What a neat kid. There’s something homey and comforting about her.

Bella's kind of wrinkling her nose but doesn't say anything about her. Last handful of juniors and then the sophomores come through.

Well, Bella is very helpful but she also wrinkled her nose about Kareen not being able to to hand out notebook powers, so Bella’s nose-wrinkles are not an especially credible source of information.

Sophomores! Sophomores can have food and pamphlets and extremely distinctive pens and notebooks.

And eventually everybody's been through once. People are coming through for seconds - "Any chance of things we can stash in our rooms? Like, dried fruit, nuts, candy, crackers, chips, anything like that."

“Oh, of course.” Candy. Crisps. Beef jerky. Chocolate digestives. Granola bars. Nuts, crackers, meal replacement drinks, a variety of canned foods with small can openers taped to them.

"Marvelous!" He loads up his bag and then goes and gets some kids who live on his hall to do the same so they can all walk back together.

"Are you going to be offended if people try to hoard this against the possibility that you vanish tomorrow?" Aadhya asks when she comes by for canned soup and granola bars.

“Absolutely not! Nothing about this situation is plausible! Please take as much as you like.”

"You are a gentlewoman and a scholar." Hoard hoard. Chocolate covered almonds, score.

Avoiding coming into direct undeniable social range of Aadhya less than with most people, the homey comforting girl reappears to load up on crackers and nuts and Ensure.

"Hi, El."

Good for her!

“If you can think of anything non-perishable and convenient I missed, let me know. —I left instant ramen out on purpose, not assuming there would be convenient access to boiling water.”

"There's largely not, no. Juice boxes? Peanut butter?"

"Canned tuna? - also the Scholomance is an extremely low mold and bacteria environment, there's viruses all over the place but live microbes are casualties every time a kid cheats. You could maybe get away with those little wax-wrapped cheeses even at room temp."

Peanut butter, juice boxes, wrapped cheeses. “There’s a canned tuna over there,” she says, pointing at a particular corner of the Miscellaneous Cans pile.

"Fancy that, thank you." Yoink.

Kareen pulls more tuna out of the bag to replace it. “You’re welcome,” to Bella, and “Thank you!” to El.

El goes off to her room, trailing Aadhya, and then comes back not too long after and offers Kareen a crystal.

Okay it's not cursed or anything she's just... huh.

Kareen accepts it. “What is this?”

"Mana storage."

"Oh, you don't even know how to build mana, yet - if you want to cast wizard spells you need mana, you get it by doing things that are effortful, that can be like, exercise, or it can be like having a really annoying hobby, that's why there's embroidery all over my clothes because I hate embroidery so it works great."

“Oh. I see. Let’s see if…”

She puts the bit of mana she has into the crystal. Then she pulls another, identical crystal from her bag, pulls the bit of mana out of that one, and puts it in the first one. Then she pulls out another crystal, and pulls the amount currently in the first crystal out of the new one and adds it in again.

By the power of the chessboard parable, it doesn’t take long until she has a pile of empty crystals, one full one, and a delighted cackle.

"- oh that is absolutely bloody brilliant, I didn't reckon it would work for magic things, I just thought -"

“I really appreciate the thought! I didn’t have any mana storage! Also, it works for magic things.” She pulls five more full crystals out of her bag and offers them to El.