Magic of Her Own, Ch. 16: Framed

“Missing?” Konoe-sensei blinked at her, and Mei was struck by the passing thought that she’d never seen her confused—but that didn’t last long. Her eyes narrowed, and she suddenly looked like a cat that had just cornered a mouse. “Or perhaps you mean to say you discarded it so you wouldn’t be found out?”

Mei’s stomach clenched. She was vaguely aware of her friends loudly protesting against that claim all around her, but that didn’t stop the tears from welling up in her eyes.

“No, please, I just… I lost it! I thought it was in my pocket!” Hot, salty tears finally spilled over, each pair of eyes piercing through her as the whole school pounced on her with hushed comments—disapproval, pity, and the kind of horrified fascination that keeps you watching even when you’re seeing something terrible.

“Let’s not jump to conclusions now, Chiyo,” said Shizuma-sensei in his best placating voice. It took Mei a long moment to realize that Chiyo must be Konoe-sensei’s given name. “It may be that she simply misplaced it, and this has nothing to do with the attacks at all.”

“Hmm,” she conceded grudgingly, with a noise that wasn’t quite a ‘yes’. “Still, you have to agree this is highly suspicious. The one time she conveniently misplaces it is when it has to be inspected.”

When she put it like that, even Mei had to admit it looked terrible. It wasn’t the proof they’d been looking for, but after that endless procession, it was the next best thing. How had things gone so wrong so fast? She wanted to protest once more that she had no clue where her wand was and hadn’t used it since her last class, but words failed her, as though Konoe-sensei’s hard stare were tying her tongue.

“I don’t like this any more than you do.” His tone of disappointment somehow hurt more than her suspicion. “Can you retrace your steps, Kusakabe? I know for a fact you were with me last thing before lunch break. Was that the last time you remember using your wand today?”

“Yes, Shizuma-sensei,” she said. Relief flooded her. At least someone was willing to hear her out.

“Is it possible you dropped it at the end of the lesson?”

“I don’t th-think so.” She thought she remembered pocketing it, as always, but the fact remained that her wand should have been there and wasn’t, so something must have happened between now and the last time she was sure she’d held it, and she couldn’t say for sure it hadn’t fallen out without her noticing.

“So you think you had it with you during lunch,” he said as if asking for confirmation. She nodded, her tears subsiding to a quiet sniffle. “And then?”

“Then I went to the girls’ shed to get a broomstick for the tryouts.”

“It’s worth checking,” said Shizuma-sensei. “I understand the race for a good broomstick isn’t precisely quiet.” He gave a small, tense sort of smile. “Someone might have jostled you there, and perhaps it fell out.”

That stirred something in Mei’s memory. “No, sir, not in the shed. But W—someone bumped into me on the way to the pitch.” She was, all of a sudden, acutely aware that involving Washio in this whole mess was a bad idea, even if it was just to say he’d been rude.

“See, that could be it. We’ll search the grounds, and if we can’t find it there, we’ll check the locker room as well. Perhaps you simply put it back there when you went to get your shoes.”

“I’ll escort Kusakabe to the locker room. If nothing turns up, you can conduct the rest of your search.” Konoe-sensei sounded for all the world like she’d picked the cleanest place to check and just wanted to avoid getting her hands dirty. “Do try to take better care of your belongings, child. Don’t you understand you’re holding up some very important proceedings for nothing?”

Mei felt herself blushing to the roots of her hair in shame. “I’m sorry, Konoe-sensei.”

The walk to the locker room was short, but even though Mei almost had to run to keep up with the teacher’s long strides, it felt much longer than usual, and it ended in the worst of ways.

Without thinking twice about it, Konoe-sensei pulled her locker open with such force that the door slammed into its neighbor, and Mei’s stomach dropped. She shouldn’t have been able to do that. Someone had broken Izumi’s spell again. Her heart hammered in her chest, but she couldn’t find it in her to say anything. If that wasn’t proof that something was very wrong, she didn’t know what was.

