She finishes scribbling out her corrections and looks up, pleased. "Got it!" She looks at Soph. "You're the best. I owe you potion if it works." To Bella, she adds, "Did you want to try a spell with not-your-sister? I can show you the glitterlight spell, or something."
"If you think you'll have better luck getting spells out of me than Soph and various books have, I'd be more than happy to try the glitterlight spell."
She poses (unnecessarily), says "Nitidi!" and sweeps her arm through the air. Sparkles follow.
"How much of that is drama and how much of that is essential spell component?"
"As far as I know? The Latin's required. The arm wave isn't necessary, I guess. But if I don't move it, no sparkles happen? Since it's a spell for "sparkles follow movement". The rest is just me thinking magic is really damn cool."
Nothing happens.
"Correct my form?"
Alli shrugs. "There isn't form. It's just- an incantation. It might just not work? One of my books was written by-" she puts on a Snobby Scholar Face, "-by an Expert in the Field of Magicks Who Tragically Lacked The Power To Himself Become a Practitioner." She reverts to normal. "Or something like that. But old person talk for 'knowing how to cast spells does not mean you can cast them', anyway."
"Okay. So I may just be a dud, as - previously suspected," sighs Bella.
Glitter: success.
"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?"
"Dibs on, um, what's a nongross doctoring specialty. Physical... therapy?"