Look! A Shooting Star! PV: Kit Paine

The sound of the impact hard enough to break through the glass of a window caused Kit to look up, frowning, from where he sat sketching in the courtyard. Tucking his pencil behind his ear and his drawing pad under his arm, he pushed himself to his feet in order to investigate. While the sparkle of the broken bits caught the light when they were magically being replaced back into their original setting, he raised a brow thoughtfully.

If someone was willing and able to fix what they'd done, that wasn't so bad, but as caretaker, he didn't think he could let the crime that had been committed pass without consequence. After all, even if the window had been repaired, someone else might have been seriously hurt by what had happened. It seemed sheer luck that it had not. This time. But it was up to Kit to make sure there wasn't a next time.

Instead of heading inside or going to inspect the window, the caretaker ambled over in an attempt to locate the chartreuse tennis ball that had landed among some of the students in the courtyard. Presumably, its owner was still busy making window repairs, so Kit retrieved the object and began to idly throw it up in the air so he could catch it again. Aside from giving him something to do while he waited for the culprit to claim their property, tossing the ball so high up attracted attention with both its motion and bright, neon color.

If the ball's owner chose not to claim it immediately, directly, or so out in the open, then Kit had other ways of tracking them down. If they did, however, end up having the guts to come over in order to admit to what they'd done or at least to try to get their ball back, other students would see and know. The one who had broken the window could be made an example of to their peers.

@Jackson Valentine

@Kit Paine

Valentine wasn't half so bold, nor shameless, and definitely not so foolish as to go and retrieve the ball personally, thereby identifying himself as the perpetrator. Even if Kit Paine had been absent, the throngs of keen eyes that would burn his image into their venomous minds would surely be the end of him. Children were notorious for having big mouths, and purebloods were even better known for their tendency to gossip. The moment the ball had gone out the window, he was prepared to cut his losses short. That ball was no longer one of his possessions. Whichever lucky soul that caught it could keep it.

Not that this happened often. The balls rarely went off tangent as they bounced firmly against the solid stone walls of the classroom, ricocheting back and forth in a dangerous dance that he had come to master over the past few weeks. It didn't come without cost. Even now, many of the bruises he had endured as a result of his painful practices were still visible beneath his clothes. Ever so often, the odd miscast 'Flipendo' would cause the ball to limp forward with the magnitude of a thrown sock. At worst, he himself would be bounced back, though he had learned with time and patience to maintain a standing position even when faced with a backfired Flipendo. However, what he hadn't expected was an overperformance of his own abilities.

A critically successful Flipendo is what resulted in the breakage of the window.

He was good. He could keep the balls flying in a straight line mostly, directly into the wall and back at him. And he never trained with more than one at a time. It was only when the return shot came at him at almost triple the speed he was used to that a poorly timed dodge caused the ball to strike his back like a bounce pad and bullet through the window.

After this occurred, he was quick to repair the damage that he had caused. He wouldn't allow it to happen again, he promised inwardly. And he meant it more consequentially than it might've seemed. With each session and each consecutive failure, Valentine grew his magical abilities like the pitch-black rose that he tended to in a pot by the door. In time, accidents like this would be an oddity. However, he wasn't so much as careful, as he was skilled.

While most criminals bailed after committing their deed, he remained almost ignorantly at the scene of the crime, his window repaired and his practice session persisting in full heat. As Kit might come to discover if he entered the room, one ball was of little prominence. He had at least sixteen that were rolling about the floor.

While coming to retrieve the ball that had broken the window might have been considered bold, shameless, or foolish, Kit had liked to think someone might have done so anyway out of guilt, perhaps, or honesty by fessing up to their crime. Eventually, though, enough time passed that it became clear that the person who had repaired the window was either not the purpertrator or not interested in exposing themselves as the culprit. Kit caught the tennis ball once more and stared at it. Oh well. He'd given them their chance.

Taking a large step forward, the long-limbed adult stretched his arm back before launching the ball straight for the window it had come from with as much force as he could muster. Once more the glass shattered, but this time it was on the inside of the castle.

Having judged and determined which classroom the window belonged to while he was waiting for the glass-breaker to show up previously, Kit ran indoors and swept up the staircases he knew would ascend him to his destination with the utmost speed. Once he reached the door to the room, (assuming it was unlocked,) he flung it open with a broad grin on his face and his arms out as if to block anyone who might have tried to make their escape at the last second.

"Surprise~!"

The look on his face might have been akin to a predator playing with their food.