“Well?” Apparently, she drew the line at rifling through her things without permission, so Mei opened her trunk herself, not really expecting anything. Shizuma-sensei’s possibilities all made a lot of sense, but she was fairly sure this one was wrong: yes, she had stopped by for her shoes before going out to the pitch, but her trunk had been closed the whole time and she had absolutely no memory of storing her wand back. Some days, she didn’t even do that when it was time to go home, preferring to carry it in her pocket the whole way.

It was all she could do not to cry out in shock when she opened the long, thin box and found it resting there, as neatly as if she’d put it back herself—and that was not all.

Shielding the box from view, her hands trembling, she pulled out the slip of parchment Nagaki-sama had enclosed, and her stomach dropped even further. On the other side, someone had scrawled in unfamiliar handwriting: Good luck getting out of this, Mudblood.

Given the hostile climate, Ryo had explained that word so she and Shinji would be ready the second it started flying, and had in fact proclaimed himself quite surprised Ichijo didn’t use it every other day, as she really seemed the type—and it had taken some convincing just to get him to say it out loud to their faces, that was how disgusting it was. Mei, however, felt only a distant twinge of hurt: it was one thing to be told she should be insulted, and quite another to actually feel it. She hadn’t grown up with adults trying to clamp their hands over her ears hoping to stop her from hearing it or anything like that, it was just a word that made Ryo and Hiroki pull faces. Still, she supposed it was a bit of a record—she was the first of her circle of friends to have been called that by someone who meant it. That was somehow scarier than the word itself.

“I… I found it, Konoe-sensei,” she said in a small voice. The teacher gave an exasperated sigh.

“Keep track of your things, you stupid girl! Do you realize how much time you’ve wasted?”

“I’m sorry, Konoe-sensei.” For maybe half a second, Mei considered showing her the message, but a little voice in the back of her mind that sounded surprisingly like Izumi told her otherwise. Rule number three, know who to trust. When it comes to these things, she’ll never take you seriously. She was probably so set in her conviction that Mei wanted to escape the inspection that she’d say the writing had been planted on purpose or some such nonsense. Mei wouldn’t have put it past her.

So she just closed the box and marched back to the dining hall behind her, knowing full well what the spell would find, and unable to do anything about it. What was she supposed to say, ‘It’s not what it looks like’? Please. She was lucky they didn’t kick her out on the spot. Whoever had sent those words was right, there was no getting out of this.

Walking back up to the staff table was worse than Mei had thought. The hall had never felt so long, or perhaps it was just the fact that everybody was staring, and none more so than the rest of the first years, who were still standing there, frozen, waiting for them.

Konoe-sensei took her seat, seeming to know all too well that Mei would feel in even deeper trouble with the table between them, snatched her wand without bothering to ask for it, and intoned: “Prior Incantato.”

There was an explosion of anger and disbelief as the smoky, damning evidence bloomed from the tip in the form of an unmistakable Beater’s bat that stood upright in the air for a fraction of a second before bending pathetically, its consistency less than rubber.

“Deletrius.” The image vanished as quickly as it had come.

“That doesn’t make any sense, Konoe-sensei!” Ryo blurted out. “I was sitting right next to her and I didn’t see her do it!”

“The spell seems to be proving you wrong, Asuhara. After all, it would be nothing short of a miracle for you to pay attention to the tryouts and to your surroundings at the same time, wouldn’t it? Perhaps you simply missed it.”

“Ask my sister, she was there too!”

“Enough, Asuhara. You don’t want to be punished as her accomplice, do you?”

“But… but she wouldn’t! Why would Mei start attacking Muggleborns left and right when she is one herself?” On any other day, Mei would have been flattered by Ryo’s stubborn defense, but there seemed to be room for nothing but sick dread.

