At least they're together, but - yeah, this is going to suck. Luckily Lu's an early bird and saw the slip as soon as it popped under the door, so they can hit the halls as soon as curfew ends. 

No time for a morning shower either uggggghhhhhh.

They'll see what they can get later in the day... But, yeah. Sucks.

Welp. Whining won't change anything. Best get going.

At least they're both athletic, and well fed after the day before. 

Small victories.

Homeroom, when they finally get there, turns out to contain a group of wide-eyed freshmen -

And a single put-upon sophmore.

Something's gone fucky here.

Jialin perks up when she sees El, though! 

Did she save seats?

She hadn't known her Mistress was joining her - but she'd gotten the best seat, and none of the freshmen seem up realize it - or seem willing to sit next to her. (She's glaring at them a little.)

Plenty of room for El and Lu, then.

After they do a thorough check of the room, including a map of everything - this place smells like 'trap.'

Of course.

One of the freshmen - who looks like an enclaver - notices them doing this, then stiffens as she apparently realizes her seat wasn't as good as she thought. 

She gets up to ask if she can sit by them, of course.

Not like there's assigned seats.

Most seniors would expect payment for sitting so close. 

Her example emboldens the others to move, too.

And it's during the reshuffling that their schedules appear inside the desks.

What's the damage? Hopefully at least a couple classes with Lu...

- Actually, all of them with Lu.

Wait, what?

The tradeoff appears to be that they're in effectively five entire seminars, not two (this includes one double length seminar), which all look fiendishly difficult:

-Advanced Readings in Sanskrit, which counts for Sanskrit, Arabic, and honors history and incantations (this is the double length seminar);

-Development of Algebra and Applications to Invocation, which counts for unspecified languages, honors history, and honors math, which means they're also going to be getting loads of primary sources; it's also the only math course, so they're probably not getting out of it; 

-Advanced Readings in the Creation of Maleficaria, which they hadn't even known was a class you can get, which counts for honors history, alchemy, artificing, and incantations, plus unspecified languages; and

-Advanced Philosophy of Magic, which probably means studying the underlying theories of how magic works and which is both fiendishly complicated and usually useless, but might mean something more stupid like ethics. It isn't listed as counting for any of their requirements. 

Plus shop and an additional honors alchemy - for both of them. 

The tradeoff to that tradeoff is a massive chunk every Wednesday after lunch - the entirety of Wednesday afternoon class period - simply labeled Work, like the work period hour they all get after lunch. It's assigned to this very room. 

They can specify up to three classes, but they don't know what else is meeting when - and the school might take the carrots away if they try. 

"Hell," she says to Lu. "I'm not sure if we can afford to swap on any these."

"It'll probably split us up if we try."

"Heavy fuckin' load, though."