"Of course I didn't touch it," Tate scoffed. He'd recognized it as a foreign object from the first, but perhaps his sense of caution came from his time on the ITF. Wherever it came from, he wasn't going to go picking up magical objects without thinking it through. He might be a Gryffindor, but he wasn't a fool.

"Perhaps there's a way to phrase it so that we don't cause panic? I just don't want this..." He indicated Max's prone form. "I don't want this to start happening over the school. But if Max's illness has nothing to do with that orb, then we don't want to worry anyone for no reason."