Bella didn't get a section of Intro Incantations this semester. Her understanding is that this happens to lots of people and means she'll have it every day of the week next semester, but it's still not good - intro incantations is one of the most practical freshman courses and you don't actually want to be scrambling to catch up on how to light dark places and purify water and open your door without getting up and clean a stain out of your homework so it's legible when you turn it in and check a room for lurky mals and uncramp your writing hand mid-essay and - well, it covers a lot. Since a bunch of students have this problem there are some study groups where an upperclassman contributes old notes for the class and settles for a very token payment on their use. Caio doesn't have intro incantations either, so they are both hanging out Monday after classes with Suze's notes, Suze's friend's cousin, another freshman Suze owes a favor through some very circuitous route of favor transitivity, and somebody who found out they were doing this from the cousin and tagged along.

They're not doing all the coursework from intro incantations, unless they have spare time, just the spells, so they're in month three, now, and -

"Ooh," says Suze's friend's cousin, "so that's how people get those jobs at banks where they're the vice president of internal compliance and don't do things."