“Unofficially, yes,” Zane agreed. “According to Merlin’s version of the story, we just saw two women leaving the Archive. He seemed to want to keep Petra’s part secret.”
From the other side of the Shard, Scorpius asked, “Why would he do that?”
“He said something about it to me afterwards,” James admitted, shuffling his feet. “He said… that it was important that he choose his battles wisely, whatever that means. He talked to Petra himself after the whole thing was over, right before he left. And then he came and talked to me. He said that it would be best if we kept what we knew to ourselves since the Americans wouldn’t have the… er… facilities to properly handle any investigation of Petra. That’s exactly how he put it, but I don’t know what in the world he meant by it. And then he asked me, along with Ralph and Zane, to keep an eye on her, for him.”
“He knew that she was involved in the attack on the Vault and he just let her go?” Rose said skeptically. “Pardon me for saying so, but that seems extremely odd. What did he want you to watch out for?”
James shrugged, looking from face to face. “First of all, maybe she wasn’t really involved,” he insisted. “Maybe it was… I don’t know… someone using Polyjuice Potion or something.”
Scorpius sighed wearily. “Potter, your blind loyalty is getting to be a bit of a drag. Isn’t this exactly like what happened last year, when you refused to admit that you saw the Headmaster in the Magic Mirror, consorting with villains?”
James’ face heated. “I ended up being right, didn’t I?” he replied. “I mean, sure, it was Merlin, but he hadn’t gone all evil. And neither has Petra.”
Rose waved a hand impatiently. “So what are you supposed to be watching out for with Petra?”
James sighed. “Anything… out of the ordinary, I guess. Merlin didn’t get specific. She’s gotten herself an apprenticeship position here at the school, working with the Potions Master, so we’ll be seeing her at least twice a week. Merlin must trust her because he helped get her the post.”
Scorpius looked thoughtful where he sat on the sofa next to Rose. “Maybe Merlin got her the post in order to make it easier for them to keep an eye on her.”
“Why wouldn’t he just bring her and Izzy back here with him?” Rose asked, looking aside at the boy next to her.
“Maybe he can’t,” Scorpius answered simply.
“Wait a minute…,” Zane said, narrowing his eyes. He leaned forward and peered critically into the Shard, his face contorted in the comic half-grin that marked his version of deep thought. “Are you two… dating?” he asked suddenly.
Rose’s eyes widened and she glanced at Scorpius, who looked back at her sideways. There was a long pause.
“I knew it!” Zane cried, pointing at the Shard.
Rose’s face went red. “Don’t be ridiculous. We’re just friends. And we’re both not even thirteen years old, if you recall.”
“Rose has a boyfriend,” Zane sang, grinning.
Scorpius rolled his eyes and climbed to his feet on the other side of the glass. “I have Runes homework,” he stated in a bored voice, walking away.
“You’re all idiots,” Rose fumed, crossing her arms and refusing to make eye contact with the boys in the mirror.
“That may be,” Zane nodded, still grinning, “but we’re perceptive idiots. Aren’t we?” He glanced back at James and Ralph. Ralph shook his head.
“I have Mug-Occ homework,” he said, turning to his bed, which he threw himself on.
“See you later, Rose,” James smiled. “I expect Scorpius could use some help with his Runes.”
“Scorpius does just fine on his own,” she muttered, standing up. “Let me know what else happens there, all right? And bring Lucy with you the next time you pop on. Maybe we’ll get some intelligent conversation out of her.”
As the final day of Ralph and James’ first full week at Alma Aleron finally came around, James found himself looking quite forward to the weekend. Now that Merlin and Professor Longbottom had gone home and his parents and sister were busy getting themselves settled into their new flat, it was going to be James’ first chance to enjoy a few days of freedom. There was still quite a lot of the campus that he had not explored, including the inside of the Tower of Art, the strange ruin at the northern end of the campus, the massive sports stadium (known as Pepperpock Down), and the endless statues, fountains, and odd magical landmarks that dotted the grounds.
Lucy had promised to take the boys on a tour of Erebus Castle, home of Vampire House, but James was rather less interested in that, having already had Cursology class in the large glassed ‘moonroom’ of the castle and not particularly liking what he’d seen. Hogwarts castle was the real thing, of course. By comparison, Erebus Castle felt a bit like a Muggle movie set, with baroque chandeliers crammed into every available ceiling space, enormous, morbidly detailed tapestries hung from every stone wall, and far too many suits of armor, gaping fireplaces, and looming staircases. For her own part, Lucy seemed to have quickly come to love her house and her fellow Vampires, even befriending some of the girls whom they had first encountered aboard the Gwyndemere.
