alt_antonin | Private message to Auri

Dear heart,

It's a bit late, and you may not see this in time, but I've just realised you have the 6th years later tonight and ought to know. I don't remember if Mr Thomas is one of your NEWTs, but if he is, to my very great displeasure I must let you know he will not be in class tonight. Nor, indeed, will he be in class again. I have not got to the bottom of all the details yet -- I will tell you what we do know once I'm done with the bloody firecalls -- but Mr Thomas was killed, late last night to the best of what we can reconstruct.

(A sequence of poor choices all around -- impossible to place blame fully, and yet not precisely an accident. I will elabourate when I've a moment.)

You may see MLE or the St M's containment team on the grounds -- I would recommend that you keep the children's attention on the skies as much as possible.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

alt_sinistra

Oh, Tosha.

He is was.

Better to cancel them tonight. I think. I'll send an elf around. I can't cancel the 5ths, I really can't, their exam's so close.

I just. Details. When you can. Please?

From:

alt_antonin

Right. I've notified everyone who needs to be notified, and the cleanup has proceeded as far as we can proceed until we have sunlight and I can collect some morning dew to complete the purification, so there's nothing more I can do tonight.

It was a confluence of bad luck, small mistakes, and poor choices. As near as I can tell, this is what happened: Miss Patil received instruction from her sponsor that her next task was to interfere with the prospects of a candidate from a short list, which Mr Thomas was upon. She chose him, and decided that her tactic would be to set him against my protections: her plan was to falsify a letter from Mr Thomas's own sponsor, instructing him, as a halfblood, to "prove" that he was worthy of Council membership and properly respectful of his gift of magical heritage, by demonstrating ability to cast a suitably high-order Dark spell. Her intention was that he would attempt to get into my locked cabinets to obtain a book of suitable strength, fail at that attempt, and incur my wrath in the process. Mr Thomas, meanwhile, had just received a challenge he found unpalatable; he took the arrival of Miss Patil's forged communication as a chance to redeem himself, and threw himself into the project wholeheartedly.

Coincidence, meanwhile, meant that last week and this week I have been teaching a unit on research skills and safety when working with materials more powerful than the books we have been using in class. I happened to bring one of the volumes from my locked cabinet at home -- one I would not otherwise allow at Hogwarts, given how dangerous it can be. (I do not know if Miss Patil conceived the false challenge before or after I announced the lesson plans. I ought to determine that; it will undoubtedly come up in the inquest.)

In retrospect, I believe Mr Thomas made an attempt last week; on Friday after their class session, when I was bringing the book back to my office in its carrying-case, he was one of the several who followed me back to my office asking followup questions, and in the haste to answer their questions and get back to the classroom in time for the third-year theoretical class, I did not notice I was distracted enough to leave the book, in its warded carrying-case, on the desk instead of locking it in the cabinets. If you'll remember, that night when I walked Mr Finch-Fletchley back to his dormitory I locked up the office to evening wards early, trusting none of the NEWTs would stop in that late on a Friday night? I believe that action is what prevented Mr Thomas from walking off with the book on Friday; the perpetrator got through several layers of the evening wards before Mr Diggory returned to the office from the library to gather his things.

At any rate, on Friday after I noticed signs of someone having attempted to break in, I added multiple extra layers to the evening wards, but did not revoke the keying-in I had provided to my NEWTs to allow them passage through the day wards and access to the bookshelves -- it is nearing the time of year when their independent research projects will be due and many of the resources they need are not in the library, and Mr Diggory is present for most of the day. I did increase the protection on the cabinets, to the point where I honestly believed none of the students would be able to get through, but I did not deploy the most serious wards; ironically, I did not wish to risk placing wards that severe where someone unsuspecting might innocently activate a potentially-lethal response. My quarters, yes; my office, no.

