“Oh, yeah,” James remembered. “The alignment of the planets. Petra and Ted told me about that. They’re in Divination with her. Seems like the voodoo queen’s really into that kind of stuff.” “She’s the anti-Trelawney, that’s for sure. With her, it’s all math and calculations. We know the date it’ll happen, but she wants us to factor out the exact timing right down to the minute. Pure busywork if you ask me. She’s a little kooky about it.”
“She’s kooky in general, if you ask me,” Ralph stated.
“I think she might be onto us,” James said in a hushed voice. “I’ve seen her looking at me sometimes.”
Zane raised his eyebrows and pointed at his eyes. “She’s blind, if you remember. She’s not looking at anything, mate.”
“I know,” James said, undeterred. “But I swear that she knows something. I think she has ways of seeing that don’t have anything to do with her eyes.”
“Let’s not freak ourselves out,” Ralph said quickly. “This is freaky enough already. She can’t know anything. If she did, she’d act on it, right? So forget about her.” The next day, James and Ralph went to visit Hagrid in his cabin, ostensibly to inquire after Grawp and Prechka. Hagrid was rebuilding the wagon Prechka had accidentally destroyed and was glad of the break. He invited them in and served them tea and biscuits while he warmed himself by the fire, Trife lying over his feet and occasionally licking Hagrid’s lowered hand.
“Oh, it’s all ups and downs for them,” Hagrid said, as if the tumults of giant courtship were a quaint mystery. “They fought fer a while over the holiday. Lovers’ spat over an elk carcass. Grawpy wanted the head, but Prechka wanted to make the antlers into a bit o’ jewelry.”
Ralph took a break from blowing steam off his tea. “She wanted to make jewelry out of elk antlers?” “Well, I say jewelry,” Hagrid said, raising his huge palms. “It’s a tricky concept. Giants use the same sound fer jewelry an’ weapons. Comes to the same thing when yeh’re twenty feet tall, I s’pose. Anyway, they worked that all out and now they’re happy as can be again.”
James asked, “Is she still living up in the foothills, Hagrid?” “Sure she is,” Hagrid said, a little reproachfully. “She’s an hon’rable girl, is Prechka. And Grawp, why, he bides his time in his hovel most days. Got ‘imself a right nice firepit and a lean-to of birches. These things take time. Giant love is… well, it’s a delicate thing, don’cher know.”
Ralph coughed a little on his tea.
“Hey, Hagrid,” James said, changing the topic. “You’ve been around Hogwarts for a long time. You probably know lots of secret stuff about the school and the castle, don’t you?”
Hagrid settled into his chair. “Well, sure. Nobody knows the grounds s’well as myself. Except maybe Argus Filch. I started out as a student, I did, a-ways back before even yer dad was born.”
James knew he had to be very careful. “Yeah, that’s what I thought. Tell me, Hagrid, if somebody had something really magical they wanted to hide in the castle somewhere…”
Hagrid stopped petting Trife. He turned his great shaggy head toward James slowly. “And what would a first-year pup like yerself be needin’ to hide, might I ask?”
“Oh, not me, Hagrid,” James said quickly. “Somebody else. I’m just curious.”
Hagrid’s beetle black eyes twinkled. “I see. And this somebody else, I’m wond’rin’ what they might be up to, then, hidin’ secret magical items here and there…”
Ralph took a large, deliberate sip of the his tea. James looked out the window, avoiding Hagrid’s suddenly penetrating gaze. “Oh, you know, nothing particular. I was just wondering…” “Ah,” Hagrid said, smiling slightly and nodding. “Yeh’ve been told a lot of stories about old Hagrid from yer dad and Aunt Hermione and Uncle Ron, I’m guessing. Hagrid used to let slip some details that maybe he was supposed to keep secret. S’true, too. I can be a bit thick sometimes, forgettin’ what I should and shouldn’t be saying. Yeh may recall stories about a certain dog named Fluffy, among others, yes?” Hagrid studied James intently for a few moments, and then heaved a great sigh. “James, m’boy, I’m a good bit older than I was then. Old Keepers of the Keys don’t learn much, but we do learn. Besides, yer dad clued me in that you might be getting up to dickens and asked me to keep an eye out for yeh. Soon as he noticed yeh’d, er, borrowed his Invisibility Cloak and the Marauder’s Map, that was.”
