Penwick

A little over two weeks was all the time it had taken for the case of a second delinquent to reach Professor Corvesso's desk. He had been keeping an eye on the first, Mr Fondatore @Devon Fondatore , for a while now. That boy had rather impressively managed to land himself in detention on his first day of school. Although… could it really be called detention? It had been more like a little nudge back in the right direction, making idle hands do some light work. Fondatore had not broken the rules since, to Rafael's knowledge, but whether that meant he had taken the lesson to heart remained to be seen. No need yet to make him scour burnt cauldrons the muggle way.

The case of Mr. Murray @Archer Murray was a bit different. Breaking curfew was in many regards a more ordinary violation. Alerting half the school's staff in the process however was not. Little did the boy know that he had been saved from four hours of dull work and was about to receive a punishment more suitable to his character and to the severity of his crime. Murray had undeniably broken curfew - little more than a rite of passage in Rafael's mind - but that was not what had caused him to take up the case. Murray's story had been a rather unlikely one, at least the version he had heard tell. It painted Ms Hathaway as a vigilante hero who has taken it upon herself to capture wandering first years. There were certainly sticklers for the rules like that among the studentry, like that one first year Mercator boy @Luke Campbell who felt an irresistible urge to correct both students and professors alike, but Ms Hathaway? He couldn't claim to know her particularly well, but she was old enough to be aware that Professors and prefects looked after ridding the halls of insomniacs.

Rafael sat down behind his desk with a sigh and rubbed his eyes. Sleep was a scarce commodity at Penwick, not a day went by without a minor incident of some kind. The more tenured Professors were more accustomed to it perhaps, more willing to let things sort themselves out. Time had a funny way of eroding more than just memories.

Inevitably his eyes were drawn to the small, whirring brass instrument on his desk. To the untrained eye the device seemed utterly indecipherable, six rotating clockfaces, each with their own handles turning and clicking at different rates. He eyed it for a while, wondering like he often had if the device truly worked. With a sigh he pushed it behind a stack of books, out of sight, but still softly audible.

He leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes for a short while. Mr Murray’s guilty face was not due to arrive for another five minutes.

—
While the fifth-year students Rafael had taught would be familiar with Memisi, the Australian first-year was unlikely to be (unless he’d spent some time in the depths of the library). The turbaned, wrinkled gnome-sized creature that had come skittering toward the boy would’ve almost certainly registered as an escaped garden gnome or a very odd looking house-elf. Niko, as the big-headed creature was called, had chosen a rather unfortunate moment to make himself known. Just when young Archer was passing through one of the darker, lonelier passages of Penwick, he had jumped out in front of the boy with wide eyes and an even wider, almost creepy grin.

Several golden earrings on the creature’s wrinkled ears glinted in the half-dark as he made the faintest of bows. “Murray…” he said while eyeing the young student. The memisi circled around the boy in silence save for the faint clinking of his loose metal armbands, as though he was searching for something - valuables perhaps - but couldn’t find them on the boy. When he had completed his circling, the creature pressed its lips together and fetched a crumpled note from his coat with many patched pockets. “Murray message…” said the creature, handing the boy the note. “Murray message!” he insisted impatiently, waving the note in the boy’s face. ”Niko Murray message!”

No sooner than the boy would have taken it, the gnomes-sized creature would whirl around and vanish, the soft tickling of his many pocketed trinkets the only sign that he wasn’t some figment of the boy’s imagination.

The note read: