Magic of Her Own, Chapter 17: Missing Out

“You should have told her,” said Tamako for what must have been the fourth time that day. “Even she is not that unfair.”

“She’s right, you know,” Hiroki chimed in. “That message was all the proof you needed. You would have gotten out of detention!”

“You could have been coming to the tryouts with us!” Ryo sounded like he thought missing Quidditch was the absolute worst part.

The only one who seemed to support her decision to keep her mouth shut was Shinji, who added in a soft voice, as if he didn’t quite dare contradict the majority: “She would have found a way to blame her anyway. She was too convinced already.”

“At least show it to my sister, if not to the staff. That would be a start,” pleaded Ryo.

That would have been an excellent idea, if Mitsuko deigned to talk to her.

What hurt Mei the most was not that most of her friends thought she’d made the wrong move, or having to spend an extra hour in the Potions classroom when she could have been out on the pitch with the boys, or even the prospect of scrubbing cauldrons until her arms fell off from here to the holidays: it was Ryo’s sister’s attitude.

The older girl had been in shock when the ‘evidence’ had burst out of Mei’s wand, but with nothing to prove it wrong, she had no choice but to believe it, and was now giving her the cold shoulder for supposedly hurting her best friend, despite Ryo’s best efforts to convince her otherwise.

“All Kaori ever wanted was to come out of her shell and make Naito-senpai notice she existed,” she blurted out at lunch on Monday. “And she ruined it for her.” She was pointedly acting like Mei wasn’t even there.

“Sis, are you even listening to yourself? Honestly, give me one good reason why Mei would want Ueda to get a Bludger to the face! She’s Muggleborn, and a fine thing it would be if she attacked one of her own!”

“I know what I saw, Ryo.”

And that had been the end of it: Mitsuko had simply dug into her lunch with a vengeance and refused to say another word.

At least not everyone was against her, and now that the fated Tuesday had rolled around, she had something important to do before dashing off to the Potions classroom for her first detention. The others looked at her strangely as she hung back at the end of Ebisawa-sensei’s latest lecture and they made for the pitch, but she had to get it off her chest.

“Uh, excuse me?”

“Yes? Do you have a question?”

“Not really, just…” She breathed in, gave her very best bow, and said it all very fast: “Thanks for supporting me at the inspection, Ebisawa-sensei. I would have been expelled if you hadn’t convinced them.”

She straightened up and was met with the softest smile she’d seen on the teacher’s face in quite some time.

“You’re welcome, Kusakabe, but you’re really just thanking me for using simple logic. I’ve had my share of unfairness, and I can’t stand to see others suffering for it, that’s all. I felt that Konoe-sensei wasn’t considering all the facts, and I had to intervene.”

“But do you have any idea who did trip you?”

Ebisawa-sensei sighed. “Unfortunately, no, and the list of possible names is rather longer than I would like, for reasons I’m sure you understand better than most.”

The spark of understanding that followed took Mei by surprise, but they really were in the same boat, even with the divide between student and teacher gaping wide between them. They had more in common than she’d realized.

“Run along, now, Hiranuma-sensei doesn’t appreciate lateness.”

Mei had long been convinced that the Potions classroom somewhat resembled a blend between a kitchen and a scientist’s lab painted by an artist who had a very strange and confused idea of what either of them should look like. It had an almost homely feel once you got used to it, no doubt helped by the fact that Hiranuma-sensei was nice if you studied hard and watched out for all of her known pet peeves (arriving late and disregarding lab safety chief among them), but the rows of workbenches bore the permanent marks of incidents that Mei didn’t even want to begin thinking about, the kind of stains that wouldn’t go away with elbow grease nor with magic, and the sizeable storage room, she now knew from countless frantic trips, held a motley collection ranging from items as tame as sweet-smelling bunches of herbs to suspicious bits of things that must have once been alive, whose names Mei still had some trouble memorizing, and that she honestly preferred not to know unless it was for a test.

She came to a skidding halt in front of it and made her presence known, but there was no answer from inside, so she stood there as long as she dared, trying to calculate in her head how late was too late, and then slid the door open without waiting to be let in.

