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The only thing that sucks more than the Scholomance is not going to the Scholomance
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"...yes, that is what the innuendo was about, well-spotted. It was still just banter. Between friends. Without any romance involved."

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"...okay but you're clearly into them. Aren't you?"

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"...well. I mean. Yeah. Kind of."

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"And Yahontov is totally into you. Like, you'd have to be blind not to see it."

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"Then I guess I'm blind. He and Yvette have been dating for longer than they think they have!"

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"If you can be into the two of them at the same time, Lake, Yahontov can be into you and Villeneuve at the same time, too. And you said she was your only friend," and ouch that still hurts actually, "so clearly you're at least important to each other. Come on. You'd like to."

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"Of course I'd like to! ...well, I don't really know Alexei that well, yet, I think this is more sexual tension than romantic tension per se, but. ...but yeah. Just. It's not going to happen."

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"...why not?"

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"Because most people are not, in fact, polyamorous, Thomas."

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"Have you asked them?"

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"And Yvette specifically turned me down! We rubbed each other the wrong way. I was kind of... I mean, look, she's not interested, she's definitely not interested. And I don't want to ruin our friendship, and I don't want to get into their thing, they're only officially together as of a couple of days ago and I don't want to muck it up either. We're fine as we are, we're friends, it's fine."

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"Once again: bullcrap, Lake." Sigh. "But I guess you don't have any advice, huh. Sucks."

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"...I can tell you Geoff does like you back, if that helps?"

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"...he does? How do you know? You didn't know I liked him."

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"You are a lot more stealth. You're not even out of the closet, publicly. He is. He's not trying very hard to hide it. Even odds he's been trying to sound you out on it and been completely stonewalled by your solidly masc het vibes."

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"...oh. You... really think so?"

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"Yeah. ...you're going to be gossip, again. The thing between you and Theo and him and Theo is old news by now but if all three of you get together that is going to be the talk of the month."

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He squints. "You're just hoping it displaces the rumor about you and the two of them."

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"A little bit of that, too, yeah."

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"You're hopeless, Lake. Fine. Let's go to class."

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The demonstration of Yvette's new phase-change spell was scheduled for the first half of lunch period, at the workshop, and despite how unpleasant it tends to be this close to graduation it has a lot of people not-quite-crammed in wanting to get a peek at this insane spell.

And it is very unpleasant; the gears that are soon to shift the entire school down a floor to send the senior level down to the graduation hall are starting to warm up, which makes the rooms literally warm, so hot in fact that some of the boys are even taking their shirts off. The floor trembles approximately every fifteen minutes, making it hard to keep anything on the desks from sliding off them whenever that happens. Anyone who hasn't finished their graduation assignment for shop is in for some very difficult times trying to do precision work when the place seems to be working against them.

Alexei sorted everyone out for best views, prioritizing seniors. He's hoping the top five bids will go to them so that they can do a second auction next year after they're gone to the new seniors.

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Yvette has her demonstration all planned out, by now, and has been nervous gathering mana while everyone gets themselves organized. Inventing and then solving sudokus, mostly. It lets her be perched neatly out of the way while the people who don't like her sort themselves out.

So, she could just melt metal or freeze water or something obvious. But why would she do that, when she's still got several projects to work on? Much better to be efficient with her mana. Instead, she'll be making progress on the chest she promised her grimoire. The plan is for it to only be big enough for it, and no bigger. It will be for the sutras, and nothing else. It will be mostly out of wood, a mix of redwood and black walnut. The redwood is easy enough to work with, but the black walnut is a hard wood, which essentially means that while it's sturdier, it's also more of a bitch to work with. That is, unless one has a spell that can let someone cheat.

"I'm going to liquefy the lignin in the wood, and then bend it into the shape I want," she says, holding up the long strip of the walnut that will become the edge of the box. Sure, she could cut it into three pieces and then put them back together with glue or dowels or clever woodworking, but why do that when she can just bend it directly?

She lets everyone take a look at how it is definitely a normal bit of wood, and then she casts the phase change spell. It accordingly goes pliable. Organic things prefer curves to sharp lines, so she's very careful to give the edges plenty of room to curve as she deliberately begins bending it at the marked places on the wood. It's bent twice, and she checks her work to make sure it's even once it's clamped down and holding still and straight, and then: with another repeat of the spell, the whole thing becomes solid again. Three sides of what will be a rectangle, tidy as can be. It only took a couple of minutes, and an impressively small amount of mana for all the result. Such is the benefit of leveraging magic with precision, only when and where you need it.

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There are excited murmurs as the result is passed around for everyone to see, and then for the second demo Alexei will use an engraving tool to carve a design on a different piece: the hilt of Yvette's new dagger, so that he can then pour gold into it, for decoration, with Yvette melting and solidifying it.

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(She was tempted to work more on the grimoire's box, but uh, ignoring her athame entirely in favor of the new and shiny book is a great way for it to leave her. Or try to kill her, because it hasn't even gotten to stab anything, yet. Really, it's been remarkably patient with her.)

She carefully makes sure to re-solidify the gold in a continuous process, just as it hits the carving of the turning hilt, as the hilt is a curved thing. They'd planned to go in batches to keep it from dripping, but with her finesse they can just turn the (sheathed) athame all the way around in one steady circuit. She even briefly liquefies where the pour had begun, to tidily match it up with the end into a perfect engraved band without any obvious start or end. And then it's done, and her athame is now looking very fancy indeed.

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This is extremely exciting. Is there anything more they can show? Not that there's a reason for it exactly, but. Exciting spell!!!

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