Initially, when she'd received the letter, she'd made a point of ignoring it. She'd leave being at the beck and call of the council to people who were still interested in that tedious runaround that was mage politics. The envelope remained stuffed into a seldom-used pocket of her backpack for several weeks until the thought of it returned and her mind started to change. 

Maybe they were hoping she wouldn't show up. 

Maybe if she did turn up it would piss people off. 

And it did beat her current plans of couch-hopping after her recent falling-out. 

So that was how the rather scruffy-looking young woman, in a denim jacket, shorts, and a faded T-shirt, approached Marchand Academy.

Dinah Jael Fox. Second-born of Matthew and Morgana Fox. She strolled along the side of the driveway, half-watching some of the cars that pulled away.  She could see for a moment from her vantage point, a somewhat familiar face.  Spire Schippers, driving past without a care in the world, whilst Erik Norrevinter seemed to be doing his best to talk his wife out of making the car's engine burst into flames. 

Nope. She wasn't touching any of that. 

Dinah picked her pace up and hopped across the road in order to avoid running into that shitstorm, and made her way to the steps with fairly little incident. 

She was late. Entrance hall was already clear of new students. 
Did she care too much? Not especially.  
She even took a degree of amusement watching the expression of the receptionist falter and the smile became more strained as the name went down on the sign in sheet. 

F-O-X. 

Dinah offered a lopsided smirk in response. 
Yeah, you weren't getting away that easily Marchand. 

With the paperwork out of the way she set off upstairs.  Her shoes, a pair of battered-looking hiking boots, left some grubby scuffs on the floor. This place was pretty fancy. Council was clearly doing pretty alright for herself. 

She didn't hurry too much to get up to the common room. By the time she did, the orientation appeared to have already started. 
Also it appeared that the resident Norrevinter and Sterling were fighting,  but that was pretty much on the level of water being wet and the pope being catholic. 

Pretty much everyone looked about five social classes better off than her, but again, not really a surprise.

  She could see Toby Schippers, the cousin, not too far away, but neglected to approach as he seemed to be occupied.  Plenty of the usual suspects, usual faces, usual bullshit. 

On the bright side, free food and somewhere to sleep that wasn't someone's couch, so she was pretty sure who was winning.  With a general disregard for the mess, DInah decided the creepy dude with the ponytail had the right idea  and hopped on over to the wreckage of the food table, where she started stuffing several handfuls of dry cereal into her mouth like some kind of socially irresponsible hamster.