Not two seconds later, a harried-looking Hiranuma-sensei emerged from the storage room carrying as many of those rather ominous-looking jars as it was physically possible for a witch: she was holding a generous armful with the hand that didn’t have her wand, and several more were being directed to follow her, hovering gently in midair behind her in the strangest procession Mei had ever seen. She bowed in greeting, but the professor didn’t even appear to notice.

“Ah, there you are, Kusakabe. Just in time.” She unloaded some of her burden on the nearest workbench and gestured vaguely at it. “Sit.”

Mei hurried to comply as the rest of the ingredients took their place in front of her, the space looking more cluttered than it had ever been in class. She hoped there was no potion with this many things in it anywhere on the curriculum, because no one could possibly keep track. Well, maybe Hiroki, and even he would sweat. She gulped. What kind of task had she come up with for her first detention? They hadn’t even started, and it already looked daunting. She noted vaguely that the table had been set up as though Hiranuma-sensei expected her to do a lot of writing and, for some reason she couldn’t fathom, there was a pair of scissors off to one side, but she thought it wiser to wait until the teacher had at least caught her breath before asking the question that was on the tip of her tongue.

“Good afternoon, Hiranuma-sensei,” she began. Politeness was always the best policy. “What do I have to do today?”

“See the labels on these?” she said, pointing at the closest jar, which was about three-quarters full of what looked like tiny seeds she had not studied in Herbology yet. “They’re getting completely discolored with age, so someone inexperienced or in a hurry might confuse them, and we do not want that happening. So for the time being, and until my storage room is back to a decent state, you will be writing and cutting out the new ones, and peeling off the old ones while you’re at it. Their Sticking Charms are barely holding on, you should be able to do that by hand, but do tell me if any refuse to come off.” Then she seemed to size her up and remember all of a sudden that she was only a first year. “If you don’t know what the ingredients are, just ask me, and if you haven’t mastered the Sticking Charm yet, I’ll attach them myself later.”

Mei couldn’t help it: she breathed a sigh of relief. Her imagination had been coming up with much worse. Granted, her hand was probably going to feel like it was going to fall off, but Konoe-sensei’s threats of ‘healthy scrubbing’ had her picturing increasingly disgusting scenarios of scraping off nameless, foul-smelling gunk from cauldrons until the holidays rolled around, and preparing new labels was getting off easy compared to that.

“Have the good sense not to look too happy, Kusakabe. I might change my mind if you enjoy it too much. This is supposed to be a punishment, after all.”

Mei set to work, thinking she would probably look like she knew what she was doing if she started from the few she was sure she could identify, but the first drop of ink had barely touched the paper when Hiranuma-sensei spoke up again.

“Wouldn’t have guessed it in a million years, but then, I suppose it’s a good example of what Akio says – that’d be Shizuma-sensei to you –, it’s always the ones you underestimate who turn out the worst…”

That stung, and Mei was sorely tempted to protest she hadn’t done anything, but what good would that do her?

“I’m confident it’s not too late for you, Kusakabe. One spell doesn’t mean you’ve gone Dark forever, or you’d be out of here already. I understand what you’re going through.” Yeah, right, thought Mei bitterly. What could she possibly understand when she had it all wrong in the first place? “You haven’t been learning magic very long, and it must be all so very new to you, what with coming from a Muggle family and all. It could go to anyone’s head, having so much power you never knew about, and to tell you the honest truth, I think we’ve all… experimented, even the ones who will swear up and down they’ve never so much as charmed their friend’s hair purple for the fun of it. I understand wanting to seek the thrill of doing something just because you can. But the thing is, Kusakabe, you have choices, and we’re all here to help you make the right ones, even if it’s simply by showing you that there are certain… consequences for your actions.”

Mei privately thought it would have been a good lecture, if only she’d deserved a word of it. Some of it rang true: yes, it had been an endless whirl of novelty and excitement that was only now starting to settle into something that felt normal, if going to a school of magic could possibly ever be anything close to normal. But the rest of it? Mei had often been put in the position of having to point her wand at someone, especially in Defense Against the Dark Arts: that was just how classes went. But frankly, she only did it because refusing would mean failing, and the feeling it gave her was nowhere close to the ‘thrill’ Hiranuma-sensei supposed she must have felt, and far more similar to an uncomfortable squirm in the region of her stomach.

