Someone was screaming in pain. After a second, James realized it was himself. He rolled over and cradled his wounded wrist. It felt horribly loose, and a soft grinding sensation accompanied its movements. The fingers on that hand tingled numbly.
Tabitha Corsica's whistle sounded in three short bursts.
"Everyone back away, now," she called as she approached. "Give the young man some air. Thank you. Lunt, if you would be so kind as to line everyone up, we shall return to the locker rooms now."
James felt Corsica hunkering over him. Her shadow blocked the dull grey sky. He resisted as she reached for his broken wrist, but she was persistent.
"Nasty break, that," she said, gripping and turning his forearm like a dead fish. "Unfortunately, medical methods here at Yorke are not quite what you may be accustomed to. Here, there is no magic remedy for a broken bone. Of course," she mused, cocking her head and lowering her voice, "I do have my wand with me, as you know. I could help you. But that would rather defeat the purpose of this programme, don't you think? I fear you will simply have to bear the pain until your return through the cabinet. You can bear the pain, can't you?"
James didn't reply, but simply attempted to wrench his wrist from her grasp. It hurt immensely as the broken bones ground together. She saw this on his face and her eyebrows rose slightly, along with the corners of her mouth.
"I didn't curse you that last time," she whispered conspiratorially. "That was good old fashioned Potter clumsiness. Perhaps that adds a bit of insult to your injury, but I thought you should know it, nonetheless."
James pushed her away and struggled to sit up. His ribs felt bruised where they had been stepped on, but he pushed through the red mist of pain, using his good hand to leverage himself to his feet. Next to him, Tabitha Corsica sighed as she also stood.
"I hope you'll take note of what happened here today, James," she said, glancing aside to where the rest of the class was lining up along the edge of the field. "You can't get away with your little shenanigans any longer. You can't beat me. You never really could. Your luck's run out. And I'm not done with you. I'll be watching every little thing you do. If you so much as stick one toe out of line," she smiled, as if this was her greatest wish. "Believe me, I'll be there… to chop it off."
She met his eyes, still smiling wistfully, assuring he saw that she meant it. Then, with a brisk sigh, she turned away, addressing the rest of the class. "He's all right, everyone. Just a little sprain. Nothing to be concerned about. Much ado about nothing, quite frankly. Back to the locker rooms, now. And in honour of how our guests will be spending their next class period…" she glanced back at James again with a vicious smile, "why don't we run?"
"She's gone completely mental," Ralph seethed as he stood next to James in the hospital wing half an hour later. "Sorry I didn't believe you straight away, mate. I should have known there was nothing she wouldn't stoop to."
"But cursing you to the point of injury!" Rose said wonderingly, settling into a seat opposite the little medical table upon which James' sat, his arm outstretched in a bath of sparkling magical light. He winced with each enchanted flash as the bones in his wrist slowly realigned.
"Not that anyone would know that she was responsible," he sighed. "She's sneaky. No one saw a thing."
"And technically," Rose admitted dourly, "she didn't actually cause your injury. She just created the conditions that allowed it to happen."
"And refused to help when it did!"
Ralph's face was stony. "There was a time when I actually thought of her as almost a friend, or at least someone to look up to," he admitted. "And later, after the whole mess with the Gatekeeper and her thinking she was the bloodline of Voldemort, I sort of thought she might have learned her lesson. I wanted to think she wasn't all bad after all, just a little twisted and misguided."
"That's because she's pretty," Rose rolled her eyes. "Boys always think the best of pretty girls. It's like a mental illness."
"Nobody asked you, Weasley," Ralph muttered with surprising venom.
The swift clacking of boots announced Madame Curio's return along the ward floor. She threw a disapproving glance at Rose and Ralph, who retreated away from the examination table. Unsheathing her wand from an apron pocket, she teased the glowing, sparkling field over James' wrist, intensifying it. "This will sting a bit," she said unapologetically.
James nodded but didn't reply. He well knew of Madame Curio's disdain for sport-related injuries and didn't want to provide her any more opportunities to lecture him about it. She pressed her lips into a thin line and sighed briskly, finally dispersing the magical field with a sweep of her wand.