“Sure, they’re all a little melodramatic and morose,” she conceded at breakfast on Friday morning, “but they’re really imaginative and intelligent. Felicia Devereau makes charcoal rubbings of the gravestones in the campus cemetery. And Druzilla Hemmings writes poetry. It doesn’t rhyme or anything, but that just means it’s really good poetry. Very grownup.”
“Yeah,” Zane nodded critically. “And I hear the whole lot of them are making some new clothes for the emperor.”
Lucy blinked at Zane, and then shook her head derisively.
“Wait a minute,” Ralph said, frowning. “America has an emperor?”
The last class of the morning turned out to be Theoretical Gravity, which was apparently a strange mix of levitation, flight, and anything else that dealt with getting things off the ground. The class met in the center of a grassy quadrangle between the Tower or Art and the Administration Hall and James was delighted to see the Trans-Dimensional Garage pitched nearby, its canvas walls flapping in the breeze. The flying cars sat inside, their chrome glittering as the sun angled into the tent’s open front.
“Is that the permanent home of the American side of the Garage?” James asked Zane.
Zane glanced back at the tent-like structure. “Yeah, I think the other side is somewhere in Pakistan right now. There’s a team of wizarding archeologists there, digging up some old magical city. Professor Potsherd is always dragging his students all over the world, scratching around in the dirt like a bunch of beetles. In fact, beetles are all they brought back with them last time. Scarabs, actually, from Egypt. Pretty cool, now that I think of it. They’re up in the museum on the top floor of the Tower of Art.”
As Zane spoke, a figure strode out from beneath the huge trees at the edge of the quadrangle and James was surprised to recognize Oliver Wood, dressed in a short cape and boots with a pair of goggles pushed up over his eyebrows.
“Greetings students,” he proclaimed, summoning them to gather around him in the sunlight. “Professor Asher is feeling a bit under the weather today, so I’ve been asked to fill in. I am given to understand that you are currently working on intermediate airborne traffic regulations, yes?”
There was a collective moan as the students slumped.
“Come on,” one of the Igor boys complained. “Asher’s sick. Can’t we do something other than aerial right-of-way drills? Let’s do a collective levitation!”
“Nosedive recovery practice!” a Zombie girl called. “From a thousand feet! It’s clear enough today!”
The class broke into a babble of unruly voices as Wood shook his head and raised his hands, palms out.
“Look, you lot, just because your professor’s sick, doesn’t mean we can just ignore the curriculum. He’ll be back next Friday… er… probably. Actually, maybe not, now that you mention it…”
“What�
�s he got?” the Igor student asked.
“I hear it’s witherwart,” a Vampire girl called out from the rear of the gathering. Everyone turned to look back at her. She blinked at them. “At least, that’s the rumor that’s going around. I don’t know anything about it. It isn’t like I cursed him with it just to put off my UP-DWN examination. Er, none of you can prove anything.”
“Either way,” Wood said, trying to regain control of the class, “it may, in fact, be that the professor could be absent for a few weeks. So…”
The class broke into a babble again, begging to be given a holiday from the regiment of flight regulations they had apparently been studying. Wood glanced over the students a bit helplessly, and then grinned.
“Fine,” he called out, silencing them nearly instantly. “We’ll run some laps on the Clutch course, just to warm up. After that, we’ll go over passing streams and confined space landing techniques.”
“Excellent,” Zane enthused as the class cheered, drowning out the second half of Wood’s statement. “We can get a little speed behind us up in the rings. It’s good timing too. The first Clutch match of the season is only a week away.”
“So what is Clutch anyway?” Ralph asked as the class followed Wood across the quadrangle, heading for the stadium parapets which were just visible over the roofs of Faculty Row. “Is it anything like Quidditch?”
“Not really,” Zane answered, cinching up the corner of his mouth thoughtfully. “Clutchcudgel is sort of a cross between broom racing and rugby. Basically, you have a series of floating rings that form a big figure eight in the air over the field. The point is to catch one of the three Clutches, which are just flying leather footballs, and then zoom three times through the course as fast as you can. On the last pass, you toss the Clutch through the goal over the middle ring.” James shrugged. “Doesn’t sound too hard.”
“Nope,” Zane agreed. “Except for the Bullies. They’re the guys on the other team whose job is to force you out of the rings and make you forfeit the Clutch.”
Ralph nodded. “All right. But still, assuming you get past them, it’s just a straight shot to the goal, right?”
Zane clapped Ralph on the shoulder. “Absolutely. Except for the Keeper. He carries a big wooden Cudgel, and he’ll swat the Clutch right back at you if he can. Knock you right off your broom if you aren’t careful. Bullies can carry Cudgels too, sometimes.”
“And don’t forget about the offensive and defensive spellwork,” another boy called from nearby.
