"Fortunately my family can afford all the books I need," Scorpius said with a wave of his hand. "And my father approves of harsh punishments. He thinks it will 'put the Slytherin back in me'."
A shadow passed over the table and James felt someone standing behind him. He glanced up and was chilled by the sight of Filch himself, suddenly looming over him, a grim, self-satisfied smile creasing his wrinkled face.
"Doing homework are we?" he asked in a low, grating voice.
"Yes," Ralph answered loudly, at exactly the same time that Rose said, "No." She glared at Ralph, and then glanced back at the caretaker.
"We're finished, sir. We… were doing homework. Now we're just… er, talking."
Filch raised his stubbly chin, his eyes sparkling meanly. "Strange that I see no books. Difficult to do homework without books. Or quills. Or parchment."
James tried not to wilt in Filch's long shadow. He could smell cold and mustiness on the man's worn leather coat. "We're discussing a class project, sir. Something for, er, Muggle Studies." This seemed safe enough, as Muggle Studies did not, this term, require any books.
Filch glared down at James for a long moment, his eyes narrowed, his mouth cinched up on one side, consideringly. "Talking's for common rooms," he finally said in a low, grating voice. "The library is for quiet."
Scorpius cleared his throat loudly, drawing attention away from James. "Right you are sir. If you will excuse us, then, we'll just be on our way. Won't we?"
He climbed to his feet and straightened his robes. James, Rose and Ralph followed suit. Filch did not move.
"Enjoy your nice long nap, Mr. Potter?" he asked pointedly.
James felt the heat rise to his cheeks again and knew they were burning red. Angry retorts crowded into his mind, clamouring to be spoken. Instead, he glanced away, toward the distant librarian's desk, and merely said, "Is sleeping against the rules, sir?"
Filch's smile widened, showing his yellow teeth. "It may well be. You've missed several days' classes, Mr. Potter. Your professors mind such things. I, however, do not. I mind that you are a foolish, stupid boy who seems to attract trouble the way rotten food attracts flies."
James felt the anger welling up in him, nearly bursting forth. And then he realized something: Filch was trying to anger him. The caretaker was hoping to provoke a reason to give James detention. And it had almost worked. Realizing this, the rage slowly subsided. He glanced up at Filch thoughtfully.
"Enjoying my father's cloak, Mr. Filch?" he asked, looking the old man square in the eye. "He knows that you have it, you know."
Filch's smile dried up in an instant. "That cloak was confiscated," he growled peevishly. "All very nice and legal. If your father dislikes it, he can take it up with the headmaster, and I would very much like to see him try. In the meantime, I suggest you keep your cheeky comments to yourself."
With that, he took a step backward, allowing James room to move around him. Tentatively, the four students trickled away, heading toward the door, expecting Filch to call them back at any moment. He did not, but he watched them beadily, angrily.
"That was really stupid, James," Rose said quietly as they climbed the stairs. "Brave, but stupid."
"Don't listen to her," Scorpius countered. "It was bloody brilliant. Besides, what's the worst he can do?"
James considered this for a moment, unsure if the answer was particularly comforting. "So what did you do to get detention anyway?" he asked as they neared the portrait hole.
"A trifle," Scorpius replied in a bored voice, then, to the portrait of the Fat Lady. "Flitterbloom."
The Fat Lady nodded and swung aside in her frame, revealing the entrance to the common room. Scorpius climbed through.
Rose turned to James before following Scorpius. "He took the blame for the Fainting Fancies dare," she explained. "Said he told you you were a Flobberworm if you refused. That's why he got detention."
James blinked at her, and then glanced through the portrait hole, watching Scorpius hurl himself into a saggy chair by the hearth. He didn't know what to say.
"Let's just hope," Rose sighed, turning to clamber through the hole herself. "That that dream of yours ends up being worth it."
The following weeks went by in a sort of hectic blur. James quickly learned that both the new Wizlit professor, Herbettina Blovius, and Herbology's Tabitha Corsica had taken to assigning crippling amounts of homework. James, having missed most of his first week back, found himself immediately buried under a seemingly insurmountable pile of essays, worksheets and literature assignments. Fortunately, Rose was able to assist with the latter, having already read most of the books on Blovius' reading list and providing James with a quick verbal synopsis of each.