“What?” James blurted, turning so quickly he almost knocked over his tea. Hagrid’s bushy eyebrows rose. “Oh. Well, there yeh go, then. I don’t s’pose I was meant to tell you that.” He frowned thoughtfully, then seemed to dismiss it. “Ah, well, he didn’t actually tell me not to mention it.”
James sputtered, “He knows? Already?” “James,” Hagrid laughed, “yer dad’s the Head of the Auror Department, in case yeh forgot. Talked to him about it last week right in me own fire, here. What he’s most curious about is whether or not yeh’ve gotten the map to work yet, since so much of the castle’s been rebuilt. He forgot to test it when he was here. So, had any luck, then?”
In the adventure of capturing the Merlin robe, James had completely forgotten about the Marauder’s Map. Sulkily, he told Hagrid that he hadn’t tried it yet. “Prob’ly for the best, yeh know,” Hagrid replied. “Just ‘cause yer dad knows yeh nicked it, doesn’t mean he’s happy about it. And so far as I was able to gather, yer mum doesn’t know about it at all, yet. If yeh’re lucky, she won’t, neither, although I can’t imagine yer dad keepin’ that kind of secret from her fer long. Best just to keep yer contraband packed away rather than hidin’ it anywhere on the grounds. Trust me, James. Keepin’ suspicious magical items around the school can cause a lot more trouble than it’s worth.”
On the way back to the castle, bundled against the windy cold, Ralph asked James, “What’s he mean about getting the map to work? What’s it do?” James explained the Marauder’s Map to Ralph, feeling vaguely worried and annoyed that his dad already knew about his taking it and the Invisibility Cloak. He’d known he’d get caught eventually, but had assumed he’d get a howler about it rather than a ribbing from Hagrid.
Ralph was interested in the map. “It really shows everybody who’s in the castle and where they are? That’d be seriously useful! So how does it work?”
“You have to say a special phrase. Dad told me a long time ago, but I can’t remember it off the top of my head. We’ll give it a try some night. Right now, I don’t want to think about it.”
Ralph nodded and let the subject drop. They entered the castle through the main portico and parted at the stairs leading to the cellars and the Slytherin quarters. It was getting late and James found himself alone in the corridors. The wintry night was cloudy and starless. It pressed against the windows and sucked at the light of the hall torches. James shivered, partly at the cold and partly at a sense of icy dread that seemed to be seeping into the corridor, filling it like a heavy fog from the floor up. He walked faster, wondering how it could be that the halls were so dark and empty. It wasn’t particularly late, and yet the air had a sense of chilly stillness that felt like the dead of morning or the air of a sealed crypt. He realized he’d been walking rather farther than the corridor should have allowed. Surely he should have come to the intersection with the statue of the one-eyed witch by now, where he’d turn left into the reception hall, leading to the staircases. James stopped and glanced back the way he had come. The hall looked the same, and yet wrong somehow. It looked far too long. The shadows of it seemed to be in the wrong places, teasing his eye somehow. And then he noticed there were no torches on the walls. The light hung empty, ghostly, bleeding its color from flickering yellow to shimmery silver, fading even as he watched.
Fear leaped onto James’ back, icy cold and undeniable. He spun back to the front, meaning to run, but his feet failed him when he saw what was ahead. The corridor was still there, but the pillars had become the trunks of trees. The ribs of the vaulted ceilings had turned to limbs and vines, with nothing beyond but th
e vast face of the night sky. Even the pattern of the tiled floor melted into a lacework of roots and dead leaves. And then, even as James watched, the illusion of the school corridor evaporated completely, leaving only forest. Cold wind barreled past him, whipping his cloak and threading the hair back from his temples with ghostly fingers. James recognized where he was, even though the last time he’d been here, the leaves had still been on the trees and the crickets had been singing their chorus. This was the wood bordering the lake, near the island of the Grotto Keep. The trees groaned, rubbing their bare branches together in the wind, and the sound was like low voices moaning in sleep, wrapped in fever dreams. James realized he was walking again, moving toward the edge of the trees, where the reeds swished and bobbed at the edge of the lake. A great, dark mass rose beyond, blotting out the view. As James approached, apparently helpless to stop his plodding feet, the moon unveiled from a bank of dense clouds. The island of the Grotto Keep revealed itself in the moonglow, and James’ breath caught in his chest. The island had grown. The impression of a secret fortress was stronger than ever. It was a gothic monstrosity, decked with grim statues and leering gargoyles, all somehow grown from the vines and trees of the island. The dragon’s maw of the bridge lay before him, and James forced himself to stop there, without setting a foot onto it. He remembered the gnashing wooden teeth as it had tried to devour him and Zane. In the silvery moonlight, the gates at the other end of the bridge were quite visible, as well as the words of the poem. When by the light of Sulva bright I found the Grotto Keep. The gates suddenly shuddered and flung open, revealing blackness like a throat. A voice came out of that blackness, clear and beautiful, pure as a chiming bell.
