Ted smiled, and it was a huge, genuine smile. “You’re a brick, James. I’d hate to have to eat you. Learn how to turn yourself into a giant dog, like Sirius did, and maybe being a werewolf wouldn’t be so bad after all, with you trotting along next to me. But I almost forgot why I brought this up at all.” Ted leaned forward again, his eyes serious. “You have the shadow of your dad to grow up in, just like me. But I can’t choose whether I’m like my dad or not. You can. It’s not a curse, James. Your dad’s a great man. Pick the bits of who he is that are worth being like, and be like them, if you want. The other parts, well, that’s your choice, isn’t it? Take it or leave it. Those are the places where you can choose to be even better. Your dad didn’t much ask for help, did he? But that’s not because he didn’t need it. The fact that you asked for help doesn’t tell me you’re worse than him. It tells me you learned something he never learned. That’s you being you, not just a copy of your dad. I think that’s pretty cool, if you ask me. And not just because it means I get to help pull a fast one on Tabitha Corsica.”
James was speechless. He simply stared at Ted, unsure what to feel or think, unsure if what Ted was saying was true or not. He knew only that it surprised him and humbled him, in a good way, to hear Ted say what he had. Ted closed the gigantic book in front of him with a loud clunk.
“Come on,” he said, standing and gathering the books together. “Help me get these to the common room so Petra can look them over before the match. She’s going to have to help me get this right or we’re doomed for sure. Dinner is in an hour, and after that, we’re going to be pretty preoccupied for the rest of the night, if you know what I mean.”
The afternoon of the last Quidditch match of the season was cool and misty, covered with a veil of restless, grey clouds. Silent and unusually somber, the Gremlins trooped through the tunnel behind the statue of St. Lokimagus the Perpetually Productive. When they reached the steps that led up to the interior of the equipment shed, Ted slowed and tiptoed. By now, Ridcully had probably already retrieved the Quidditch trunk from the shed, but it didn’t hurt to be careful. Ted peered around the cramped space, saw only some dusty shelves and a few broken brooms, and then beckoned the rest to follow him up.
“It’s all clear. We should be safe in here, now that Ridcully’s been and gone. He’s the only one that uses the shed.” Ralph climbed the steps and looked cautiously around. James remembered that Ralph hadn’t been along the night he and the Gremlins had used this secret tunnel to go raise the Wocket. “It’s a magic tunnel. It only works one way,” he whispered to Ralph. “We can get back through it because it’s the way we came, but anybody else would just find the inside of the equipment shed.”
“Cool,” Ralph breathed meaningfully. “That’s good to know.” James, Ralph, and Sabrina pressed against the rear of the shed to peer through the single, grimy window. The Quidditch pitch lay behind the shed, and they could clearly see three of the grandstands, already mostly filled with banner-waving students and teachers, all bundled against the unseasonable chill. The Ravenclaw and Slytherin teams were gathering along opposite sides of the pitch to observe their captains shaking hands and listen to Ridcully’s traditional recital of the basic rules of play.
“I forgot all about this,” Sabrina said quietly. “The whole handshaking thing. That Zane is a pretty sharp fellow.” James nodded. It had been Zane’s idea to stage the broom caper during the opening moments of the match, in those few minutes when both teams came out of their holding pens beneath the grandstands to watch the opening ritual. It was a genius idea, because it was the only time when the teams’ brooms were separated from their owners, left behind in the holding pens until the teams collected them for their big flying introductions.
“It’s time,” Ted said, tapping James once on the shoulder. “There’s Corsica already.” James swallowed past a lump in his throat that felt like a marble. His heart was already pounding. He pulled the Invisibility Cloak out of his backpack, shook it open and threw it over his and Ralph’s heads. As they neared the door of the shed, Petra whispered harshly, “I can see your feet. Ralph, duck down some more.” Ralph hunkered and James saw the edge of the cloak meet the ground around his feet.
“Stay low and move fast,” Ted instructed. He turned and peered between the planks of the door. The equipment shed was positioned at a corner of the pitch, just inside the magical boundary erected by the match official. The door faced away from the pitch, visible only to the Slytherin grandstands right next to it.
