"Yeah, no. I'm not going to bother hiding it, I'm - people are saying 'mundie'. Muggleborn from the Chicago slums. I think I'm paranoid enough to have a shot at not dying anyway but you be the judge. Yes, German. It's the vocabulary mostly, I can sort of guess what words mean and I speak it well enough but not reading, and not so many words. I've got about half the spells though."

She's kind of incredibly stressed about putting all that in the open but candid is her default state and if they're going to fuss about it better now than later.

Julian observes that a) this girl is doomed, and b) that Marcy is being fairly generous with her anyway, which suggests that c) any advice he offers won't make him look totally pathetic, so d) he can go ahead and be helpful, because e) he is the absolute worst kind of grasping hagfish but dammit he's going to live. 

"If the school thinks you need to learn a language, it'll generally keep offering you books in that language. If you can't keep up, you might get spellblocked – you'll only get spells you won't be able to use. If you're planning on keeping the spellbook, you should at least make an effort to read through all the spells. It's more respectful, and spellbooks tend to get very opinionated." 

"It's fuzzy, but yeah, pretty much like they said. If you get through this semester, you'll be roughly up to an indie level on languages, but it's going to be painful until then. Sorry, on behalf of this whole f-  On behalf of the whole stupid system."

"It is what it is. And- yes, definitely. It's a very helpful spellbook! I like it! I have metal spells, it's fun! I am just not good enough to learn what it has so fast. I need to be fast."

She pulls out the book, a black-fronted journal titled in German, practical incantations of manipulation and defense, M. Madsen. "Everyone here is welcome to copy a few when we study. So you are not angry for being less good at the homework probably."

"If you show us spells we should show you some too." Knowledge doesn't cost anything and if Wendy's going to have any chance whatsoever she should learn to charge for stuff. Besides, if people had to pay for being less good than the room average at German she'd be in trouble.

Julian doesn't see what there is to apologize for. This girl practically fell headfirst into a Scholomance slot. Of course she's still going to die, but it's the principle of the thing. 

"You're very lucky, you know. You have a better chance in here than you did out there." 

And then, to the spellbook – "Oh, you look so useful! You know, I was just thinking about how badly I needed new defense spells. I'm so glad to have met you!" 

"Hum. Spell for spell unless it's a spectacular spell seems generally fair and generally a good idea, yes?" She pats the spellbook gently and dusts it off. "I'm going to make good book covers for all my spellbooks, they deserve that much."

"You have no way of knowing this, but it's more polite to offer specific, individual spells. We can get – stuck – if we learn even a few words of a spell and don't get the rest, and learning spells takes time" 

"You're not wrong about the book covers, though. Spell books like this one deserve a little love and care."

"Do you know what's in there that's good yet or have you not been able to figure out what most of them do? Also, do already have a basic ward and something cheap for attacking smaller mals? Because those are the first two you want."

"I gave her decent basics day one, actually."

Why would you do that, Julian does not say. 

"I have English spells for those, yeah, thank you. And I have a - it's meant to pick smallmetals out of bodies but I made it work for moving screws out of furniture too, and a - I'm calling it a nail gun, and one I'm pretty sure is for invisible-dead-person mals, and one for making your hand as tough as iron. Specifically the left hand, and only the hand, though."

"I'm glad you've got the basics, and I'd love a spell for dealing with incorporeal mals. Do you want one for stabilizing a thrown object in flight, or one for making your hands steadier, or one for making quiet sounds nearby a bit louder?"

"Ooh, second one!"

"Cool. Also we should make sure not to get too distracted from the homework assignment; if we get first drafts or at least outlines done while we're in here we can swap papers and give revision advice."

"-Good point. I'll stay when everyone leaves and we copy spells then?" She's done working on half of Julian's extra copy, anyway.

"Sounds good!" Marcy goes head down on her outline for a while.

"I'll have to sit out the trade, the prep I came in with for this year is mostly artifice recipes and spells I'll be able to learn later in the year. Though I do have a privacy ward I can work on a book with an hour, a little input from the owner, and a dusting of powdered silver, and I should have the materials for my don't-run-off ward by next weekend."

A privacy ward sounds like the interesting kind of expense he can't justify until he makes it out. Riley tries to focus on writing a draft; if he cobbles together something impressive enough, he could bank some points with Boston and Philly. It's interesting enough material for the first day, too. He'll need to work hard to keep up on the language front, though; no matter how hard he's tried, he's only gotten up to par (according to Dr. Walsh; it's not like he's ever met another wizard kid).

"Let's swap clockwise first, then counter-clockwise," he thinks to say when he's reaching the end of a page. "I'd like everyone to get two eyes on their paper, until we know more about each other's strengths."

Wendy swaps. She is kind of messy with her annotations.

"Not that I'm getting lazy on the first day and this is actually interesting but if times get tough, how good does the homework have to be so it doesn't eat you?"

"No one really understands how the grading works. You want to stay 'passing', like a C on the usual American scale, but what counts... there are all kinds of superstitions. I've heard that enclavers get better grades for free, that if you cheat and don't make mistakes you'll get better grades than the person you copied from, that you get better grades on anything you finish during curfew... or even that grades are random. Some of that's probably even true."

"The grades being random--or depending on what you expect to get--would explain the rest of it. If anyone cares to all turn in identical assignments at some point and see what we all get it could be interesting." It had better not turn out that enclavers get better grades for free, that would be incredibly dumb. Probably enclavers just specialize and copy each other more; her squad is certainly expecting to get the same grades for less effort together than any of them could alone.

(She lightly marks several grammatical errors on the paper she was passed to review. The structure and content of the arguments she feels less qualified to critique.)

"Maybe enclavers get better grades because they have more friends and because of lower stress, more... Thinking size? What is the thing you do thinking with - what is the word for the English 'capacity' does anyone know-"

"Probably you want 'Fähigkeit', it's closer to 'capability' literally but fits better here. That's probably a thing, there are lots of reasons for enclavers to be in better shape. But it's still weird, right, because the very top are all people who aimed for valedictorian, but most of the top fifty are usually enclavers. And almost none of them are even trying, enclave kids are taught better than to try to do better than the C+, B- range, because that's effort you're not spending on the tools and spell repertoire that will get you through graduation. And in the what, four hundred enclavers a year who make it to senior Field Day, there are some geniuses with the slack to half-ass their way to B+ work, but not thirty of them. So, it's weird."