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The only thing that sucks more than the Scholomance is not going to the Scholomance
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Oh good! She will be happy to show off her book, and have that be the entire topic of conversation that she participates in! She's willing to participate in others, mind, but the topic of Quayle and the mal that will not be named is kind of the hot one right now, so. None of that. Absolutely none of that.

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And then: class! Today is a Monday, so most language-track students like Yvette have double language in the morning while the alchemists have lab and the artificers have shop.

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Honestly, a double language sounds excellent. Very good for getting distracted with. Is the school willing to let her work on Sanskrit? She would like to work on Sanskrit.

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Nope! The school is presenting her with the dubious gift of an Arabic worksheet, not a single word of English on it, and of course not even a dictionary. The cartoonish illustrations on it—most notably a man in a car about to run over some pedestrians—suggest it's modern Arabic rather than something more usefully classical to help with her new heavily-annotated grimoire.

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Damn it. School, why do you have to be this way. She's going to have to ask goddamned Ibrahim for help, isn't she, he knows Arabic. Ugh. Until then she'll. Just do her best.

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Ibrahim is unfortunately alchemy-track, but he has a friend called Nadia who's incanter track too and whose booth is right over there?

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Extra damn it. She should have been clever and run to grab a Classical Arabic book from the library in the morning. Like a dictionary. A dictionary would be excellent. That would be both useful and steer this damn school towards something a touch more relevant. As it is, she will in fact go talk to Ibrahim's friend Nadia and try her very best to look innocent and nonthreatening as she requests if Nadia (and look at her, remembering this girl's name!) knows anyone with an Arabic to English (or French, or even Mandarin) dictionary that they could lend her for the double period. She will be more than happy to proofread things! Especially now that it's so close to the end of term!

(This does admittedly work out well for her, in terms of likelihood of getting trades; usually, by this point in the year, no one needs their dictionary anymore, and the tests and final papers are due. Excellent for proofreading things. Just... less fortunate in terms of being really damned inconvenient.)

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Yeah sure that seems like a great trade in her opinion, her dictionary for Yvette's promise to proofread her paper.

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So now Yvette has the opportunity to listen to a voice doing an angry speech she can't understand at all in Arabic, occasionally interspersed with grudging explanations about how to pronounce قتل and صرخات.

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Yaaaaaaay.

She starts making her own copy of the dictionary, because that's just sensible. That can be done while doing the worksheet; whenever she looks up a word, it goes in the dictionary. It's a bit tedious, but she's used to this sort of work by now. Wheee.

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At lunch, Todd is already not being completely frozen out anymore: a group of loser freshman seem to have taken seats at the end of his table.

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Ooooof course. Ugh. Honestly, besides the guy he pushed into the void, she most pities his alliance. Especially the valedictorian, Clarita Acevedo-Cruz, from Argentina, because, yes, Yvette bothered to learn her name, she has traits besides being the valedictorian. Is this knowledge spite motivated by how reducing someone to just 'the valedictorian' is dehumanizing and reducing her to what she can provide? Yes. Yes it is. Clarita Acevedo-Cruz is impressive as a person, because not only did she make valedictorian, but she made it without letting on to anyone else that she was even going for it. The running for valedictorian is a cutthroat and sometimes violent business, and the grades aren't publicly posted anymore for everyone to plan (and perhaps kill) accordingly, not until the end of the first senior term. Usually, though, it's kind of obvious who's going for it, by how they are focused intently on grades and only grades, with as much extra coursework as they can manage to fit without exploding from pressure. With Clarita, it was not obvious at all, and she swept the board when people had thought she was just another loser beneath notice. And now she's stuck with fucking Todd.

Whatever. She's just. She's just going to eat her lunch. Occasionally, Todd will get some dirty looks, because she is better than him and has actual tangible proof of this fact. More than most people know, even.

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The talk is still mostly about the putative maw mouth, but without a dramatic thing happening Right Then And There people are mostly treating it as gossip instead of a life-and-death thing. Or, well, everything is a life-and-death thing, and therefore can become gossip, but some of it is more immediate.

Also, Scorpius is nowhere to be seen.

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But most of the usual suspects are.

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Nnnnhhhhh she doesn't want to be anywhere near any conversations about the mal who must not be named. Hey, does anyone want to talk about tactics to maybe persuade the school to put her on classical Arabic instead of the modern version? She supports picking up Arabic, but she wants to aim properly, here.

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Good luck to her if the school has already decided she wants modern Arabic. She could try grabbing some dictionaries and other texts in the library and spend pointed amounts of time reading them? The school doesn't usually take a hint but it might be worthwhile anyway, especially if she actually goes all in and tries to aim for stuff that is very different between classical and modern Arabic.

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Yeah. That was about what she had planned, really. (This is mostly an excuse to not talk about the mal that must not be named.)

Will she have any problems finding an appropriately sized group for a quick trip to the library after lunch?

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...uh, yeah, she will. Pretty much everyone who has a choice is avoiding the library right now, especially with the way Todd Quayle explicitly pointed out that it would be prime hunting grounds for a maw-mouth just this morning. No one wants to go.

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... Yeah, that's fair.

But instead of being sensible and following the crowd, she'll instead just shrug and head there on her own. Is this smart? Probably not. But she really doesn't want to continue hanging around everyone talking about the mal who must not be named, and after yesterday, she's missing some of her usual levels of caution. Besides, she's been doing so much social lately, and she wants a break from that, too. It's nice, but also exhausting. There are so many people that now apparently see her as a person, now.

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And as implied by the lack of people coming with her, the library is in fact nearly deserted. Most of the tables and chairs have been badly scorched, and there's a lingering smell of smoke and ozone. There are a few freshmen there in actual seats, Monday being the afternoon they have work period together, but most people are being sensible.

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Wild. She could actually sit in the reading room.

She's not going to, but she sure could. Instead, it's off to the soothing comfort of the library stacks, to see about sweet talking the school into putting her on Classical Arabic instead of the modern version. The way to do this is mostly by assigning oneself extra work; it likes to incentivize students going above and beyond and trying to better themselves. So she's going to get to work on translating her shiny new grimoire, like the studious little nerd she is. She'll have to leave for her maths class eventually, but maybe the school will get the hint by then.

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Well, she won't know whether the school did or did not get the hint until her next language lab! She will be in exciting suspense until then.

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Yaaaaay.

Her day is an exercise in normality, which generally means that she's avoiding everyone, instead of capitalizing on the world of socialization that's opened up to her. Don't talk to her, she has work to throw herself into in a desperate attempt to ignore the hot topic of the day. So much work. So very, very much work. She does obligingly sit next to Alexei at dinner, but she is so unhappy with the general direction of all conversations that involve mouths that may or may not maw.

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Since Alexei is having so much trouble with hiding his own feelings from himself despite the years of practice, he notices it when he feels very tempted to pet her and has to fight against the instinct.

Having a crush sucks, actually, especially in this gods forsaken school.

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"You're not going to find it," Liu says a little bit after Scorpius arrives at their table, having shown up later than everyone else. He'd skipped class this afternoon, it seems, and given the givens everyone assumes he went looking for it. "It wouldn't be hiding, it wouldn't need to. It would just be eating. If you've looked and not found it..."

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