"It will ache throughout the night as the bones knit, no doubt, but the breaks are sufficiently set. Lift anything heavier than a fork for the next twenty-four hours, however, and I'll need to re-break the bones and begin all over again, do I make myself clear?"
"Yes, Ma'am," James nodded, seeing in the head nurse's eyes that she believed re-breaking his wrist would be a valuable lesson indeed. "I won't touch so much as a quill. Promise."
She shook her head irritably. "Give a student medical advice," she muttered, "and he takes it as excuse to skive off his homework." She waved a hand at him. "Be off, the three of you. And Mr. Potter, sincerely, if you appear in my ward one more time, I promise I will start charging you."
Later that night, James slumped in a patched arm-chair before the Gryffindor common room hearth, his legs akimbo and his arm throbbing monstrously.
"Curio could have given me something for the pain," he complained bitterly. "I mean, that's what she's there for, isn't she?"
"She wants you to learn your lesson," Rose shrugged from the hearth rug, her nose buried in a gigantic book propped open against a table leg. "After all, stupid injuries and maladies seem to be a specialty of yours."
James was too tired to argue. "What are you reading now, anyway? I thought you were done with your homework."
"I'm researching," she sighed irritably, glancing back at him over her shoulder. She tapped the book with a forefinger. "'The Art and History of Magical Warfare'. There's a whole chapter on dark superweapons and doomsday hexes."
"Anything on the Morrigan Web?"
Rose shook her head and slumped. "Who can tell? Every magical war machine had its own code name and secrecy charms and even its own special language. There's no way to figure out what's legend and what's true. For instance, here," she turned back a few enormous pages. "This is a whole section on something called 'The Wrath of Chaorenvar'. According to the legend, a century's long wizarding war had so poisoned an entire region with dark magic, buried curses, and demon armies that it became a complete wasteland-- the Tempest Barrens, they called it. Merlin himself ended the war by harnessing the power of a volcano, making it erupt with so much force…" she leaned over the book and read, "'that the earth broke like a plate, creating a rift one hundred leagues wide and a thousand feet tall. The Cragrack Cliffs ever since form an impenetrable barrier, and a permanent stalemate, between the two warring nations.'" She heaved the heavy book shut, sending a whump of dust into the air. "See what I mean? Legends and myths. Even if I found a section on the Morrigan Web, how could we know it wasn't just some story for scaring little kids?"
James frowned. "Like, maybe the earth is going to erupt in a volcano when all those government people show up for the Quidditch tournament?"
Rose glared back at him with one eyebrow raised. "Are you even listening?"
"Look!" James suddenly sat up and pointed toward the hearth. "Is that…!? Dad?"
The dying coals in the hearth shuffled and sparked as a head reared out of them, revealing Harry Potter's glasses, perpetually unruly hair, and distinctive, famous scar. He glanced swiftly around the room, spotted James, and smiled.
"Hi James," he said in a hushed voice. "Hi Rose. I don't have much time. I've been watching the Marauder's Map ever since I received your note, James. I thought Devindar Das was never going to go up bed."
"Oh, he's been up late every night brushing up on classic Quidditch strategy," Rose nodded. "Thinks he can still squeak Gryffindor into a victory with proper play formations, despite Lance Vassar dragging the whole team down."
For once, James' dad didn't rise to the topic of Quidditch. "Considering what's happening," he said quietly, "staying out of the tournament might not be a bad thing."
James slid off his armchair onto the hearth rug, wincing as he accidentally bumped his wrist. "So you know about the big Quidditch summit with all the magical and Muggle government people?"
Harry's face tensed, and James could see that it was a sensitive topic. "I only know because it was in the Prophet. Titus is in charge of security for the whole event, while I'm being sent to Pakistan to audit a flying carpet warehouse."
"But--!" James spluttered, "But that's not even Auror work! Dad, what's going on?"
