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The only thing that sucks more than the Scholomance is not going to the Scholomance
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"... You don't have to! It's just, it, I." Huff. "... There's, so my mother hates it? She, um. Tried to give it up after she graduated. But my dad... didn't. Graduate, I mean. And she was kind of. All alone, with a little graduation baby, and." She gives an awkward, slightly guilty shrug. "She couldn't keep me safe without... going back. Um. And she told me that she would help me no matter what my personal choices in the Scholomance were, so long as I wasn't going to, to. Well she didn't have Westing as a reference but Westing. Anyway she wanted to give me the best shot I could of getting myself back out, whole and safe, even if I were to, um. You don't have to take it, I just. She wrote it with a lot of trial and error and pain over a decade and and and if I can spare you any of that I would like to?"

Oh god, did she ruin everything, she might have just ruined everything.

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Her face slowly fades away from confused and scared and towards... angry. Angry? Angry. It doesn't sit right on her. "I don't want to be better at it! I don't want to do it at all!!!"

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And she starts crying.

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"Oh," says Yvette, in a very small voice. Oh god she broke everything!!! Everything is broken and terrible and she failed at friendship and also reading people!!!! She offered a girl who was burning herself up for the sake of her family goddamned matches she is the worst person ever, of all time!

"... I'm sorry, I didn't... do you want help? Stopping? There's a, a ritual to just, it only works once in a lifetime but it would just. Um. Cleanse everything."

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"I can't stop," she says. Her tears are flowing freely and she's covering her mouth with one hand and using the other arm to hug herself around the midsection. "I can't stop! My, my twin cousins are coming next year, and I promised I would help them, and I will, and I already killed two of them and—"

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"Okay why don't we have this in my room, we can skip Creative Writing entirely if you want, shhhh I'll help you and them and, and, you're not alone, okay? I'll help."

Is Liu up for being gently ushered into her room? So uh, she can stop having a meltdown about the very taboo magic she doesn't want to be doing where someone could see her??

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...yeah. Yeah, she can be ushered. Into the room of someone who has claimed to not be a maleficer but somehow has a book on maleficing anyway and. For some reason Liu trusts her.

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Great, excellent, Liu is gently ushered into the room and the door is closed, so she will not be having a meltdown about being pressured to use a taboo magic out in the dormitory where just anyone could walk by, and then, uh, uh.

She forks over the spare bits of silk to use as makeshift handkerchiefs and fills her cup of water from her pots and, and,

"... Do you want a hug?" she offers, softly, because she doesn't know what else to do, and Liu so, so looks like she needs a hug right now.

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She shakes her head and tries to get her breathing under control. She's hugging herself, though.

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Yvette will respect her stated preferences even if she looks very very sad and in need of a hug, though.

"Okay. Um. Well I can teach you how to make the mana crystals I use, if you make your own they will work really well for your blood relatives, and, and probably Scorpius is going to be more than happy to help get you mana to give to them and keep them safe, New York would just be wasting it anyway..."

She is babbling a little, because oh no poor Liu.

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She looks up at Yvette, uncomprehending. "What?"

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"I would be happy to just pass on the crystals I have, let them hold the box when I go down to graduation, not like I have relatives to worry about here, but in order for them to be maximally efficient we'd need to make an intermediary crystal together to act as a bridge between the two sets, which I'm willing to, but the bridge goes both ways and I'd understand if you'd rather just have something entirely devoted to your family..."

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She just blinks, slowly, at that, sufficiently recovered from her momentary fit—being able to bounce back from crying jags is a survival skill in the Scholomance—that she can focus her full attention on being very confused.

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"Sorry, should I slow down, I don't know what your mana storage situation is like already, you might have something better already? I should, uh, they can definitely get my sunlamp, though I don't know if they'll have the stomach for the compost heap, it's kind of objectively awful, but it'd be good to trade away at the very least, and worth keeping depending on their affinities..."

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"Who can?"

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"Your... cousins??" says Yvette, now also confused.

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"Why would my cousins get your sunlamp?"

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"Because... I would give it to them??"

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"...Yvette, I don't have anything to pay you with."

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"Oh, I despise the, the haggling and scraping this place demands of us. I don't want payment!! I want your cousins to live! I want your soul and self to be, be untattered and your conscience clear!! I want to help you and them because you need it and I like you and I can!"

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"So, what, you want to become allies, and I swear off," and she can't actually say it, not even here, "and I just hope you're, you can..."

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"I, I don't know, I'd need to talk to Alexei before we can formally declare ourselves an alliance, but I'll just. I'll help you regardless? Whatever you decide you want to do? You can have the book if you want it, and if you do want to stop I'll help you, and help you find alternatives, and if you want to find someone else that would be a more stable alliance then I, I mean, your connections are certainly better on the Mandarin side but I could probably help there? A little? I don't want things from you, I just. I like you."

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She becomes even smaller, somehow, hugging herself tighter and pressing herself harder against the door. "I can't stake my cousins' lives on liking. And even if I could, you can't... get rid of," hiccup. "If you could everyone would. You have to wait it out. And I can't wait it out. I need to do this for my family."

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"Okay. ... The ritual to cleanse yourself is real, though, it's just, it sucks a bunch and can only be done once in a lifetime and if you fuck up from there then it all snaps back and, um. Do you want the book. It's in the book."

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Her eyes snap to the book, then, and there's—something in them. Yearning. "How could it work?" she asks, in a whisper. "If it did—why doesn't everyone know it? You have to wait it out," she repeats, but she clearly wants to be wrong, wants to be convinced.

Except... "And what's even on the other side?"

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