“Looks clear enough,” Ted said, his face pressed to the cracks in the door. “Let’s just hope everybody’s looking at the pitch and not this shed.” With that, he pushed the door open and stepped aside. James and Ralph shuffled through and James heard the door clunk shut behind them.
The wind was shifty and unpredictable. It barreled across the pitch and swatted restlessly at the Invisibility Cloak, flapping it about the boys’ legs.
“Somebody’s going to see my feet,” Ralph moaned. “We’re almost there already,” James said under the noise of the crowd. “Just stay close and keep down.” Through the transparent fabric of the Invisibility Cloak, James could see the dark mouth of the doorway into the Slytherin holding pen. The great doors were swung wide open, latched to the walls of the grandstand to keep them from blowing shut. The Slytherin players were lined up along the pitch on the other side of the doorway, close enough that a careless word or a flicker of their shoes might be noticed. James held his breath and resisted the urge to run. Slowly, the two boys sidled past the nearest Slytherin player, Tom Squallus, and slipped into the shadow of the doorway. Inside, the wind fell away and the cloak hung still. James let his breath out in a careful hiss.
“Come on,” he whispered almost soundlessly. “We don’t have much time.” James knew what the Gremlins were planning, even though he wasn’t going to see any of it. Zane, who was watching along with his teammates on the Ravenclaw side of the pitch, told him all about it later. As Tabitha and Gennifer Tellus, the Ravenclaw Captain, walked to meet Ridcully at the centerline of the pitch, a strange sound began to build in the air overhead. All day, the sky had been low and sluggish, packed with grey clouds, but now, as the spectators and players glanced up, the clouds had begun to circle ponderously. There was a bulge in the clouds directly over the pitch, spiraling in on itself and lowering even as the crowd watched. The general noise of the assembly quieted, and the sound of the clouds in that silence was a deep, vibrating groan, long and menacing. With only his eyes, Zane glanced toward the equipment shed at the far corner of the pitch. He could just see the shapes of Ted and Petra, ducked low in the corners of the tiny window, their wands raised, teasing the cloud shapes. He smiled, and then, when the timing was perfect and the entire pitch had fallen silent, he called out across the pitch, “Quidditch is never called on account of weather, right, Gennifer?”
There was a nervous ripple of laughter across the nearer grandstands. Gennifer glanced at Zane for a moment, then looked back up at the funnel lowering over her. As a Gremlin, Ted had told her of their plan, but Zane could tell that her nervousness wasn’t hard to fake. Neither Ridcully nor Tabitha Corsica seemed prepared to move. Corsica merely looked up at the clouds, her hair whipping wildly around her face, her wand visible in her hand. Ridcully’s expression seemed to be one of grim determination.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Damien’s voice echoed throughout the grandstands from his place in the announcer’s booth, “we seem to be experiencing some sort of highly localized weather phenomenon. Please stay in your seats. You are probably safe there. Those on the field, please remain where you are. Cyclones cannot see you if you don’t move.”
In the crowd, someone shouted out, “That’s dinosaurs, you crazy fruitbat!”
“Same concept,” Damien answered in his amplified voice. Sabrina and Noah darted out of the equipment shed, ducking against the swirling winds. They scurried toward the tiny concessions area built into the base of the Hufflepuff grandst
and. The counter was manned by Hufflepuff students, but the food itself was prepared by elves in a kitchen near the back. Noah and Sabrina headed along the side of the grandstand and stopped at an open doorway.
“Hey, you fellows see what’s going on out here?” Sabrina yelled over the growing noise of the cyclone. “Weather’s getting pretty foul, isn’t it?”
A grumpy looking elf in the back of the kitchen lowered his pipe. “And what do you want we’s to do about it, eh? You wants we should shoot a blast of storm-calming pixie dust out our ears, maybe?” “I was just thinking about section fifty-five, paragraph nine of the Elves of Hogwarts Coalition Agreement,” Noah yelled, hunkering in the doorway. “Says elves are responsible for securing the grounds during inclement weather. Getting pretty inclement out here, I’d say. Maybe you’d like Sabrina and me to go shut and lock the holding pen doors for you until this blows over? Come on, Sabrina.”