Shizuma-sensei inclined his head. “There is that,” he agreed pensively. “And I wouldn’t expect your average first year to hit a moving target from the stands…”

“I wouldn’t be so sure,” said Ichijo, sweetly as you please. “That’s her signature move. The whole class knows it. Kusakabe is very good at Softening Charms, she once bested me in a duel with it.”

Konoe-sensei raised a single, disbelieving eyebrow at the thought of Mei winning a duel against her precious pet, but a confirming nod from the Defense teacher convinced her that the miracle must have indeed happened.

“Well, I’d say that settles it. Ample witness accounts that you are capable of the spell, and proof of it coming from your own wand… your future at this school is in question, Kusakabe.”

“Wait a minute!”

Mei blinked. The sudden eruption had come from Ebisawa-sensei herself.

“What is it? Do you have a more fitting punishment to suggest? Surely you understand that if Kusakabe was implicated in one attack, it’s highly likely she was responsible for the other, and you, of all people, should be glad to see justice done. Assaulting a teacher is grounds for immediate expulsion.”

“But that’s just the thing, Chiyo.” Mei couldn’t help but notice that Konoe-sensei looked considerably less pleased at being called by her given name this time. “This is hardly justice. First of all, you didn’t let the spell go far enough back to see any evidence of a Tripping Jinx, so there’s no proof that she did both. And second, Kusakabe can’t have tripped me.”

“A Tripping Jinx is hardly outside the realm of possibility for a first year, if she puts her mind to it.”

“That’s not what I meant at all. You see, the attack happened too early in the morning for her or any day student to be here. They were probably still on the way here when I was tripped. Didn’t you consider that?”

Konoe-sensei looked positively livid. “But all boarding students have been inspected, and no wand produced evidence of a Tripping Jinx.”

“That is troubling,” Ebisawa-sensei agreed. “It means even an inspection like this can be fooled. But still, all things considered, surely you can’t punish Kusakabe for an offense she wasn’t here to commit.”

“Is it possible,” Shizuma-sensei put in, “that she was simply tripped without a wand? We don’t typically teach wandless magic to any but the most advanced students, but you all know full well it’s possible. I could tell you of boys and girls no older than our youngest seniors doing more complex magic than a Tripping Jinx with just their hands in Africa.”

Mei just stared, almost laughing with relief and with the slight absurdity of the situation. In all their speculation, the professors seemed to have forgotten that the entire junior first year was still standing there, waiting for a verdict.

“This theory seems sound,” said the Headmaster, and that gave it all a feeling of finality. “It still means the culprit of one of the attacks hasn’t been caught, but at least we have confirmed that there must be more than one person at work here, which is more than we knew before, and we have cleared this girl of one of the charges. As for the other one…” He was talking directly to Mei now, and she had to resist the urge to shrink in on herself. “There seem to be quite a few people who are convinced this is wildly uncharacteristic for you, but our hands are tied. As a Quidditch injury is hardly a matter of life and death, I believe your continued attendance is no longer in question.”

Mei’s knees almost gave way. She was staying! An odd sort of hiss from behind her told her that Tamako was trying to cheer in a whisper and failing spectacularly, and she had to fight back tears once again, but for an entirely different reason.

“However,” Headmaster Gojo continued gravely, “for lack of any evidence to the contrary, we must assume the spell is correct, and tampering with Quidditch equipment in a way that results in a player getting hurt cannot be ignored.”

The teachers huddled closer, appearing to trade ideas, and finally, Konoe-sensei emerged from the consultation looking grim, though whether it was just to impress on Mei the gravity of what she had supposedly done, or because she would have been happier to see the back of her, she couldn’t tell.

“Starting next week and until the holidays, except on your cleaning duty days, you will stay back and assist Hiranuma-sensei with whatever task she sees fit to assign you in the cleaning, preparation and storage of Potions equipment.”

Mei’s jaw dropped. She’d already done the math: her cleaning turn was on Mondays, so that meant her first day of detention was next Tuesday—exactly on the day Iwamoto-sensei had set for the new tryouts.