“I understand, Hiranuma-sensei,” she said, but it rang hollow. She could tell the teacher was trying very hard to appear sweet and encouraging rather than angry at what Mei had supposedly done, and if she really had, perhaps it would have comforted her. But Hiranuma-sensei had constructed her own perfect little story about what had happened and why, one that was a million miles away from the truth, and that Mei didn’t dare shake. She didn’t think she would have believed her anyway, her heart was too set on it.

“Good, good. Get to work.”

Mei reached for a jar and pried off the label. If you squinted, you could see that the old, faded writing confirmed that the slimy things in it were Murtlap tentacles, which were supposed to give you resistance to jinxes if you had the guts to swallow them—Mei didn’t think she ever would, and she wasn’t even the squeamish one of her friends. She wrote out a clearer, better version in her very best handwriting and moved on, but before she could pick another jar whose contents were familiar, Hiranuma-sensei spoke again. This was beginning to get rather awkward for Mei, who wasn’t sure if she was supposed to keep working and give the appearance of not caring, or listen attentively and look like she was slacking off.

“I suppose this will teach you better penmanship, if not Potions,” she said in a winning tone that seemed to mean she thought she was being very funny. “Yes, yes, better this than mindless scrubbing, in my opinion, at least you’re learning something… They say I’m too soft in my choice of detentions, but this is quite enough for today, considering what you’re missing to be here.”

Mei paused in the middle of her new label for horned slugs and shifted in her seat. Were Ryo and Hiroki up in the air yet? What kind of tests had Iwamoto-sensei come up with? Were they doing well?

“You were at the tryouts the first time around, weren’t you? As a candidate or just for support, if I may ask?” As if she didn’t know.

“I wanted to try for Chaser, Hiranuma-sensei,” said Mei, trying to make it sound like she didn’t care much and failing miserably.

“And that,” said the teacher with an air of finality, “is why you’re starting off with lighter work today. You've already lost enough without being treated like my personal house-elf. Consequences, Kusakabe. The true purpose of detention is not for me to get free labor, but for you to think about the consequences of what you’ve done. You could be well on your way to earning that position if it weren’t for that. The way I see it, that’s punishment enough.”

Mei could do nothing but sigh her supposed agreement and start labeling the minuscule beetle eyes staring at her from their half-empty jar.

She worked in silence after that, or at least, she did until she ran out of containers full of ingredients she’d used or studied before, and had to work up the courage to ask the first of many: “Excuse me, Hiranuma-sensei, what are these?”

“Snargaluff pods,” she said after one look at those mysterious green things that Mei could swear were moving as if they wanted to burst open. “Fresh off the tree. Not surprised you’d never seen them, no sane wizard would let a child your age near it, the vines could hurt you badly.”

That, Mei noticed, started a pattern. When she asked about an unfamiliar ingredient, Hiranuma-sensei was not the type to bark out a name and move on; instead, she always added a little something about what it was for, or how to harvest it, or something interesting that had happened to her in her youth while looking for it. Mei kept her mouth well shut about it in case she stopped, but she liked it, and listening to those tidbits made missing the tryouts hurt a little less.

She’d almost stopped thinking about her friends when a loud rumbling noise almost like thunder made her jump and ruin her label for lacewing flies. It grew closer and closer until she had to cover her ears to protect them from the worst of it, and then faded away in the distance. Hiranuma-sensei hardly seemed to have heard it.

“Huh. Looks like today wasn’t the best day for Quidditch after all,” she commented as calmly as if she’d been talking about the weather.

“What was that?”

“Just a plane. There’s a Muggle airbase not too far from here, didn’t you know? Sometimes, a flight will interfere with Quidditch, and everybody has to get down until the coast is clear. I suppose there’s been a break in the tryouts just now.”

Mei had a weird mental image of Ryo waving hello to some frightened passengers from outside their window and snorted.

“It’s no laughing matter, you know. Most broomstick users will fly much lower than a plane’s cruising altitude, but here, Muggle aircraft are closer to the ground than usual, and someone might spot us.”

Mei blinked at her casual use of words like ‘cruising altitude’ and ‘aircraft’. Ryo had trouble saying ‘telephone’, since when did a witch throw around terms from aeronautics without batting an eye?

“Do you… like planes, Hiranuma-sensei?”

