The Mysterious Box: The Result
Maeve took a deep breath, walking briskly towards the Great Hall. Her eyes were dilated, scared, and the scent of firewhiskey still reeked her lips.
With a slight teeter and a too-blank expression, she entered the occupied space. “Professor Wilkinson,” she greeted. “Starkey." She shot him a menacing look, kept hidden from Sarah, of course. The witch didn’t know her and rage would only make her seem suspicious.
Maeve had been there through the incident, in fact, and she’d seen it all. Christina, the box, the ponderous force… It was tragic, really, but tragically beautiful. She remembered the body, floating into the air like some ominous being of peace. Anyone could’ve died, really. A student, a passerby… Maybe even a teacher. But Christina had been the lucky (or perhaps unlucky) one. Maeve was jealous, oddly, in her own peculiar way. How nice it would be to escape, to leave before innocence ran and each mirror turned into a dagger.
The girl would be a dagger too, though. In photographs, memories, minds especially. Makeup. She was wearing makeup.
Maeve’s heart wrenched, twisting and curling like the dead girl’s limbs. The body, Christina’s body, had once been a girl. One who’d prettied her face for her first year classes, one who’d tried impress a boy.
“No,” she choked out, after fleeing from sight. No one had seen her, she’d made sure of it. Quickly, she rushed towards the nearest bathroom, releasing her stomach into a stall. Then, finally empty, she stitched her nerves back together with cold, barbed wire. “It could’ve been anyone,” she thought, “and you’d feel the same way.”
The burn of firewhiskey seared down her throat, numbing her mind and her insides. After hearing Sarah’s announcement she tossed her bottle, cursed, and set off towards the Great Hall.
"Oh god," she choked, clamping a hand over her mouth. She looked towards Mikey, then Sarah, then back towards the body. "What happened?" She sputtered, her words slightly slurred. "Why… How did she… Who would even do something like this?"
Maeve. Of course. She and he hadn’t spoken since the Veritaserum incident, which was for the best. She had an enemy in Mikey, and he was not above destroying her.
Of course, that would be a bad idea at the moment. There was an actual threat, and as much as he wanted it to be Maeve, he doubted it was. It would be too easy. She was crazy, but not evil.
"That is precisely what we are trying to find out, Maeve," Mikey said, standing and acting as if being half-naked and crying were a perfectly professional thing to do. "But Sarah is taking point, given her Auror training and her particular magical talents." He nodded toward Sarah, a sign of solidarity, and though he was still shaken he trusted her far more than Maeve or the unknown witches and wizards at the Ministry.
She had been right. Hogwarts and the Ministry employed the people best suited to this kind of situation. If anyone could solve it, they could.
Maeve, of course, was not part of that group.
"So, Sarah, where do you want me?"
Oh good, Sarah thought to herself, the literature professor came... that'll help.
"I don't know what more we can do here. The Ministry will be arriving in Dawson's office any minute now, and he can deal with them at the moment. The students should be informed of the tragedy. The Slytherins, at least, are bound to notice her absence. At least one person needs to stay at the scene, and we'll need to find anyone that was down here when it happened. We'll need to know what everyone saw. So, we'll have to question the students. Mikey, do you want to go to the Hufflepuffs or head up to the Aurors and tell them what you saw. I can stay with the body and wait for the other heads to get here if you want to check to see if the healers are on their way, Maeve? They should be coming up from Hogsmeade by now.