"All except for Persephone Remora's vampire trilogy," she sniffed with obvious distaste. "I mean honestly. How many adjectives can someone pile up before the whole sentence just collapses under its own weight?"
The general theory among Scorpius, Rose and Ralph was that the teachers were under strict orders to keep their students as busy as possible as a sort of distraction. This was indirectly confirmed by Professor Votary at the end of one of his accidentally exciting Ancient Runes lectures.
"As you are aware, students, I traditionally eschew the assignment of homework," he sighed impatiently, gazing fixedly at an upper corner of the classroom, "since I believe it is an archaic and ineffective measure of academic progress, remnant of a time when scholarship was judged by mere repetition of facts rather than application of experience. However, in light of new imperatives instituted by current leadership…" He adjusted his tiny spectacles and seemed to give the matter a moment's disgruntled consideration. "Six inches of parchment on the similarities between Babylonian cuneiform and ancient Hexaphonics should suffice."
This was, of course, met with a chorus of weary moans, since Hexaphonics were among the most notoriously complicated magical runes ever devised.
"You guys are right," Zane whispered, slinging his backpack over his shoulder as the class shuffled muttering toward the door. "This has got to be Grudje's work. He's keeping everybody too busy to ask any awkward questions."
"Filch, too," Ralph glowered. "Since not handing in homework is now a punishable offense."
Zane gave a low whistle. "Lucky for me he's got no jurisdiction over us Alerons."
"I feel worse for those poor Yorke students," Rose said, glancing over her shoulder toward Morton Comstock and his Muggle companions. "They don't even have the resources to study such things. Not to mention the fact that most Hexaphonics are invisible to Muggles."
"I wish they were invisible to me, too," James countered grumpily. "Just looking at them gives me a headache. The way they crawl all over the page. It's like trying to read an anthill."
Water dripped steadily from the roofs and gutters of the castle as winter receded, revealing dark patches of muddy grass like islands in the slushy snow. Soon enough, the trees of the Forbidden Forest budded with green and stiff spring winds tore across the grounds, raising leaden waves on the lake and snapping students' cloaks and robes as they made their way in huddled clusters to the greenhouses.
Tabitha Corsica, however, never seemed even slightly ruffled, regardless of the weather. She presided over Herbology class with her typical infuriating smugness, showing special favour to her former house (Slytherins were always granted the care of the flowering Perfunia bushes while the rest were responsible for the maintenance of Mandrakes and Thorned Pus-Tubers). Like Professor Blovius, Corsica prescribed endless essays and reading assignments. It was common knowledge, however, that she provided her Slytherin housemates with extra-curricular assistance, up to and including (or so the rumours went) dummy essays, posted in the Slytherin common room under the guise of 'study aids', that they were allowed to simply copy.
"And they don't even have to go to the effort of copying them down by hand!" Graham Warton insisted as he, Ralph, Rose and James squelched back from the greenhouses one particularly blustery day. "
Mei Isis heard from Ashley Doone that she saw Beetlebrick laughing about it in the library. Corsica's taught them all the Duplicitus spell!"
Ralph frowned into the wind. "What's the Duplicitus spell?"
"That's ridiculous," Rose shook her head peevishly. "That's advanced N.E.W.T. level transfiguration. Believe me, I've tried it."
Ralph glanced from Rose to James, his brow furrowed.
"It's a copying spell," James shrugged. "Transfigures one thing into an exact copy of another. But you have to be touching the thing you want to copy, and it's supposed to be dead difficult."
"Difficult or not," Graham scoffed, heaving open the castle door and ducking out of the damp wind. "Corsica's teaching her Slytherin pets a lot more than Herbology, I'll tell you that."
As spring finally warmed the air and coaxed the grounds into a lush green patchwork, Quidditch matches progressed from icy tests of endurance to mere frustrating disappointments. Lance Vassar's performance as Gryffindor Seeker was not improved by the warmer weather, and this was even beginning to take its toll on Professor McGonagall, whose love of the game and pride of house were legendary. As firework spells erupted from the new scoreboard in celebration of a Hufflepuff victory, James could hear her angry muttering even over the noise of the cheering Hufflepuffs.
