for most wizards. Or, well, wizards younger than us, we can probably relax about mana costs considerably more now."

"For us, affinities are a set of mostly-racial quasi-elemental categories that make it easier for us to learn certain kinds of magic. For example, I'm 'neutral'--fully human aside from the magic--which means that my affinities are soul and body. Other affinities include mind, death, beast, nature, life, blood, water, fire, metal, earth, and wind."

"...huh. At least most of those are plausible wizard affinities but ours're much more varied than that."

"There are also three basic categories of witch, according to how we learn magic--I'm a sorceress, which means I mostly learn magic through instinct and practice; the other kinds are academics, who learn magic out of books, and warlocks, who make compacts with greater beings for power."

"I suppose we're all academics by that scheme."

"Or at least, your magic is more similar to academic magic in that way. Some kinds of magic are also easier or harder to learn for one or another category. Like, elementalism is a lot easier for me because I'm a sorceress." 

"Manchester enclave had a water and a fire affinity in our year."

"Come to think of it, you mentioned yours earlier--metamagic, exotic materials, aaand potions?"