17/11

I think the new boy at our school is a wizard.

Cassian will insist that wizards aren’t real, which is rather odd for someone who likes fantasy stories as much as he does, but I’m sure Ash is magic in some way.

I know, I know! I sound mad, of course I do, but weird things keep happening around us now. Last week something Cassian called an ‘ice spirit’ broke into the school, as you do, and ended up flooding the place. Somehow. Because ice and water aren’t quite the same thing.

But ice is melted by fire, right? And Ash is one, literally called Ash, and two, he’s got red hair. Which is half the reason why I think he’s behind the whole school being flooded by an ice spirit. The other half is that two weeks ago a… minor explosion happened during a Science lesson.

Just, you know, a mild one. Apparently it was entirely Ash’s fault (according to Cassian), or entirely Cassian’s fault (according to Ash)… or maybe the fault of some other kind of ‘spirit’ (according to Elliott, one of the other two people in their group that day, who nobody listened to because the boy has a habit of talking to nobody).

And they all ended up with some rather nasty burns.

Everyone but Ash.

So that’s my rationale. Ash must be some kind of wizard, because how else would that make sense?

Cassian refuses to believe me, obviously, which is why I’m going to prove it.

~

~

~

4/12

As it turns out, it’s difficult to prove that your classmate is secretly a wizard.

Well, it’s difficult to prove that the secret-wizard classmate is actually magic. All I’ve managed to prove is that Elliott might not be as crazy as everyone seems to think and Cassian is quite possibly trying to gaslight me into forgetting that magic exists in any capacity.

So… uh, the fact is that I think I saw a ghost yesterday. And Elliott was talking to it — I swear! Which makes so much more sense! But then I told Cassian, because he’s really weird about whether ghosts exist or not, and his response was that he’s starting to think I’m delusional.

I mean, maybe I am… but I don’t think so.

Although come to think of it.

Why does Cassian know so much about ice spirits and the non-existence of wizards?

God, it’s like I solve one mystery and six more pop up in its place. But I’ve got English in five minutes, so I’ll finish writing this up later.

18/12

Uh.

Well, I did say ‘later’, didn’t I? It’s been two weeks, sure, but it is two weeks *later*.

Yeah, that’s no excuse.

The past two weeks have been rather crazy, alright? Aside from preparing for Christmas, I’ve been busy trying to investigate Cassian and Ash at the same time — made considerably more difficult by the fact that Cassian suddenly insisted on avoiding me like the plague — and finally stumbled onto something two days ago.

Which was rather unhelpful for my actual investigation, but it does prove that magic exists!

I watched a boy turn into a wolf. In the library, of all places. And there was this other kid, couldn’t tell if they were a boy or a girl, with the wolf-boy, and guess what they were wearing?

Yep. A red cloak.

So, like any sensible person would do when confronted with such impossible things, I managed to track Cassian down (admittedly not the hardest thing — he was at one of the outdoor tables, reading a book, as per usual for Library-Boy) and asked him about it.

Completely casually.

And he reacted in an appropriately normal manner — telling me I was a liar before running off in the general direction of the library.

So, my conclusions:

1) Magic is real, whatever Cassian may tell me.

2) Cassian is bad at keeping secrets.

3) And lying.

4) Ash is far too good at keeping secrets.

5) But I did catch him setting a book on fire and extinguishing it in almost the same instant, so I’m still pretty certain about his wizard-ness.

6) Something’s apparently up with fairytales at the minute, and Cassian knows exactly what it is.

And what am I going to do?

Well, keep investigating… after the Christmas holidays, naturally.