"It's one thing to be a good sport," she groused under her breath. "It's another thing entirely to serve victory on a ruddy silver platter."
"What's that professor?" Deirdre Finnegan asked loudly, craning to look back at McGonagall from the front row of the Gryffindor grandstand.
"I said good match," McGonagall called tersely, arising from her seat in a swirl of tartan robes. "And I'll thank you to keep your ears to yourself."
"Look at him," Graham shook his head. "No new scoreboard is worth that."
James sighed as Lance Vassar circled high over the pitch, his right arm raised in a lazy wave. Hovering in front of the goal rings on the far side of the pitch, Devindar Das pressed a hand to his forehead in weary defeat. Heth Thomas and Willow Wisteria, Gryffindor's beaters, both watched Vassar with tight frowns, their Beater bats dangling at their sides.
Rose shook her head. "He doesn't love Quidditch. He just loves being seen. I don't think he's even broken a sweat!"
"This is all your fault, James," Deirdre seethed. "That should be you out there. Not that arrogant little git."
"True," Scorpius lamented breezily. "James would at least lose with the proper dejected shame. He's had more practice at it, after all."
Rose cuffed Scorpius on the back of the head as they stood.
Fortunately for everyone, the international exchange classes provided a welcome relief from the burden of homework. Since most of the exchange classes counted simply as credit for Muggle Studies, students were technically exempted from in-class assignments, although participation was "strongly encouraged" by Professor Curry, who occasionally sat in on the international classes to judge student performance and involvement. The day she visited James' and Ralph's Theoretical Arithmatics class at Beauxbatons, however, she seemed as baffled as James himself by the enormous abaci and the busy clicketyclack of their coloured beads.
"Mr. Potter," she said quietly, sidling up to James. "Who is the teacher of this class?"
James shook his head. "Couldn't say, Professor. We've been at this for months now and I've never seen anyone that I could say for sure was actually teaching anything."
Professor Curry nodded uncertainly. "A practical class, then," she said. "Practicing… er…"
"Quadrant A dash eight resolved," Morton Comstock announced proudly, stepping back from his abacus and flexing his fingers. "That's a new record."
An older Beauxbatons girl with long black hair glanced up sharply. "Accounting for the temporal distortions from Ursa Major?" she asked with the faintest of French accents.
"Of course," Comstock smiled. "Give me a challenge."
"You shall have it," the dark-haired girl nodded briskly. "Join Miss Durand and Mr. Fournier on the constellations grid, s'il vous plaît."
"Moving up to the big time, eh, Potter?" Comstock grinned, nudging James with his elbow as he edged past.
Professor Curry watched him join two blue-robed students at the front of the gilded and mirrored room. "That boy is from Yorke, is he not?" she asked, trying to keep the incredulity out of her voice.
Ralph nodded. "He's… got unique skills."
In the front of the room, Comstock's voice echoed loudly. "It's the perimeter mapping level from Cosmic Commando all over again. I defeated that in three hours flat. This should be a piece of cake."
"Is he…" Curry frowned, "Is he some sort of… space explorer? Do Muggles allow their children to do such things?"
Ralph stifled an uncharacteristic chuckle. "He plays games, Professor."
Curry nodded, still watching Comstock with her brow furrowed. "Fascinating! Is this a prized talent in the Muggle community?"
"Hah!" a girl's voice scoffed nearby. James glanced aside and saw Comstock's Yorke classmate, Lucia Gruberova, her brown hair done up in her usual spritely pony tail. She glanced at James and quickly smoothed the derision out of her face before dropping her eyes. "Video games are all right, I guess," she said to the floor. "But not as good as books, if you ask me."
James nodded. He wasn't sure he agreed (he'd never played a Muggle video game in his life), but he appreciated that she, like him, seemed to have no love for Morton Comstock.