"That's what I asked Loquatious Knapp," Harry nodded darkly. "I went straight to his office, didn't even say hi to Percy when he tried to stop me. The Minister of Magic says that I'm too valuable to risk on such tetchy missions. He also says that since Revalvier's books were famous even in the Muggle world, my presence would be a distraction."
Rose frowned. "But that's ridiculous. The whole point of showing the Muggle leaders a Quidditch match is to show them we're friendly. If you're already known to them, at least as a fictional character, you'd form the perfect bridge into the magical world."
"You're thinking about it too logically, Rose," Harry shook his head. "Or not with the right kind of logic. None of what the Minister said makes any sense unless there's something else going on, some other, more secret plan."
"They want you gone," James said slowly, his eyes widening, "because you might not go along with this secret plan of theirs. You might stop them!"
Harry seemed to shrug wearily. "It may not be that obvious. I honestly don't think Loquatious Knapp himself knows what he's doing or why he's doing it. He's a politician, not a strategist. Talking's what he's best at. Managing the crisis of the crumbling vow of secrecy is completely out of his depth. He's relying more and more on his team of advisors. He goes along with pretty much everything they say."
Rose narrowed her eyes suspiciously, making her look to James very much like her mother. "Who are these 'advisors'? Do you know them?"
"There are several of them," Harry said. "People from the Office of Ambassadorial Relations, mostly. But there's one that Knapp seems to rely on more than anyone. An Unspeakable."
James cocked his head quizzically. "An Unspeakable?"
Rose grunted with impatience. "Someone who works for the Department of Mysteries. They're called Unspeakables because no one really knows what they do, and they never, ever talk about it."
James glanced from Rose's annoyed expression to the face of his father, gazing up at him from the glowing coals. "Who is it, dad? You know, but you're not telling us."
"I'm not telling you for good reason," Harry admitted. "I don't want you to worry about it. And I know you well enough to know that you will." He shifted his gaze to Rose. "Both of you."
"Headmaster Grudje!" Rose exclaimed suddenly, her eyes brightening. "That's it, isn't it? He was in the photo with the Minister of Magic when the summit was announced, along with the Muggle Prime Minister. That's why no one had ever heard of him before he was named Headmaster! He's an Unspeakable from the Department of Mysteries!"
"Next time," Harry said, trying to conceal a disgruntled smile, "I'm waiting until you go to bed, too, Rose."
"Oh, tosh," Rose objected. "None of you would get anywhere without my mum and me."
"So if Grudje is the Minister's main advisor," James thought aloud, "then he's the one keeping you away from the big Quidditch summit. For some reason he doesn't want you to be there."
Rose looked uncomfortable. "But… Grudje is the headmaster. He can't be the one planning to set off some magical doomsday weapon. It would kill him as well, along with any number of students." She shivered, apparently reluctant to believe anyone would be capable of such things.
James, however, saw the truth on his father's face: some people would indeed be willing to murder hundreds of students, and even to die themselves, if they were crazy enough, or committed enough to their cause, or both. "For what it's worth, Rose," he said carefully, "I think you're half right. If there is indeed a plot to attack the Quidditch summit, and if Worlick was murdered to cover it up, then I don't believe that Grudje is behind it. He may be like the Minister himself: a willing dupe, influenced by someone deeper in the shadows."
"Dad," James said, lowering his voice and leaning close to the fire, "We may know who that person is."
From the hearth, Harry studied his son's face. "I have a pretty good idea myself, James. I've been calling in some favours with a few low level contacts at the American Muggle Integration Bureau. This new vice president of theirs-- the wizard who you say calls himself 'the Collector'-- virtually no one has ever heard of him. Apparently he was the protégé of the Senator that was killed last year, Charles Filmore. At least, that's the story the Muggle news people are reporting. But there's no evidence that it's actually true. As far as I can tell, he simply appeared out of nowhere. If he is indeed a wizard taking advantage of the broken vow of secrecy…"
"Then his plan may be to murder the American president and assume his position," Rose nodded. "Sorry, Uncle Harry. We already figured that bit out."
