It is well known that the library is the safest place in the school. It's at the top level of the Scholomance, and its bookshelves extend all the way up, to the safety of the void above. It is as far away as physically possible from the entrance and exit of the school, which is of course at the very bottom. There are precious few vents in the library to let in air, and what little ones that are here are small. Because of this, the whole place smells musty and stale and quite like ancient books that have been forgotten for centuries. There's also no plumbing on this level, either, so any restroom or water breaks involve a long trip down to the cafeteria level, which is just as annoying as it sounds. All of this inconvenience comes with the benefit that the maleficaria are just as inconvenienced, though. Which means, for however dark it is, how much it smells, how inconvenient it is to ever need to pee, however much the shelves and their contents don't always like to stay put, for how easy it is to get lost in the stacks with aisles that change length and that all look the same... it's where everyone wants to be.
The reading rooms are especially favored, because they're actually comfortable. There's a main one, nicely centralized, conveniently located near the stairs up and down without being directly in front of them, whose tables and couches are jealously guarded. Each set is claimed by the major enclaves, and the whole thing is the hub of library related social activity. Yvette is not, and will likely never be, welcome there. She doesn't bother looking there for anything but mals, and just walks right past without so much as a forlorn glance. Up on the mezzanine, there are a couple smaller reading rooms that are a bit less set in ownership; controlled by shifting alliances of minor enclaves, maybe particularly powerful independent alliances, and the like. The rooms there are both more out of the way and less comfortable, but if anything they're guarded more jealously. They're closer to being edged out, and there's less comfort of an established power base. Obviously, Yvette is somehow even less welcome there, maleficer that she appears to be, because she could maybe even actually be a threat.
So of course, Yvette has nothing to do with any of that. For her freshman year, she'd just bring books down to her room to work. This was a little bit inconvenient, but it worked all right for her first year here, and at the time, it hadn't been all that long to walk. The freshman dorms are just below the library's level, on the outer ring of the cylinder of their school. The trouble comes when one makes it to the next year. Each year, the dorms descend a level, grinding slowly down an almost impossibly large screw-like threaded monstrosity on the school. Freshmen, at the very top, far away from the horrors that wait for them below in the graduation hall, are the safest. Seniors, at the very bottom, are... distinctly not. Put the most powerful and capable students in front, between the monsters and the youngest children, and all of that. Which meant that once sophomore year hit, she had twice as many stairs she needed to go down to bring books to her room. Rather put a damper in that strategy.
If that were the only problem, she might have just gotten used to it, used the extra exercise to gain mana. But of course, it's not. Books, especially magical books, are finicky and proud things. There are no due dates for library books here, but you'd have trouble keeping them for any extended period of time anyway. If they feel they're being neglected, or ignored? If they've been too far from their shelf home for too long? If another student also needs a book on this subject while the first one is hoarding it? It'll just leave. Good luck ever finding it again, even if you made note of where it had originally been shelved. It'll avoid you out of spite, if nothing else. Books used in the first year of school, baby's first magical tome and the like, tend to be more forgiving. They understand that they're dealing with children, newly ripped from their homes and dropped into a void suspended school filled with monsters that are sometimes maleficaria and sometimes human. As magical books go, they're very patient and gracious.
As the students grow in power, and need tomes of corresponding strength, it starts becoming very necessary to see that books are treated very politely indeed. Yvette has taken to keeping careful track of where the books she needs come from, in a tidy little notebook she keeps on her. Title, catalog number on its label, which aisle it's in, how many bookshelves from the end, which shelf from the floor, how many books on either side of the shelf, and the names of its immediate neighbors. The aisles are, in her notebook, color coded. When she is done with her books, which should be promptly, they are to be reshelved right where she found them. 'Promptly', in this case, means 'when you are not using them,' and 'when you are not using them' means 'directly making use of them right that second to learn or work on something.' No taking them away for later reading, no keeping books for after dinner study, and especially no holding books overnight. They have a purpose, and they have a place, and she will respect them or she will not have access to them, and none of them will broach or tolerate any argument to the contrary. Yvette thinks this is very fair. Also rather charming; she's occasionally been tempted by the idea of becoming a librarian.
This sort of careful and dutiful treatment of the contents of the library is not very conducive to long periods of time to work with the books when one is taking books to places besides the conveniently placed reading rooms that she will likely never set foot in. Studying in the stacks themselves works fine with singular books, safely kept in her lap and off of the floor, but this strategy falls through when she's juggling several to compare their contents. The best she could do with that situation after her second year was grab an empty classroom to study in, instead of trekking all the way to her room, and that comes with its own dangers. Mostly mal related dangers. Not to mention, the conventional way one navigates the library is by staying in the main aisles, where the classification of the contents of each row is tidily written on the end. If a student doesn't keep track of where they are in the library at all times, they could very well get lost, and, well. Getting lost doesn't tend to go well. The oldest and least used works are further in, too, and late last year she'd had a project involving the comparison of several old languages. Which meant a lot of walking in, grabbing her book, walking back to the main aisle, then walking back in again. All of this with no cheating by doing her reading on the floor, because by then she'd had it good and impressed upon her that books are precious and to be respected. Eventually, she'd gotten frustrated with the inefficiency, and decided to risk going around the back to save time.
Her gamble had gotten her a viable shortcut that saved quite a lot of time, a forced crash course in Sanskrit (from paying a bit too much attention to the titles of that particular section of the library to keep from getting lost), and a true library treasure. A studying desk, tucked away in a little nook that could only be seen from the back, tucked away in darkness beneath one of the mezzanine walkways and between scrolls and tablets so old the language has been forgotten. After it showed up in the same place several times in a row, she did the only sensible thing and traded for a mostly empty bottle of wood oil (courtesy of Alexei) and lovingly got it cleaned up. From then on, it became her desk. Nobody else knew where it was, and it liked her at least well enough to stay where she thought it would be.
She's known for disappearing mysteriously into the stacks and not coming out until the bell demands it of her, and this little bastion of hers is usually where she ends up. It's where she happens to be today, working dutifully on Liu's history homework.
