School starts up again. Darren and Bella are both skipping straight into twelfth grade. (Bella looked into just starting college early, but while she does technically have the sort of resume that can lead to that kind of thing, she can't exactly write an essay about how she saved the life of another person and this caused her to have Moral Character, let alone about how she started a small business - so skipping one grade it is.)
They apply to colleges. They both get into University of Washington and get sufficient scholarships to accommodate both going there.
Summer ensues again.
One afternoon, Bella is over at Darren's, and has fallen asleep - in purring fullform - across his lap on the couch.
"Which would you like to do first?" he asks, grinning.
And then she sets about staring at the cut paper.
Then he gets to watching the cut paper and seeing what it does. For science!
Millimeter by millimeter -
The paper knits back together, seamless, good as new.
Bella sits back up, triumphant, and writes this down.
Darren giggles. "I'm a bit curious - once we're done with fixing things, do you want me to get like - a pen, scribble something, then see if you can change that?"
And then he goes off to get a pen, and he starts scribbling on the newly fixed cut paper. She doesn't have to do the test right now, but he is prepping for it!
The ripped paper heals just like the cut paper. She takes a twig and breaks it and starts concentrating on that.
"This is harder," she observes absently, staring at the twig, but eventually - entire twig.
"The twig has more structure to it than the paper or the string. I'm doing all of this consciously above about the cellular level, it's really concentration-intensive."
"Which doesn't explain how I manage to do comprehensive healing," she says. "That's definitely not conscious."
"Yeah, that's - hmm. It's almost like there's two modes? One where you do it yourself and stay conscious and another one where you don't but pass out."
She heals all the objects intended for healing - then, thoughtful, cuts along part of the hem of Darren's supplied shirt, lines the edges up, and stares them down.
She manages to reunite them with a sort of chevron pattern in the visible stitching.
Her boyfriend watches with fascination. "You know, if not-Hogwarts fails you can always take up tailoring," he deadpans.
"Where in there do I get my beauty sleep?" she snorts. "Do you want the embroidery on the shirt or should I put it back?"
"Obviously you will run entirely off of coffee. And magic. Don't worry about the shirt, it's not my favorite one in the world, feel free to embroider it."
"Cool." She cuts a stripe entirely out of the left sleeve, and very slowly manages to turn that sleeve into a swath of embroidered whitework attached to its original location. It's not especially pretty embroidery - she is not, despite fairy princesshood, a seamstress - but it is sort of visually interesting, and, of course, magic.
"I like it," pronounces Darren. "I declare this to be test subject shirt, do whatever you'd like with it."