“Keeper of the relic,” said the voice. “Your duty is satisfied.”
As James stood and watched, looking across the bridge into the darkness of the open doorway, a light formed there. It condensed, solidified, and assumed a shape. It was, James recognized, the gently glowing shape of a dryad, a woman of the wood, a tree sprite. It wasn’t the same one he had met before, however. That one had glowed with a green light. This one’s light was pale blue. She pulsed slightly. Her hair flowed around her head as if in a current of water. A quiet, almost loving smile was on her lips and her huge, liquid eyes twinkled gently.
“You have performed your role,” the dryad said, her voice as dreamy and hypnotic as the other dryad’s had been, if not more so. “You need not guard the relic. This is not your burden. Bring it to us. We are its guardians. Ours is the task, granted from the beginning. Relieve yourself of its weight. Bring us the relic.”
James looked down and saw that, without realizing it, he had taken a step onto the bridge. The dragon’s maw hadn’t closed on him. He glanced up and saw that it had actually pulled upwards a bit, welcoming him. The junction of the fallen trees which formed the jaw creaked slightly.
“Bring us the relic,” the dryad said again, and she lifted her arms toward James as if she meant to welcome him with an embrace. Her arms were unnaturally long, almost as if they stretched out to him over the bridge. Her fingernails were a blue so deep, it was nearly purple. They were long and surprisingly ragged. James retreated a step, backing off the bridge. The dryad’s eyes changed. They brightened and hardened.
“Bring us the relic,” she said once more, and her voice changed as well. The song had leaked out of it. “It isn’t yours. Its power is greater than you, greater than all of you. Bring it to us before it unmakes you. The relic destroys those whom it does not need, and it no longer needs you. Bring it to us before it decides to use someone else. Bring us the relic while you still can.”
Her long arms reached across the bridge and James felt sure he could touch them if he reached out. He backed away further, hooking his heel on a root and stumbling. He turned, pinwheeling his arms for a handhold, and fell against something broad and hard. He pressed his hands against it and pushed backwards, righting himself. It was the stone of a wall. Five feet away, a torch crackled in its sconce. James glanced around. The corridor of Hogwarts stretched away, warm and mundane, as if he’d never left. Perhaps he never had. He looked the other direction. There was the intersection with the statue of the one-eyed witch. The sense of dread was gone, and yet James felt certain that what had happened hadn’t just been a vision of some kind. He could still feel the chill of the night wind in the folds of his cloak. When he looked down, there was a crumble of dry river mud on the end of his shoe. He shivered, then gathered himself and ran the rest of the way to the stairs, where he took two at a time climbing to the common room.
The only thing James was sure of was that something wanted him to give up the Merlin robe. He just wasn’t sure it was the right something. Fortunately, the robe was still locked away in Jackson’s bag in James’ trunk. After his experience with touching the robe, James had no plans to take the robe out of the trunk again until he handed it over to his dad and the Auror Department when the time was right. The time wasn’t right yet, but it would be. Soon. Either way, he wasn’t about to hand it over to some mysterious entity, tree sprite or not. Confident of this, James reached the Gryffindor common room and prepared for bed. Still, long after he had settled under his blankets, he thought he could hear the whispering voice in the wind beyond the window, pleading with him endlessly, monotonously: Bring us the relic… Bring us the relic while you still can… It chilled him, and when he did sleep, he dreamed of those haunting, beautiful eyes and those long, long arms with the thin hands and ragged, purple fingernails.
