Potentially the best bit I've written, which is a little horrifying to think about. >.<

The day of departure approached in the midst of my midyear examinations, last-minute homework assignments, and forced group projects that depleted any and all hopes we had of achieving more than six hours of sleep a night. Seeing as all ladies require at least eight hours of sleep a night in order to be fully rested for the day ahead, this took a great, taxing toll on my health.

“Henny, it’s just a cold,” Kalina said, as I lay in bed bemoaning my raging fever.

“I am dreadfully ill,” I said, pulling my covers up to my chin and sniffling. “If my mother knew how hard they were working us here, I’m sure she would withdraw me straightaway.”

“You say that every year,” she said, but she dutifully left me alone and allowed me to sleep the day away. Of course, my instructors were upset with me, and I had to spend the next three days arguing with Mr. Gale about giving me a failing grade on the homework I was not present to turn in, which involved going to the school nurse and demanding a note certifying I was truly ill (which she was reluctant to give me, seeing as I hadn’t actually come into to see her to confirm my deathly illness, but the school nurse was also the sort of practical person who respected noble, if not explicitly royal, authority). I had neither the time nor, truthfully, the inclination to spend too much time contemplating my visit to the foreign land, or the time to pack for such a trip.

Finally, the last day of examinations came and went without incident (although Harold did succeed in turning Louisa to stone, although he was unable to reverse the effects, which led to a delay of three hours while they coaxed the magic out of her before I could take my exam, in which I took out my anxiety by turning the rest of my classmates into various animals when they weren’t paying attention, sometimes when neither of us was paying attention. This led into a half hour hunt for Reshma, who had turned into a chipmunk and taken refuge in the attic of the main building, and then a stalemate in which Raziel had to coax both Reshma and the hawk that was attempting to eat her down from the attic, whistling a crazy tune that sounded more like screeching cats than music. It developed that the hawk was a first year victim, which I certainly knew nothing about, as I had of course spent the entire time waiting for Louisa to return to normal within the confines of the examination area, while the first years had been at lunch). We ate dinner late and retired to our social space; the boys followed us because they tended to be fairly purposeless if they did not have females to guide them. I suspected this boded poorly for our senior year, but for now we tolerated their presence in our sitting room because we didn’t particularly have anything to do either.