Trial

In the morning, Fontaine gave him Invigoration Draught after which Luca's ears emitted a puff of smoke accompanied by a brief whizzing sound. He instantly felt like jumping over the castle or running a Boston marathon would not be that much of a problem. His teacher himself dressed in his best clothes, the firmament-patterned black robe, brought Luca a selection of clothes from the dormitory, wearing a Wampus uniform would be much preferable to the cape and makeup he still didn't wash off himself.

"Teacher, are you suspiciously attentive or is it my imagination? Also, can I have that sleeping drug?" Luca realized something had to be wrong with vice-headmaster's actions and how happy he seemed.

"So you noticed? Good, not wasting time teaching an idiot is always a pleasure. I had this idea long ago that will for sure not be accepted by the wider public, and your dilemma is a great opportunity to get it out there without crossing my candidacy for the next headmaster." Fontaine praised his student without reservation and revealed some of his plans. "Potions can be addictive, also in case of emergency as you sleep under it, you can't wake yourself." he refused the second request and explained the downside of overusing such drugs, Luca had some complex feelings over ultimately being used that showed on his face. "Don't overthink, I would still do what I did, at most without being so happy about it." Fontaine noticed where Luca's mind went at a glance and stopped him, the boy had to get a shower and dress up before the trial started in an hour.

The vice-headmaster waited for him over a table with some pastries and milk as he looked outside the window at the clouded sky, the weather getting colder with each passing day. Luca came back and sat on the other side, the boy not having an appetite to touch food sank into rumination over his defense while Fontaine smoked a pipe and made up various figurines dancing on the ceiling, pondering more about how to word his ideas than helping the boy he thought didn't need to worry about anything as his attack was undoubtedly justified and the victim survived.

"Go." Fontaine left the pipe on the table and made Luca wear handcuffs again for some pity points potentially gained, mid-sized handsome kids like Luca always favoured by those who look at them. They went down the sandstone steps of the staircase until reaching the ground floor, again towards the only place from where any noise came.

As they entered the Entrance Hall modified to at least partially resemble what you would find in a no-maj court, a witness stand in the middle over the selection platform, judges' bench lined before the wooden sculptures of the houses' patron creatures, the prosecutor's desk on the right of the bench, and a chair prepared for Luca on the other side of the room closest to the corridor leading to the gate of the castle, Fontaine pushed him in the chair's direction and went to take his place on the bench in front of the Wampus statue. Other deans dressed as they liked, the headmaster with his messy beard unusually clean and groomed changed into formal robes with MACUSA and Ilvermorny emblems on them, and Juno the only one wearing a no-maj judge's Geneva gown and a detachable white collar slightly but noticeably different from a wizarding robe that has traditionally a row of buttons, serving as the prosecutor, already awaited their arrival in silence.

The crowd up the auditorium could be described by any other word than silent, students now wearing their house's colours separated from each other, brown and blue made sure to stand opposite, the teachers and ghosts in a vertical row between the houses. Eventually, those who noticed Luca's appearance pointed him to the others, and the hall went quiet as the defendant sat in his place. Luca forced himself to seem calm, the hypnotizing mantra 'it's not real, it's not real' echoing in his mind. The headmaster took a swig from a vial of an unknown potion and hit the gavel three times.

"Order, order, order, we gather to seek truth and give a fair verdict in the case of Luca Granger, student of year one, house Wampus, grave assault on Malin Berbat, student of year five, house Horned Serpent, that took place on the night of thirty-first October. First, I want to retract my statement of open discussion uttered more or less seven hours ago, I just said that to shut you up Makris, I'm not spending ten hours over here listening to 'totally reasonable' takes from fifteen-year-olds." the headmaster's words made for another uproar on the Wampus side, so he waved his gavel and a one-way invisible soundproof barrier rose around the circular arena separating the crowd from the process, made possible because of the headmaster's authority over the castle itself. He looked at Juno to take over, which she did giving an order with a serious face.

"Witness Abigail Bagley, come forth." the ghost girl flew down from the stands, she didn't face Luca to avoid some sort of partiality accusation.

"Good morning. I swear by Merlin that the evidence I shall give shall be the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth." Abigail swore to the microphone as she stepped inside the witness stand.

"Very well, describe your connection to the defendant and the events of yesterday." Juno directed.