The following Friday, in Herbology class, James was amused to see that Neville Longbottom had moved Ralph’s transfigured peach tree out of the Transfiguration classroom, where it had become rather cumbersome, and into one of the greenhouses.
“All this from a banana.” Neville confirmed to James after class. “Yeah. I bet Ralph was more surprised than anybody. He’s amazing, but I don’t think he knows his own power, really. Some of the other Slytherins think he’s got some powerful old magical family in his bloodline. Could be, I suppose, since he never knew his mum.”
“That’s the sort of thing they’d think,” Neville said with unusual candor. “Muggle-borns can be just as powerful as anyone born of an old pureblood family. Some prejudices never change, though.” James looked up at the peach tree, which had become rather large despite the fact that its roots were still twined hopelessly around one of the Transfiguration room tables. He knew Neville was right, but he couldn’t help thinking about the look on Ralph’s face the day he’d transfigured the banana. Ralph had never said so, but James had a sense that Ralph’s power frightened him just a little.
The next day, the Gryffindor Quidditch team was slated in a match against the Slytherins. James sat in the Gryffindor stands with Zane and Sabrina Hildegard. Ralph, for purposes of maintaining his few Slytherin friends, sat in the green-decked grandstand across the pitch. James made eye contact with Ralph once and waved. Ralph waved back, but carefully, being sure not to be seen by his older housemates.
Below, on the field, the team captains strode out to the centerline to meet with Cabe Ridcully for the declaration of rules and a handshake, a tradition that nobody really paid any attention to anymore. James watched Justin Kennely shake Tabitha Corsica’s hand perfunctorily. Even from his vantage point high in the grandstand, James could see the smarmy, polite smile on Tabitha’s admittedly beautiful face. Then both turned and walked in opposite directions back to their holding pens beneath the stands, leaving Ridcully alone with the Quidditch trunk.
Zane happily munched a bag of popcorn he’d brought with him, having somehow convinced one of the kitchen house-elves to prepare it. “This should be an excellent match,” he observed, taking in the highspirited crowd.
“Gryffindor against Slytherin is always a crowd-stopper,” Sabrina said, raising her voice over the noise. “Back in my mum’s day, everybody hated Slytherin because they were dirty players. A guy named Miles Bletchley was the team captain back then, and he went on to play for the T
hundelarra Thunderers for a couple of years until he was booted from the league for using a corked broom.”
“A what?” Zane interjected. “How do you cork a broom?” James explained, “It’s a kind of cheating where a hole is drilled down the center of the broom and something magical is threaded into it, like a dragon’s rib or a basilisk fang. Basically turns the whole broom into a magic wand. He was using it to cast Repelling Spells and modified Expelliarmus spells, making the opposing team fumble the Quaffle. Really crooked old bugger, he was.”
As he spoke, the Slytherin team streaked out from their holding pen to the sound of cheers from their grandstand. Damien, seated in the broadcast booth with his wand to his throat, announced the team, his voice echoing in the crisp January air.
“So,” Zane called over the cheers, “doesn’t seem like everybody hates the Slytherins anymore.” Sure enough, there was scattered applause throughout the rest of the grandstands. Only the Gryffindor stands booed and hissed. James shrugged. “They don’t seem to play as dirty as they used to. But they still field unusually strong teams. There’s something dodgy about them, it’s just not as obvious as it used to be.”
“I’ll say,” Zane agreed. “When we played Slytherin before the break, it was as clean a match as I’ve played all year. Ridcully barely called a single foul on ‘em. Still, there was something just a little too slick about them. They’re either the luckiest bunch of skunks ever to mount brooms or they’ve made a deal with the devil himself.”
James gritted his teeth. Across the pitch, Horace Slughorn, red-cheeked and bundled in a fur-collared coat and matching hat, waved a small Slytherin flag on a stick and yelled encouragements to his House team. Ralph, seated two rows below him, applauded dutifully. James knew that Ralph wasn’t much of a Quidditch fan, despite the almost studious attention he paid to the matches, and James guessed that it was because Ralph couldn’t really choose a team to be loyal to. His friends, including Rufus Burton, cheered and hooted wildly.
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