“If you can’t hide,” Fonsus muttered as he scribbled down a few words. He paused in thought, staring at the notebook in his hand. “If you can’t hide, you can cover it, right? Sort of like a distraction or smoke and mirrors. If you don’t want it to be found, or at least not easily, you’d make it so others would be focusing on something else. Right?”

River smiled. "Thank You..." Her eyes checked the shelves, eager to find something else that he might lend. The Fey poetry was too rare, he'd never let it go, but something else useful to their investigation or suiting her taste in literature... Her search stopped as her ear caught his words...

... A disruption... Damage. She paused. The paintings... She had assumed there was a particular working done in order to erase the memory of the paintings. However, maybe it wasn't its own curse. Who paid attention to paintings anyhow? Maybe they forgot because they were injured by dark magick happening around them.

She opened the book on magical paintings. She should give it a read before lending it to the prim and platinum painter. If they could find a disrupted pattern in the shades and tones in the frames... Was it like a footprint? There was more than one painting, more than one place to look for that footprint, that injury.

She regarded Fonsus, not quite following his train of thought. She trusted his instinct, he was clever, and always thought outside the assignment. In school it was messy, here it might be invaluable. It was endearing...

... Endearing. She thought about Hale... There was NO WAY Richard or Fonsus would want to incorporate him into the investigation. He had been an ass to them. Yet... was he not just angry and angsty against an unfair world, Could she blame him? No... Could she trust him...? Maybe...

Could they find out what happened to his sister? And if they did... What then?

"Right! This is where a lot of dark wizards, or even petty magical criminals, lack. It's easy to do damage, sadly. But to cover it, or obfuscate it, takes clever charm work.

"A simple and common method, which takes no magical nohow whatsoever, is to use someone else's wand. The spells a wand has used can be traced back, with the priori incantarum charm, but there's no known way to use the same effect on a witch or wizard themself. Of course, most people notice if their wand has gone missing."

"I bet there's statistics on wand theft," Richard said, momentarily forgetting why they were actually here in the face of academic interest. "That'd be interesting, if we could correlate reports with crimes."

(delete)

River turned from the shelves looking up from the book she was leafing through. Responding to Fonsus. "Yeah there' might be a distraction..."

She felt a vibration... It was low and subtle, perhaps imperceivable to others in the room. What she felt wasn't magic or a disturbance in the force...

She reached into her pocket, where her own wand would have been.

She touched the button on the side of her cell phone to silence it, then pulled it out. She put the books down and unlocked her screen to see who had called. Thankfully they hadn't left a voice mail and sent a text instead.

(UnknownNumber)

'hey'

Who is this?

'So u give ur number to lot of guys/?'

'...'

'chill, it's jacck.'

'So you *do* have a cellphone. When you didn't text right away I thought you might not. Lot's of wizards still don't.'

'i got 1'

'Oh cool. Early Christmas present?'

'No.. i got it... allowance $#$$'

contact added 'Jack Hale'

'Still figuring it out. Emoji's are weird i like this 1 ''

She giggled. Of course, he figured out the most ridiculous one first!

'How is your trip./?'

Changed Contact Name
'JH'

Changed Contact Name
'Jeremy Halvard Prynne'

She grimaced, looking up from the phone at the other two. She was a little anxious about the web-of-lies she might have just created... But it was no big deal, right? Nothing was really going on with her and Jack, so, that was fine. So far this was looking like a dead-end, and there wasn't really a story to tell here about Jack's sister anyway.

So... No big deal. Right?

"Yeah, um." She responded to Richard's comment. "If there isn't an incident report that could say something too. It's embarrassing to lose your wand. My uncle lost his and didn't tell any of us for 6th months. We found it under his couch. The Dust bunnies had used it in their nest."

Fonsus nodded as he continued to scribble in his notebook. His pen paused as Richard spoke up.

“Maybe,” Fonsus replied and his pen resumed, no doubt to catch and note Rich’s words. He did make a good point but the place and timing were not great. Fonsus hinted, “But that’s not exactly the focus of our school project.”

“So if it takes incredible charm work to cover damage or distract from the damage, would it be possible to lift such spells? Or reverse them? This is under the assumption you can’t find the wand or wizard in the first place. Unless…you would have to find the source in order to lift their spells…because you don’t know what spells they used in the first place. Which makes this entire thing difficult.” Fonsus frowned at his notebook. He felt like he was running in circles.

River decided she didn't want to lose track of the investigation too much...

She put her phone back into her pocket, after making sure it was in 'silent mode', and walked to where Fonsus was.

"I wonder what would happen if... Say someone did a charm to cover up damage... and you broke the charm somehow. Would, like, the stuff fall apart again? We haven't learned much about undoing charms, just making them." Not that she had luck with either.

"A repair charm will make the thing look good as new... But maybe it's not actually fixed." She tilted her head.

She frowned a little. She didn't like that thought. Magick doesn't really fix things. She touched her sternum where her charmed-necklace had settled under her sweater.

"In class, my charms fall apart all the time after a few seconds." She bit her lower lip, thinking.

"Is that the difference from transfiguration maybe? Transfiguration you're, like, changing the matter itself. A charm is, like... Adding something or tacking magick on. If that's the case it can come off, theoretically, a stubborn sticker."

"Transfiguration can be undone too," Richard cut in. "Even if you don't know what something was originally, you can return it to its natural state if you know that it is transfigured. But that's the hard part, isn't it? A teapot with legs is obviously charmed, but most people wouldn't stop to think that an old tire is actually an alligator or something..." he trailed off, his eyes widening slightly and his usual thoughtful movements ceasing in a characteristic pose of having realized something. "Be a good way to hide a body," he finished quietly.

"Erm, yes," Clowers looked at Richard with mild concern. "In fact, there are several documented cases of that happening. And of course most experts assume that it has happened many times without ever being discovered. Typically it's found because something is out of place. Or else someone familiar with the scene(a resident at a home, for instance) points out that some object has never been there before. And of course an inept or not completely trained wizard might make errors in the transfiguration."