“But even pancakes don’t make Brynjolf happy!” the first year wailed, seemingly at random, in the middle of the library. Nolan was beginning to regret not pretending that he was deaf or had thought she was talking to someone else or something. Why were so many people at RMI like this? Okay, maybe not freaking-out-in-the-library weird, but compared to Nolan’s old school back in Oklahoma, it sure seemed like a lot of the other students couldn’t keep steering their brooms in the face of the slightest breeze. So to speak. Maybe it was because it wasn’t all purebloods here, and other people weren’t used to how you were supposed to act in the wizarding world. Nothing against Muggleborns and half-bloods, but Connor and Claudia and Alena never randomly freaked out about mouse traps or started crying in the library.

Or maybe Kaye had put an invisible sign on Nolan telling people to just be weird at him all the time. That was plausible, too.

But what the hell, he didn’t want to keep reading this book either, so he folded down the corner of the page he was on and closed it while she kept talking. At least Nolan had context now. Ish. He was pretty sure that this first year was the younger sister of the only other non-Lyra guy in his year. Nolan didn’t know Brynjolf very well. He seemed like the loner type. But he was in all of Nolan’s classes except for History of Magic and Divinations, so they’d worked together a couple of times, and he seemed, like, decent and competent.

Now Norah was crying. Or at least uncomfortably close to crying. Nolan had no idea how he was supposed to react to that, but it was way too late to remember that he had something else to do on the opposite side of the school. “Sure,” he said, shrugging one shoulder. Nolan still wasn’t totally clear on what in Merlin’s name she was talking about, but it sounded like she was looking for a ‘yes’ answer. “Why, what’s going on with Brynjolf?”