“I can’t say, I’ve never been on one, but I was no slouch at Muggle Studies in my day. Now get back to work, we’re not here to chat.”

And so she did, but not before making a mental note that Hiranuma-sensei did not consider Muggles so beneath her that she didn’t bother learning their words. Figuring out why was a question for another day; for now, Mei was content with knowing for certain that she didn’t look at her like something unpleasant stuck at the bottom of her cauldron just for being her parents’ daughter.

Mei lost count of the labels she wrote, cut out, and left on the table for the teacher to stick in place while she waited for Tamura-sensei to get as far as the Sticking Charm in his curriculum, but eventually, she was let out of the classroom with one last stern lecture about consequences and cramps creeping into her hand, just in time to follow a group of older junior girls who had stopped by the shed to put their broomsticks back and were discussing the tryouts loud enough for her to catch a few snippets of the conversation.

One of their number was being thumped on the back with enough force to stagger on her feet as her friends all agreed that whatever she’d done was insane; completely worth it, but insane. It made the missed opportunity sting more than ever: it must have been a sight to see, and she hadn’t been there.

She spotted Ryo and Hiroki in the antechamber as the junior boys came out of their locker rooms, and when they finally caught up with each other on the grounds, the former abandoned his trunk and tackled her. It was a miracle they didn’t both roll onto the grass and come to a stop at a very disgruntled bird’s feet.

“I made it!” he all but screeched, spinning her in place until she was dizzy. “I made it, I made it, I made it!”

“Ryo, slow down!”

He took a step back and bent into an exaggerated bow. “Asuhara Ryo, junior reserve Seeker, at your service,” he said smugly. “Mom always said I looked good in green.”

“Yeah, rub it in, why don’t you?” said Hiroki, who had apparently not made the cut.

“You’re just grumpy because you missed that last shot, but you weren’t half bad. Try asking around if any unofficial team wants you, I’m sure plenty of captains had their eyes on you.”

“Unofficial teams?” Mei had been barely aware there were such things: sure, she’d seen people on the pitch who didn’t appear to be in full uniform, but she thought they were just practicing or having pick-up games with friends in a lull between classes, and unofficial teams sounded more serious than that.

“Yeah, that’s the only way we can have a decent number of full games throughout the year,” Ryo explained in his best expert voice as they secured their trunks, like he’d been let in on some unspeakable secret now that he was an official player. “School teams will sometimes play against each other, but can you imagine the reserve juniors going up against the starting seniors who are practically twice their size? Nah, some of the best Quidditch you’ll ever see is an official team versus an unofficial one about the same age. The playing field is more even that way.”

He clambered onto his bird’s back and grinned. “C’mon, I’ll tell you all about it, it was incredible. I was the smallest one there, I was terrified, I had to keep reminding myself that being tiny is actually a good thing when you’re trying for Seeker.”

“And he’s not just bragging, for once,” Hiroki agreed as he and Mei hurried to climb onto their rides home too. “Honestly, Ryo, I thought you were going to crash straight into the goalpost, what were you thinking?”

“What happened?” asked Mei eagerly as the storm petrels soared as one, sorrier than ever to have missed it all.

“Oh, I wish I could show you the memory of it, he had to make a catch so close to a goalpost he almost hit it face-first, I thought he was done for.”

“What do you mean, show me the memory?” Whenever she thought the wizarding world had run out of surprises, a new one came out of nowhere.

“Never heard of a Pensieve before?” asked Ryo.

When Mei shook her head, he proceeded to give her a somewhat garbled explanation that didn’t do much to help her picture what a Pensieve looked like or how it worked, except that his wildly gesturing hands had formed the shape of a bowl and then he’d touched his temple as if pulling something out, but she got the gist of what it was used for—to replay memories.

“Do they use it a lot for Quidditch?” she asked. “You know, to make sure there really was a foul or something.”

Ryo and Hiroki both snorted with laughter. “No way,” said the latter. “A Pensieve is crazy expensive, no one in their right mind would take it out to the pitch just to make sure the referee’s doing a good job, you keep it locked up in a room where it can’t break. It’s used for much more important things than Quidditch.”

“Like there’s anything more important than Quidditch,” Ryo joked. “Seriously, though, I don’t even know if there is one at the school at all. If anyone has it, it’s got to be a teacher, or maybe the Headmaster himself.”