"But that's not who I'm talking about," James said, exasperated. "When we discovered Worlick's body, we saw someone else. Well, at least Lucia and I did."
Harry tilted his head. "Who's Lucia?"
"That's not important," James insisted. "The point is…"
He paused, suddenly unsure how, precisely, he should proceed. How should he tell his dad that one of the most important people in his life, the long dead Albus Dumbledore, seemed to have a sort of evil twin-- a mysterious dark mirror in the form of Avior Dorchascathan? Suddenly, James heard Avior's own words echoing in his head, accompanied by the deep chill of the Durmstrang classroom: It would be best, Mr. Potter, the hauntingly familiar wizard had said calmly, almost kindly, if you did not tell your father about this. Harry might be a bit… conflicted…
James felt stymied before the patient gaze of his father. The words dried up and he found he simply could not speak. Finally, Harry himself broke the silence.
"I know this is all very worrisome and confusing," he said, addressing both James and Rose. "And I am sorry that you lot have gotten involved in this at all. I wish I could tell you what I've told you in the past, that this isn't your problem, that we adults will handle it. But the fact is, you are no longer exactly children yourselves. You've seen too much," here, Harry looked directly at his son, and James knew what he was thinking of: Poor, lost cousin Lucy, held in Ralph's arms, carried through nightmare after nightmare. "No matter how much I might wish otherwise," Harry went on, "This isn't only my battle. I told you at the beginning of this year, James, that I might need to rely on you, that you might be in a position to do what I cannot. It seems that that time has come."
A sudden chill of fear descended upon James at these words. He hadn't realized how comforting his father's old reassurances had been-- assurances that the world was an essentially safe place and didn't need to be saved by him and Ralph, Zane and Rose; that the adults were in charge and were fully equipped to handle anything that came their way; that his only duties were to his schoolwork and his friends and to enjoy being young and free of weighty responsibilities. He had always rejected those assurances, always chosen to involve himself anyway, and to bring along those of his friends who were willing to help.
Now, he realized that there was a secret luxury in assuming responsibilities that weren't his-- the luxury of knowing that no one expected him to succeed-- the luxury, at the heart of it all, to fail.
James met his father's eyes and nodded slowly. He swallowed and heard an audible click in his throat. "Whatever you need, dad."
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Harry closed his eyes, seeming to war within himself. He drew a deep breath. "Your mother would kill me if she knew I was asking this," he admitted seriously. "But here it is. What I need from both of you is to be my ears. Loquatious Knapp may not know what is really happening, but Rechtor Grudje just might. Surely he knows more than the Minister, at any rate. But," he added quickly, his expression turning stern, "I'm not telling you to go spying on him. I'm not giving you permission to do anything daft that might get you caught. Filch would love nothing more than to pour his torture out on you lot."
"Corsica, too," James added fervently.
"I'm only telling you," Harry went on, ignoring this, "to keep your ears open. If there are more attempts to stifle the flow of information in and out of the school, if there are any new decrees or rules about what teachers are allowed to teach, or what clubs are permitted to meet, or if there are any other changes to the way things are done, I need you to let me know. Grudje won't come out and say what's coming, but we might learn something just by the preparations he makes."
James ran a hand through his hair in frustration. "But how can we tell you anything even if we want to? All our post is searched, remember?"
"I've already thought about that," Harry said, firming his voice. "Just send a note to your Mum saying you miss her cooking. She'll be happy to hear from you and I'll know that you need me to contact you. Be here in the common room when everyone else goes to bed and I'll find you."
James nodded his understanding. "But what should we be watching for most of all? What are we most hoping to figure out?"
Harry shook his head slowly. "Anything at all. I'm totally in the dark here. You have no idea how frustrating that is. If I get caught so much as asking the wrong questions, I suspect I'll be shut down completely, possibly put on extended leave. But what we really need to know more than anything," he admitted with a sigh, "is if the Morrigan Web is a real thing. And if so, what does it do? We can't hope to stop it if we can't answer those questions first."
James Potter and the Morrigan Web Page 51