The elf stuffed his pipe into the knot of his napkin loincloth and jumped forward. “Never you mind that, now!” He turned and called into the depths of the kitchen. “Oi! Peckle! Krung! Seedie! We got a job, we does. Let’s get a move on.”
The four elves bustled past Sabrina and Noah. The grumpy elf called back over his shoulder as they went, “Much obliged, master and mistress. Enjoy the match, now.” As the elves scurried through the wind toward the holding pen doors, the cyclone finally touched the pitch. It licked across the center line, twenty feet to Tabitha Corsica’s right, and for several moments, she watched it, fascinated. Many people commented later that, impressive as it was, it was certainly the smallest cyclone they had ever seen. The grass where it touched down tossed wildly, but the power of the tornado dropped off significantly after a hundred feet or so, so that those in the grandstands were relatively unaffected. Gennifer Tellus turned and ran to the sidelines to join her team. Ridcully didn’t seem to notice. Still standing in the center of the pitch next to him, Tabitha Corsica fingered her wand and glanced around, now ignoring the writhing cyclone. She seemed to be looking for something.
In the holding pen deep beneath the Slytherin grandstands, James and Ralph heard the noise of the cyclone and the creaking of the grandstand as the wind pressed against it.
“Which one is it?” Ralph asked as James whipped the cloak off them. “There’re so many of them!”
James pointed past the row of broomsticks leaning against the lockers. There, in the corner farthest from the door, a broom hung in the air as if awaiting its rider. “That’s got to be it,” he said, darting toward it. They stopped, one on either side of it. Close up, the broom seemed to be vibrating or humming very slightly. A low, unsettling noise came from it, audible even over the moan of the wind and the creak of the grandstands. “Grab it, then, James. Come on, let’s get out of here.”
James reached out and grabbed the broomstick, but the broom didn’t budge. He pulled it, then wrapped both hands around it and yanked. The broom was as immobile as if it had been buried in stone.
“What’s the problem?” Ralph moaned, glancing back toward the door. “If we’re still in here when they come back…” “We have the Invisibility Cloak, Ralph. We can hide,” James said, but he knew Ralph was right. The holding pen was small and there were no obvious places to get out of the way, even if they couldn’t be seen. “The broom’s stuck, somehow. I can’t move it.”
“Well,” Ralph replied, gesturing vaguely, “it’s a broomstick. Maybe you’re supposed to ride it.”
James felt a sinking in his stomach. “I can’t ride this thing, even if I could get it to move.”
“Why not?”
“It’s not mine! I wasn’t all that great on the broom until I got my Thunderstreak, if you recall. We want to capture this thing, not pulverize it into a wall with me on it.” “You’ve gotten better at it since then!” Ralph insisted. “Even before you got your Thunderstreak, you were getting loads better. Almost as good as Zane. Go on! I’ll… I’ll hop on the back and throw the cloak over both of us!”
James dropped his hands and rolled his eyes. “Ralph, that’s completely crazy.” Suddenly, a resounding boom echoed down the corridor leading to the pitch. It rattled the rafters, showering dust all around. Ralph and James both startled. Ralph’s voice was squeaky with fear. “What was that?”
“I don’t know,” James replied quickly, “but I think we just ran all out of options. Ralph, get ready to hop on.”
James swung his leg over the floating, gently humming broomstick and gripped the handle tightly with both hands. Slowly, he settled his weight onto the broomstick, letting it collect him. A minute earlier, outside, Tabitha Corsica had spied something. Zane saw her gaze stop on the equipment shed. Somehow, she’d known the cyclone was suspicious and had identified the one place someone might hide and cast spells into the magical boundaries of the Quidditch pitch. Zane was prepared to bolt onto the pitch to head her off if she approached the shed. He was already concocting a haphazard plan to pretend to drag her to safety. She didn’t approach the shed, though. Zane saw her take one step in that direction, and then glance aside at the elves closing and barring the doorways into the team holding pens. Tabitha turned on her heel and stalked purposely toward the door in the base of the Slytherin grandstands. Even if Zane ran full out, he’d barely beat her there. He simply had to hope that the elves would stick by their duties, regardless of what Tabitha said.
Noah and Sabrina had followed the elves to the Slytherin holding pen doors, watching from a distance as they swung them shut and threw the locking beam into place. Sabrina saw Tabitha striding across the pitch, her face grim and her wand out.
