She planned for that, at least; they're not school books or anything. But she wants to get this potion right,and more importantly, she wants to have it done before exams. So today she can be found in the Magic Box, digging through the herb selections.
"Ugh, least organized spices ever," she mutters to herself.
"Wicked!" Alli beams. "So, we have different books. But they're not incompatible or anything, thank all the gods."
"At least not as far as basic little light spells goes. This one's cute, I like it. Where did you start?"
"My sister left some old books lying around. I found them when she moved to college and took her room. They were mostly little things like that one. Say something, see cool but mostly useless effect, try the next one. Good for beginners who are skeptical that Magic is a Thing, anyway."
"We've just been going by stuff in the library here and at the Magic Box more recently. It's better than school stuff because Bella will do all the annoying notetaking and reading for me and just tell me what to try."
"What kind of spells are you into? I couldn't even come up with five things that use quartz, let alone ten."
"This book," says Bella, producing a book. "But the interesting one is the protection blessing. I guess the one to remove pests from the home could also be useful but unlike the protection blessing you can't just call an exterminator."
She peers at the book. "Can I look? I've never cast a protection spell. My life's not really protection-spell-worthy."
Soph passes her the book. "I like this one. It's easier to follow than some of the others. I wonder if there are actually a bunch of kinds of witches and only the basics overlap in places?"
"I'm trying to be versatile. I've barely started, what am I supposed to do, decide that I want to do divination and nothing else forever? And Dad doesn't get hurt that much but if he does it would be nice to fix it."
"I guess. Scrying's kinda fun, though, that was how I figured out the Magic Box was legit."
"Oh, I just went in and showed them a book I was working from and saw if their advice worked."
"You said you hadn't done any potions yet, right? Did you want to come over to help? I can always use more people to chop, Lethe Bramble is tough."
"I might. If it works right how good is it going to be for the memory? How long's it last?"