"Yes. We are friends with relationship lasting two months. Yesterday, I spent the day talking with girls in the Wampus female dormitories, then went outside for somewhere between two or three hours, then went to the dining hall where I gossiped with Samantha and Matilda, then went back to the Wampus dormitories to see the girls preparing their costumes for Halloween, then went down with them where we beckoned the defendant to join us as he also headed to the Halloween banquet with his roommates." Abigail related fast and with confidence.

"Was the defendant in any way agitated or displayed violent tendencies in those two months?" Juno interrupted.

"No! Except for the battle quidditch, I guess." the ghost girl had to say as she watched Luca demolish the opposition on two occasions now.

"So he did. Continue." Juno demanded.

"It's just a game… At the banquet, we heard headmaster announce the seeking contest, so we separated from the girls and went outside to find pumpkins. We gathered a lot of points and went very far away from the common paths when we both heard something akin to wailing coming from somewhere, the defendant observant enough to be able to pinpoint the source." Abigail said fluently.

"If you heard wailing, why go there and not go back to ask a teacher or a Pukwudgie for help, or you thought that an eleven-year-old has the capacity to deal with any situation himself, you incapable of providing assistance?" Juno pressed her again.

"I didn't think so much, can't speak for the defendant… We went forward into the field of flowers, at the end which a fairies' village lay, the cries and wailings coming from it. We went inside only to witness a piece of shit man imprisoning the humanoid creatures at will…" Abigail started to paint the picture but got interrupted.

"Fairies are just insects according to law, please refrain from accusing the victim of wrongdoing in this case." Juno protested calmly.

"But they look exactly like miniature women! How can anyone tell they are insects!" Abigail tried banging angrily on the railing, but Juno didn't change her face at all.

"What happened next?" she asked.

"...that worthless trash took another lady in his vile claws and yanked out her wing as me and Luca watched in disbelief!" Abigail panted despite not needing air, looking at Juno with naked hostility. This time she didn't ask anymore, so the ghost girl returned to her story.

"As the repugnant zero tried to reach for the second one, something happened to Luca. He punched out both his fists and lunged forward, landing on all fours, while the so-called victim got his arm blown into tiny pieces, and his body launched to hit the tree. I lost my mind for a minute then, Luca started moving, and he brought the degenerate as fast as he could to the nearest Pukwudgie, who decided to detain Luca for no reason." she ended the story.

"Is that it, what about the other versions of events that caused riots?" Juno questioned the authenticity of her words.

"It is my fault in a way that I only managed to reach so many people, mostly ghosts, at once, so that they turned the story different every time it was retold, resulting in the one needlessly provoking anger from Luca's friends." Abigail asserted.

"Thank you, this is all. Second witness, William, please present the findings of your team." Juno dismissed the witness and called the Pukwudgie in. Abigail flew back, and the one that tried to stop Luca's 'escape' went in, the microphone too high to reach, he unashamedly took out a step ladder and adjusted it to fit.

"Morning, Pukwudgies don't lie. We went to confirm the route defendant and victim took, matching their encounter as an accident. Wounds received by the victim match the description, all happened at one time, and the time it takes to reach the school's lawn from the place of the incident is roughly equal to the time it took to take the victim immediately for treatment. Fairies robbed of their wings crying in their village matched the motive for the defendant resorting to violence." William said what could be investigated and went back outside by himself.

"Thank you very much, last witness, regarding the harm experienced by students in the dining hall, Miranda Toll, identified to be the first to cast a spell against a member of Horned Serpent's house." Juno called on the freckled girl from the stands, she came in and send a thumbs up to Luca along with an admiring look.

"Good job!" she whispered while near him.

"What made you do it?" Juno asked, the girl stood silently for a dozen seconds thinking about it.

"Hwoot?" Miranda looked at her nose crossing her eyes, put her tongue hanging out, and said facing Juno.

"...what made you do it?" Juno repeated the question looking slightly exasperated, Miranda grabbed the microphone and went close to it with her mouth.

"Luca is innocent and that bastard shouldn't be rescued at all!!! Free the wrongly accused!!! End fairies' oppression!!!" she managed to yell before Geoffrey Roche pointed his gavel at her and flew her outside the barrier. Juno hid her face in her hands and whispered: "Merlin give me strength to deal with those γάτες."

"That's it. Everything is clear, the victim was diagnosed with a permanent loss of arm and bones broken so much he will be kept in a coma and slowly recoup for a month. We will listen to opinions on the punishment from deans first." Roche looked sideways at Fontaine with a mocking interest hidden in his eyes, which to Luca looked pretty sketchy as he knew about the supposed 'planned announcement'. His mentor stood up and solemnly looked over the crowds that were still discussing among themselves, the Horned Serpent house in a full-blown civil war it seemed from the white barriers preventively cast. He took a deep breath and spoke sonorously, letter after letter.

