DEFENDANT SPEAKS. “It was four in the morning. It broke me, thinking. About it. What I did. Please. I was scared and alone. It happened at sundown.. I’m only a teenager, okay, I was just messing around! I found the old thing when I was cleaning out my mother’s office. It’s been three years— my dad assured me it was time. I started with the biggest box and continued working as the day went on. I was so bored and I was starting to get a headache...I really thought I was hallucinating when I saw that book!”

(DEFENDANT POINTS TO EXHIBIT A.)

“I really didn’t know what it did but it was starting to get dark out and I just thought, ‘I wonder what’s in here?’ So I opened up the book and there’s all these yellow, crinkly pages and I couldn’t read anything!”

JUDGE SPEAKS. “Yet you were still able to read and perform the spell without any difficulties.”

PROSECUTION SPEAKS. “Aha!”

DEFENDANT SPEAKS. “Well that was the only thing I could read! It was the only bit not in a different language!”

WITNESS SPEAKS. “Your honor? I couldn’t read any of it either. Not even the part Rita said she could.”

DEFENDANT SPEAKS. “See?! Anyways, so I told Alexis I could read it and she didn’t believe me, so I read it loud in these weird tones— and the next thing I know the earthquake started! And that’s... that’s when the roof... fell in.”

JUDGE SPEAKS. “Do you need a moment?”

WITNESS SPEAKS. “Rita—“

DEFENDANT SPEAKS. “No, I’m fine! It’s... I’m fine. We were trapped— for hours. I— woke up in total darkness and managed to worm my way out of the wreckage, and I saw... there was his... body. He was... crushed by the bookshelf. And that’s when—when...okay... that’s when I started to... wander. I only knew it was four in the morning because of my watch that hadn’t been damaged in the crash.”

JUDGE SPEAKS. “And that’s when Alexis found you?”

WITNESS SPEAKS. “Yeah, I got out a few minutes later and found her—sorry, Rita— crying in the fields.”

PROSECUTION SPEAKS. “Your honor, might I add that Rita here had broken the Unforgivable Law?!? It’s named that for a reason!”

JUDGE SPEAKS. “And while your conditions are just, I sincerely doubt what young Rita has done can be classified as murder.”

(PROSECUTION POINTS TO EVIDENCE B.)

PROSECUTION SPEAKS. “Explain that!”

JUDGE SPEAKS. “I believe that to be Julia’s wand, Rita’s mother’s, who unfortunately perished in a similar accident.”

DEFENDANT SPEAKS. “Please I didn’t know I was one of—you—until yesterday! I’m begging you! I loved my father! You have to believe me!”

JURY CONVENES.

THEN SPEAKS.

“Ahem. Thank you. Now, Due to Rita Corners involvement in the killing of the human Robert Corner, and the circumstances of the Unforgivable law, we find the defendant, unfortunately, Guilty. Take her away.”