“Open those doors,” Tabitha yelled, her voice firm but calm. She raised her wand hand, pointing it at the closed doorway.
“Very sorry, Miss,” the grumpy elf answered, bowing slightly. “Coalition requirements. These doors must remain secure until such time as they can be opened without fear of danger or damage.” “Open them now or stand aside,” Tabitha called. She was only thirty feet away from the doorway now, and Sabrina saw the look of murder on Tabitha’s face. She’d blast those doors open with her wand and probably crush the poor duty-bound elves to paste between them and the wall. Obviously, Tabitha had guessed what was happening and knew that her broom was in jeopardy.
“Hey, Corsica!” Sabrina shouted, launching herself forward, trying to get between Tabitha and the doors. “You summon this cyclone because you were too proud to forfeit to the Ravenclaws?” Tabitha’s eyes darted toward Sabrina, but her pace didn’t change. Her wand hand swung swiftly and locked onto Sabrina, who stopped in her tracks. Noah jumped forward to pull Sabrina back, but he was too late. Neither heard the curse Tabitha spoke, but they both saw the bolt of red light leap from her wand. It struck Sabrina square in the face, throwing her backwards into Noah. Both fell to the ground, their shouts drowned by the roar of the wind and the now yelling, confused crowd.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Damien’s voice echoed over the noise, “please let’s give a big cheer for Mr. Cabe Ridcully, our beloved Quidditch official, who is currently trying to calm the cyclone with some sort of… well, ritualistic dance, as far as I can tell.” Sure enough, Ridcully seemed to be dancing around the tornado as it curled over the pitch, throwing up a thick cloud of grit and dust. He pointed his wand at the funnel, but whenever he seemed to get a good aim at it, the funnel would shift, lunging towards him and forcing him to dance away. The crowd did indeed begin to cheer him, so that very few people noticed what was happening at the base of the Slytherin grandstands.
“Last chance,” Tabitha called to the elves guarding the doorway. They both glanced at Sabrina, who was still collapsed atop Noah, her hands covering her face. “Now listen here, mistress,” the grumpy elf began, but he was cut off by the bolt of red light that struck the closed doors. Both elves were thrown aside as the great wooden beam that barred the door exploded with a deafening boom and a shower of splinters. Tabitha hadn’t slowed in her approach to the door. She aimed her wand once
more, ready to cast the spell that would throw the doors wide open. Then, suddenly, she stopped. She cocked her head, as if listening. Noah, struggling to get out from beneath the dazed Sabrina, heard it as well. Beneath the sound of the cyclone and the roaring grandstands, there was a sound like a single person yelling, and it was growing louder very quickly.
The doors to the Slytherin holding pen burst open, ripping completely off their hinges as something rocketed through them from inside. Noah had the briefest glimpse of somebody bent low over a broom hurtling past Tabitha Corsica so fast that she was thrown off her feet. She landed in a graceless heap ten feet away. The voice of the screaming rider thinned into distance as the broomstick streaked over the pitch, through the cyclone, and out the other side.
James clung to Tabitha’s broomstick as tightly as he could. He’d left Ralph behind, having launched into an instant wild acceleration the moment he’d settled onto the broom. He felt the thundering shock as the broom rocketed through the cyclone, then he opened his eyes and pulled, trying to gain some control over the wildly careening broomstick. The Quidditch pitch wheeled sickeningly beneath him as the broom responded, fighting him, but unable to resist the force of his lean. The Ravenclaw grandstand loomed ahead and James struggled to pull up. He roared over the crowd, which ducked in his wake, hats and banners flying up behind him. Damien was yelling something from the announcer’s booth, but James couldn’t hear it over the roar of the wind in his ears. He risked a glance behind him, fearing he might have hurt someone. There were no obvious injuries as far as he could see. When he turned forward, he was heading directly toward the Slytherin grandstands again, back the way he’d come. He leaned the opposite direction and pulled as hard as he could, driving the broom into a wild, banking turn. The Slytherin grandstands spun away. With a sense of wild triumph, James realized he was getting some control over the broomstick. He looked ahead to see where his turn was taking him and gasped. He barely had time to duck his head before socking through the open door of the equipment shed.
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