@Jackson Valentine

@Kit Paine

His day had been rather pleasant up until the point where the ball he had lost mere minutes ago violently returned to him. Without warning, it shattered the glass window inward, scattering sharp shards all across the room. The ball itself landed quite harmlessly against the ground after bouncing a few times, the distance it had traveled having absorbed most of its kinetic energy. Still, it was a powerful throw, likely the work of an upperclassman. Valentine had half a mind to peek out of the window and shout at whoever it was for behaving recklessly. However, good sense told him otherwise, and he merely repeated his initial mending charm, this time on the inwardly broken glass.

. . .

"Surprise~!"

The boy turned around as the door was flung open with such ferocity that it made him worry about his life for a moment. That was until he saw that it was the school caretaker. His knuckles had grown white from their perpetual tightness around his wand, and he was more than prepared to use it to defend himself was it anything inhuman.

Reducio

His outstretched hand flipped upward, guided by nothing but sheer muscle memory as the ball bounced back toward him. It missed, sailing just under his elbow and striking the front wall of the classroom with a soft thud. For a moment, he remained suspended in Kit's gaze, as if his line of sight was all it took to freeze him in place. His voice came both hesitantly and softly, the caretaker's ravenous expression chilling him to the bone. Was he even human?

"Mis- Mister Paine? Are you alright?"

"Oh, I'm quite alright, thank you," Kit laughed, straightening up once his eyes fell upon on the sole student in the room and he scrutinized him a few moments. "It's you I'm more worried about." His gaze darted about the room, taking a vague estimate of the number of chartruse balls rolling about. "You're not hurt, are you? Didn't hit your head...?"

Though his words were kind, a discordant note in his tone of voice suggested something very off about the whole thing. He offered the boy a gentle smile, but it seemed incongruous to the tense body language he had been exhibiting just moments earlier. Still approaching, he folded his hands behind his back.

"I was wondering because I know you couldn't possibly have been in your right mind when breaking that window. People could have gotten hurt outside," he continued, his demeanor pleasant and cheerful enough. Perhaps a little too cheerful. "A student in his right mind couldn't possibly have thought to play around with tennis balls indoors like this, especially with so many breakable objects around. "

He paused then in both his approach and his speech, looking as though something new had just occurred to him. "Unless...I was mistaken and that wasn't you...?"

@Jackson Valentine

@Kit Paine

With the way Kit was looking at him, Valentine was certain that he had been the one to hit his head. He didn’t want to be in that room anymore, the atmosphere souring from one of grueling training to being in a cage with a live tiger. Except tigers weren’t normally in positions of academic authority. He dismissed the idea of bolting off before it even occurred to him, a plan as naive as the childhood myth of ‘If I cannot see the enemy, the enemy cannot see me!’ Instead, the lion stood his ground.

“It was an accident. It usually doesn’t happen,” he swore, before boldly and erroneously calling out the deed of who he believed to be just another student. “Some idiot thought it was a good idea to fling the ball back in from the outside, though. Now that wasn’t an accident. Did you happen to see who it was, Mister Paine?”

Redirection of greater blame, a seamless strategy for those seeking to evade punishment. But whether or not this punishment was deserved in the first place? He’d reason at that junction when the time came. For now, he remained silent when the caretaker implicitly suggested that he was crazy. Well, Kit wasn’t wrong. Valentine had already broken several things in the classroom, though the marks would not be obvious, given that he had always made sure to mend them afterward. Surprisingly, he had grown quite attached to this venue and the people he sometimes shared it with. It was like a communal meeting place for those who feared darker forces looming upon the students of the school. Its squeaky clean walls, floor, and blackboard were the fruits of his initiative.

As for the caretaker’s last question, it should have been quite clear in the words bespoke that he was admitting to being responsible.

"Oh, an accident!" he repeated, nodding as if that explained everything. "Well, then, that just makes everything so much safer, doesn't it? And let's see, what else...misdirection?" Tilting his head, he raised a brow at the Gryffindor boy while still wearing his cheshire grin. "Attempting to shift my attention off you by diverting blame onto someone else?"

He closed his eyes, clicking his tongue as he shook his head in a pitying fashion. "How disappointing. And here I would have thought a young lion such as yourself would have at least been brave enough to fess up to a crime he'd committed without my having to pressure him into doing so."

His mismatched eyes shot open once more. "As it so happens, I was the one who thought to fling the ball back in where it came from. Good thing that didn't happen to cause an accident, isn't it? Otherwise, I doubt the fact that it was an accident would have changed the consequences much."

Bringing his hands out from behind his back, he steepled the tips of his fingers together in front of him, as if measuring his patience, as he continued to speak.

"Now...you have five seconds to give me a decent explanation as to what you are doing in this room, why, and why you can't do it somewhere else where it's safer or otherwise find a safer alternative for whatever game it is you're playing." He nodded toward the newly-broken window. "Because I highly doubt your objective was to practice the Mending Charm."

@Jackson Valentine