"There's risks you have to take because the alternative is riskier in the longer run, and then there are risks that you do not in that sense have to take, even if they are objectively very small. And the people who survive the Scholomance are exceedingly wary of the second kind - and of the second kind masquerading as the first kind, 'mental health breaks' that turn into wasting entire Saturdays and 'study habit experimentation' that turns into bombing a history test and 'urgent supply runs' that turn into walking through the halls alone because no one else was feeling urgent at the same time. He clearly can survive staying out fighting mals all night. But he did not need to."

"...I take your point." Bella has had to live with this place and the risks it poses in the absence of notebook powers, for years. Kareen has not. 

"Welcome to the Scholomance, sorry about it sucking."

"Yyyyyyyyeah it's very easy for me, specifically, to get distracted from that, mostly by the library."

"It's a very good library. They say Manchester's got one like it - Manchester was behind the original construction of the school, though it's changed hands since then and it's New York you'd have to tell now about anything like cancelling an induction because there were about to be no upperclassmen providing a buffer zone for the new frosh."

"I will also ask New York what their estimate is of how likely it is that induction would be cancelled if Orion and maybe me I don't know where I'd end up, came out yelling for them to not."

"My guess is that you'd wind up wherever the gates are anchored but I don't know."

"That would make a great deal of sense! That and 'with Orion' are the only locations where, if they were the case, I would have any idea why." Well also there's her home dimension but if she considered that a live possiblity then she would super, super not haul a school full of teenagers with her.

"Could be wherever you were on your Earth before you, uh, did not technically induct? The corresponding location, presumably."

"Oh, yes, that I would have an idea of why also. I think it's unlikelier than either of the other two options, but still."

"Yeah. But conveniently, Orion's New York, if you wind up doing something of that nature."

"If he weren't I would have, like, a designated New Yorker, to remove from my pocket dimension immediately before shoving out of the gates."

"Patience and Fortitude hang out right by the gates, that would not be perfectly reliable."

"I'm confident in my ability to use ridiculous notebook powers to make it work but it's reasonable for other people to be less assured of this than I am. Fortunately Orion is New York so it doesn't matter."

Nod nod.

"And I do have until July to figure something else out about the hall so hopefully it matters even less!"

"Plenty of time, yeah."

"It was June when I left my home universe so when I confirmed with my parents that there hadn't been a months-long gap that was further confirmation that we were dealing with separate universes, even before we found out that the years didn't match."

"Sort of a peculiar order in which to check these facts but works just as well."

"Well, I wasn't planning out checking them in advance, they just came up! I wasn't trying to confirm that this was a separate dimension, I was trying to make sure my parents hadn't spent months believing I was dead."

Nod.

"...Not that I should bring this up as a remarkably disastrous outcome in front of...most wizards...probably."

"Well, our parents spend most of the time uncertain if we are alive or not but they know where we'd be and why we'd be incommunicado even if we were to be alive."

"Yeah and then mostly you are in fact dead, lately."

"Not mostly! There are extended periods of time where the odds that we have died yet since our last chance to get on a graduate's obit list are less than half."