You swore you’d never. Yet here you are.

It can’t be too hard. You’ve seen it done dozens of times. Hun­dreds.

But you swore you’d never.

You’ve seen them raise their hands. You’ve seen them wave lit­tle sticks around.
You’ve seen them play. You’ve seen them hunt.

You’ve seen them kill.

You swore you’d never.

Of course, they never use a real stick. Never a wand made of ac­tual wood. Wood made on the spot? That’s fine, of course. It’s not re­ally wood. Or, it is, but it’s not merely wood.

Its their thoughts, made solid.

For a spell is but a thought, and you can­not cast a thought with a piece of wood.

You can only cast a thought with a thought.

You swore you’d never.

You raise your hand. The air chills. Con­denses. The wa­ter va­por so­lid­i­fies.

There. Your thought, with which you shall cast more thoughts, now so­lid­i­fied. Your wand. Your ice wand.

Your Magic.

You swore you’d never.

Yet here you are.

The build­ing plans sprawl across your desk. You scan over them once more, just for com­fort. You al­ready know them by heart.

You’ve never in­fil­trated a build­ing be­fore, but with magic, you think, it ought not be so hard.

Time to break the law.

You swore you’d never.

Yet here you are, and some­times you must, for your son is gone and The De­tec­tive won’t give you naught but the most cryp­tic of com­ments.

You en­counter your first prob­lem: how to get there. You’re sure you could just ap­pear there, but you don’t know how–and what if you screwed up? Would you leave pieces be­hind? Or worse yet, would you dis­ap­pear, and never re­turn?

You drive. You walk in. You duck into a closet. You be­come in­vis­i­ble.

It’s just a scrunch of the face, and you slowly fade away. You won­der how it works: does the light pass through you? Or does your skin’s very color change? If the lat­ter, how does it work from other an­gles?

You grow wor­ried–you’re al­ready out in the hall. What if you’re the only one who can’t see your­self? What if the only an­gle you are in­vis­i­ble from is the an­gle di­rected at your own eyes?

You need­n’t have wor­ried: there’s a mir­ror right across the way, and you can see as clear as day the cof­fee cup held by the per­son walk­ing be­hind–

You dart out of the way. That was close. Im­ages of spilled cof­fee and burnt skin flut­ter through your mind.

There’s all sorts of trou­ble you can get into while in­vis­i­ble. All sorts of places you can sneak.

You swore you’d never.

You don’t know how she knew you were there.

You also don’t know what was so spe­cial about the num­ber “thir­teen.” She kept yelling it as if she was mad.

You swear to be more ob­ser­vant: if only you had no­ticed that tro­phy in her dis­play case ear­lier–be­fore she kicked you.

Ouch.

You swear to stop re­mem­ber­ing it: min­utes old, you can feel it eas­ily. You don’t need the mem­ory, too.

She tells you to try your lit­tle es­capade again, later, when she’s not around.

You swear you won’t.

As you walk out, she gives you the last thing you want: an­other cryp­tic com­ment.

“Logic is not your friend. Logic is a Phoenix.”

You have no idea what that means.

Now your brain hurts.

You cer­tainly don’t need that. Your nuts still hurt.

Again, you re­mem­ber the kick. You re­mem­ber the stab. You re­mem­ber the scream­ing. You re­mem­ber the pain.

You swore you’d never.

Yet now you re­mem­ber.

So much for swear­ing.

A priest once told your fa­ther: “Don’t swear.”

You swear you never will again.