"Not everyone has to live until graduation. We should plug the obvious weed out while the harm it did to society is low, Malin Berbat is the most self-evident, barefaced example of someone that is destined to become a dark wizard or be corrupted by demons. There are so many fallen wizards, so many completely preventable and pointless Secrecy Law violations, perpetrators of unbelievably cruel crimes all come from among the pupils studying in this very castle. It isn't teachers' or parents' fault, some - just like the scum Luca injured - are in my opinion born evil. I am willing to eradicate an unhuman pile of shit from society before it undoubtedly causes harm, I advocate sentencing a student to death today - but not my righteous apprentice that I propose to honour instead for intervening in an act of depravity when he saw one, little eleven-year-old boy gathered the courage to stand up against a much bigger, a million times more evil opponent. Each year we are losing dozens if not hundreds of our compatriots, a lot of them join Scourers or other Underground organizations and hunt the good wizards as a mobile pile of gold, to strip them of flesh and bones, and sell them to vampires or werewolves. When we completely reformed the school systems twenty years ago, I hoped to curb the number of lawbreaking wizards coming out of Ilvermorny. From what I see, it failed. You, my students, and your parents or siblings are in numbers either the same or even higher plunging into darkness prematurely, perhaps because of the war in Canada, or other factors, but I see it as a failure either way. We need action, concrete action, beginning with dark wizard Malin Berbat's public execution." Fontaine finished his piece and sat down closing his eyes and taking off his glasses to get busy wiping them with a colourful handkerchief.

The hall plunged into silence, the barrier headmaster setup completely superfluous at the moment, everyone looking at the vice-headmaster with three-and-a-half thousand different expressions. Luca found it simply astounding that an adult could hold such an opinion, wizarding world sounded like a place in dire straits if that was supposed to be the solution. He might have regretted not acting on an impulse, but the boy was smart enough to know that such thoughts should be kept to oneself, never spoken aloud. Now, somebody proposed to institutionally kill the students in his own school, which took it to another level.

"Ekhem, Dietrich, please say your opinion on Granger's case." the headmaster broke the silence, dean of Horned Serpent's the second most involved person among the judges. He wore the blue shirt and tie like a no-maj collar-worker, and listened carefully with narrow eyes to the speech of his colleague, joining the tips of his hands in front of his chest. He stood up looking up at the Ilvermorny emblem above the circular hall, and started expressing his thoughts.

"History is written every day in blood and tears, people struggling for their goals and morals, to set a new standard of behaviour on their example or fight for what they think brings benefits to themselves, their countries or communities. What Luca did wasn't wrong, and I am not responsible for the choices made by students of my house. We can't dwell on the past and never improve or change, we can't sit still, because when good men sit still, evil starts winning. I advocate lack of punishments." he calmly looked over his house's members and sat down renewing the silence.

"Yuzuriha." Roche had to name the dean of house Pukwudgie, a Japanese older lady in a golden yukata with black flower patterns, her breasts looking like she had a couple of watermelons hidden under, that looked at Fontaine with disgust and scorn. She stood up and hissed through her gritted teeth.

"How is this clown allowed to stay in school a second longer?!" Roche had to interrupt her, reminding her that they were still in the middle of a trial. "The deed was done, boy must be punished. I heard that the victim stopped breathing, charges should be upgraded to murder! And go to MACUSA, not this shady gathering of corrupt, demented elderly!" she sat down in a huff.

"Rivers." Roche called the last one, dean of Thunderbird, a lean black man wearing a purple suit paired with a darker shade of purple fedora, who looked at Fontaine with surprised eyes containing a hint of awe.

"Thunderbird stands for freedom, clipping any creature's wings should incur punishment, and a degree of vigilantism is necessary for wizards to uphold, as long as Luca grows up to be less emotional, I expect him to grasp the scales better. Not guilty." he spoke in a lighthearted tone.

"Now, time for Mr. Granger to have a voice in a closing remark." Roche looked Luca in the eyes, tilting his head, interested in what could the boy say, probably realizing already that he got out scot-free. Luca closed his eyes and thought about what to say sorting his thoughts.

"I don't care what anybody's punishment is, but using fairies' wings in any way must be banned immediately across America." Luca stated simply.