Why the scene needs very little magic

The most common mistake is opening with a duel or a fireball. Three messages later you're out of spells, and the conversation never got started. At a magic school, magic is background, like the weather. What's interesting is everything else: who caught whom, who owes whom, who knows someone else's secret.

So every hook below has three things: a place where the two of you end up alone, a rule one of you is breaking, and a question with no answer. If you want to learn to build that formula yourself, check out how to start a roleplay with AI.

The library: for the last ones kicked out

  1. The rope at the restricted sectionThe lamps go out one by one, and you're both standing at the velvet rope. Opening line: "Are you waiting for the librarian to look away too? Then it's faster with two of us — I know which shelf creaks."
  2. Someone else's notes in the marginsYou got a secondhand textbook, and someone has corrected a potion recipe in it. "Someone wrote 'don't stir counterclockwise' in here. That's your handwriting, isn't it? And how come you were right?"
  3. The last copy