Wednesday's Practical Prophecy classes at Durmstrang had taken on a distinctly different tone in the absence of Zane, mostly because Nastasia had assumed his place. This provided James a gamut of mixed feelings, ranging from confused annoyance to grudging admiration, since, despite her brash Americanness and her day-glow hair, she seemed to have gotten herself into surprisingly good graces with Professor Avior. James remembered that she had predicted this, as the professor was obviously preoccupied with magical bloodlines, and she herself came from a long line of pureblood American wizardry. Still, both Ralph and James were consistently surprised to see the hauntingly familiar professor inviting the slight, precocious girl to the front of the classroom to assist with mundane class duties or illustrate acts of divination-- all of which Nastasia was quite good at.
"I never would have guessed it," Ralph whispered behind his hand one day as Nastasia used her wand to coax a smoke vision into life over a bright purple candle. "But she's, like, totally talented, isn't she?"
James nodded, and then shook his head in wonderment. Nastasia was definitely complicated. In light of their midnight conversation in the Gryffindor common room-- at the end of which she had inexplicably kissed him-- no one knew better than he just how complicated she was. As he thought this, she met his eyes through the ribbons of enchanted smoke that she had conjured. There was a hard glint in her gaze. She winked at him briefly.
"Excellent, excellent," Professor Avior complimented, snuffing the candle with a flick of his wand. "We have mere minutes before the smoke vision loses its potency. All of you will see something different, but every interpretation should be reliable so long as you apply the Eight Prophetic Principles that we have discussed. Please record your divinations now, and do be quick. Ms. Hendricks is, of course, exempt." He patted her lightly on the shoulder as he passed, beginning a slow circuit of the classroom. Quills immediately began to scratch on parchment, bobbing furiously over the shoulder of each student.
James peered at the ribbons of smoke, attempting to divine something from them, but all he could see was Nastasia staring unabashedly back at him through the smoke, her bright eyes watching him, her lips curled in a secret smile.
Would she kiss him again with those lips?
Did he want her to?
He was dismayed that the answers to those questions were far from obvious. His insides seemed to lift at the thought, and then drop precipitously a moment later. It was all so complicated and confusing. He certainly didn't love her. He hardly even liked her. And yet…
He tore his eyes away from her strangely penetrating stare and her secret little smile. Glancing down, he saw that his quill was pressed to the parchment hard enough to form a tiny bubble of black ink. No visions came to his mind, despite Avior's lecture on the Eight Prophetic Principles.
"Is your mind a blank, Mr. Potter?" Professor Avior asked in a low voice.
James glanced up guiltily. The professor stood next to him, his bushy white eyebrows raised inquisitively over his half-moon spectacles, and for a moment James forgot that this was not, in fact, the longdead Albus Dumbledore.
"I--" he began, and then dropped his gaze again. "I can't--"
"Prophetic Principle number five, Mr. Potter," the Professor said quietly, reassuringly. "Empty your mind of expectations. You are half-way there. Don't see what you expect to see. See only what is there."
James nodded, still staring hard at his blank parchment. He waited. A moment later he sensed the Professor drifting away, continuing his circuit about the classroom. James glanced surreptitiously back at him. He didn't just look like Dumbledore. Somehow, some way, he was Dumbledore.
Don't see what you expect to see… see only what is there…
That, James thought darkly, is much easier said than done.
As the traditional spring Hogsmeade weekend approached, a rumour spread among the student populace that headmaster Grudje intended to cancel it, citing security concerns. James found the possibility of such a ban extremely likely, considering the fact that both incoming and outgoing school post was still being screened by the Headmaster and his trusted inner circle. On the Friday before Hogsmeade weekend, tensions were running very high in the Great Hall as students awaited some announcement from the head table. It would be just like Headmaster Grudje, James thought, to wait until the final moment to dash everyone's hopes.
When the headmaster did finally stand and approach the podium, there was no need for him to call the dinner assembly to attention. Every eye had already turned toward him, and the tense thrum of conversation died away to expectant silence.
Grudje surveyed the room with his expressionless grey eyes. "As you know," he began, speaking slowly and with patient emphasis. "In light of current international tensions between the wizarding and Muggle communities, we have been forced to institute some unfortunate changes to the normal freedoms we have enjoyed within these walls."
James Potter and the Morrigan Web Page 45