Unfortunately, I forgot that Mr Thomas and his research group are studying warding, and it appears Mr Thomas had been practising on his own and was significantly more advanced than expected for any student of his age and experience. As near as I can tell, at some point -- last night while we were at supper, or this morning after I had unlocked the office and Mr Diggory, Mr Finch-Fletchley, and I went for our morning run -- he utilised the access I grant to my NEWT students to enter the office itself, then unpicked the wards on the cabinet just enough to remove the book before recreating them well enough that I did not notice the disturbance. He then removed the book's carrying-case, and himself, to the attics to have time to break the protections on the carrying-case undisturbed.

I had repeatedly warned the children about the precautions one must take to read such an advanced text -- we were practising the safety measures in class -- but I cannot say whether Mr Thomas's precautions failed or he simply did not take them. He had begun casting one of the more elabourate spells, but ~~the hæmorrhaging overtook him before he could~~

Nevermind. You do not need to know the details.

Miss Patil is adamant that had she known Mr Thomas was capable of making it through the wards she would have chosen a different tactic. I am furious that she has once again involved me in this challenge without telling me ahead of time -- there was an incident in class last week, as well, after which I warned her to bloody tell me if her plans involved me -- but in all fairness I cannot call her the direct agent of Mr Thomas's death; she may have held out the dagger but he was the one who chose to ram himself into it. Still, I have spent the past several hours dealing with MLE, assisting the St Mungo's containment squad with their attempts to dissipate the energies of Mr Thomas's half-finished casting, re-quarantining the book, informing Mr Thomas's guardian of his death, and answering to the Governors' preliminary inquiries. Thankfully I called upon Barty to help me in tracing the book once we realised it had gone missing, and so he was already on scene; he has been a considerable help.

I doubt the Governors will rule me at fault -- I have met or exceeded all the precautions it is customary to take in such lessons -- but that does not mean I am not upset with myself for my part in this disaster, and I have let Miss Patil know (and, tomorrow, will let her sponsor know), without a doubt, just how displeased I am with having been used, however indirectly, as the murder weapon. And now tomorrow I will have to spend on containment, cleanup, and redoing the wards on my office, in between defending myself further to the Governors, and will have to revoke the privilege of my office for the NEWTs completely.

From:

alt_antonin

And I must thank you, dear heart; writing that all out has helped me to gather and arrange my thoughts considerably, and made it quite clear that while I do of course hold the final responsibility -- both as the children's teacher and as the resident Master of the Arts -- and must hold myself at fault for my part in this disaster, I ought neither hold the blame nor count Mr Thomas as one of my dead. My failure, yes, but not one for which I must deeply atone.

I do wish I had seen the depth of the boy's skill at warding, however. Had I known, I would have likely reached out to him more firmly, and had he trusted me more, he might have come to lay this task in my lap for me to assist him with.

From:

alt_sinistra

Oh, Toshenka. I am glad to be some small service, at least. I sent my fifth years down a few minutes ago (with the clearest instructions to the prefects to stay together, and go straight back, mind). And I've just been sitting here and remembering.

Not just your failure, I think. I keep thinking of the summer they brought him out of the camps, and dropped him into the YPL camping trip (the first year I had it, and everything was one part chaos and one part adventure). He found magic entirely astonishing and he was so dedicated to making up in a matter of weeks what his classmates had learned in a year.

It doesn't surprise me, really, that he'd have both done the same in your class, and yet not shown how much he'd learned.

This year. Last year. ~~They have not so much taught our students adults have~~

Mmm. Do you wish company, for a few minutes? Or can I be of any help in easing any part of your Thursday to come? I'm not yet settled enough to sleep, and Raz had enough of my uneven emotions last night to last us weeks.

From:

alt_antonin

Company would be greatly appreciated, actually. MLE and the St M's team have departed, Barty among them, and I am not yet ready to attempt the few hours of sleep I am likely to get; I could use a quiet drink with a reassuring presence.

I am in my office, still, redoing the warding; will you join me there? I'll need to key you in once I get the new patterns set up, anyway, and it might as well be now.