"Yeah, my dad used to be a professor and taught me econ when I asked him."

"By correspondence when you were in virtuality, or...?"

"Some before, some during."

"That's neat of him. My mom is a teacher but just, like, kindergarten."

"He doesn't teach anymore, which was part of what freed up the time for him to teach me."

"Oh, retired?"

No.

"Um. Yeah, sort of."

She doesn't press. Her brownie's gone and she picks up her cane. "Where'd you move in?"

"Holder Hall."

"Neat, me too, I'm on the first floor east wing."

"West wing for me."

"Swing by if you want to do econ homework together."

Eep.

"I'd like that."

"And speaking of homework I have some nineteenth century literature to look through. I'll see you in Econ. Get my dishes for me." She collects her cane and gets up and tap-tap-taps away.

Lucien barely manages to keep his eep from being audible this time.

He gets her dishes and heads out.

- and then returns because he forgot about his own dishes. 

They have Econ 3 the next morning. Not godawful early, only at half past nine. Isabella shows up to it with a different color t-shirt, identical pair of jeans, and, of course, the cane. "Hi Lucien!"

"Hi Isabella"

Lucien is wearing clothes. Wow that cane is still really cool.

(More specifically, he is wearing a soft casual button down he'd insisted to his dad he'd never actually wear, and jeans.)

She sits at the desk next to his. "Settling in all right?"

"Yeah, and my first class went well I think - I just came from Stats."

"Math first thing in the morning, bold of you. I'm saving stats for some semiquarter when they have it after lunch."

"I actually enjoy having math early I think - it's better than having something which means I have to interact with other people early."

"I'm half tempted to work in not needing sleep early in my magic progression but I went and picked up lucid dreaming in virtuality like everybody else and now the opportunity cost is not conducive. Still, not being groggy would be nice."

"I tried to pick up no sleep and got something out of it but it didn't go all that well so I switched to divination earlier than I'd planned at first."

"Ah, impractical intuitions for how to build a no-sleep power? That sucks."