“Right you are, Heathrow,” Zane replied. “The magic game is an essential part of the sport. Which is why the Zombies will rule the course this year.”
“In your dreams, Walker,” an Igor girl countered. “We’ll clobber the lot of you at the first cross passage.”
“Cross passage?” James asked, glancing aside at Zane, who waved a hand dismissively.
“Some of the Bullies will hang back during the first loop, just so they can meet you at the intersection and broadside you. You can usually duck under them, and most of them don’t really have the guts to perform a true kamikaze.”
“Team Igor has plenty of guts,” the girl grinned wickedly. “We just got a refrigerated shipment of them last Wednesday.”
“Gonna whip yourselves up a squad of Frankensteins who actually know how to fly a Clutch course?” Zane asked brightly. “Or are you just hoping to spawn some dates for the Halloween banquet?”
The girl fumed angrily but couldn’t seem to come up with a sufficient retort. Zane dismissed her airily.
Shortly, the class entered the shadow of Pepperpock Down, which consisted of a series of tall grandstands surrounding a neatly cropped field. Two wooden gantries faced each other in the center of the field, each topped with a broad platform and hung with house banners. A scattering of students sat in the grandstands, soaking in the autumn sunlight or chatting in small knots. At ground level, a group of college-aged Werewolves ran exercise drills, their grey tee shirts and sweatpants dark with sweat. Wood led his class across the pitch toward a door in the base of the right gantry.
“Grab a broom, everyone,” he called, heaving the large door open and revealing a low, dark locker room. “Let’s not be choosy. I want to see you all on the platform in five minutes.”
James and Ralph were among the last ones into the musty space. The room was embedded into the ground beneath the field and framed in stone, with a low wooden roof. More house banners decorated the inside walls, most quite old and dusty. Hundreds of brooms were hung on pegs or stashed in large quivers. Babbling noisily in the cramped space, the students chose a broom each and began climbing a set of narrow stairs that spiraled up through the ceiling.
“Whoa,” Ralph said, nudging James and pointing. “Look at those!”
James whistled appreciatively as he moved toward a set of shelves beneath the stairs. “Are those brooms? I’ve never seen anything like that before.”
The objects lined neatly on the shelves were as long as brooms, but much flatter and wider, like fence planks that had been smoothed and polished. Their tails were streamlined and flattened, each bristle honed to a needle-like point. Some had been painted with garish designs and colours. They gleamed mellowly in the dusty light.
“Are we allowed to use these?” James asked, wideeyed.
Ralph shrugged and grinned. “I don’t see why not. I’d ask Zane, but he was one of the first ones up to the platform. Come on, let’s give it a shot! They sure beat the house brooms back home!”
James nodded. Almost reverently, he picked up the closest of the strange brooms. It was painted glossy black with blue flames streaming from the front. Ralph took the one next to it, which was streaked with orange and black like a tiger’s stripes. Held upright, each broom was slightly taller than they were. After a moment’s admiration of themselves with their impressive brooms, both boys turned and followed the last of the class up into the open-air staircase.
A minute later, much out of breath, they climbed into the brightness of the platform high over the field. The grandstands didn’t seem so very tall anymore as they ringed the field. The campus sprawled away into the hazy distance, topped by the bell tower on the roof of Administration Hall, which was the only thing higher than the stadium platforms. Glittering in the air over the field, James saw the rings that formed the Clutchcudgel course. The one in the middle was larger than the others, and topped with a second ring, smaller and shining silver—obviously the goal ring. A line of pigeons perched atop of the goal ring, watching the students where they gathered on the platform.
“All right,” Wood said, clapping his hands together briskly. “Let’s stretch our legs a bit, shall we? Three warm-up laps should do the trick. This isn’t a competition, so let’s avoid passing each other. Leaders cross on top at the intersection, followers keep below. Understood? Then let’s be off.”
With a curt nod, Wood straddled his own broom and kicked off, bobbing up into the air and passing through the nearest of the floating golden rings. The thought of taking off from such a high perch gave James a vaguely queasy feeling, but none of the other students seemed the slightest bit nervous about it. Like dandelion seeds in a breeze, they streamed into the air, following Wood as he navigated serenely through the course.
“Well,” Ralph said, hefting his broom so that it bobbed next to him, “here goes nothing.”
Both boys attempted to straddle the oddly-shaped brooms and immediately found them rather uncomfortable and awkward.
“Is it just me,” Ralph said, bouncing on tiptoe toward the ledge of the platform, “or does something about this feel a little… backwards?”
Most of the rest of the class had already taken off, forming a long line that streamed through the rings, calling out chatter like birds on a telephone wire. Zane still stood on the edge of the platform, waiting his turn as the others launched ahead of him. He glanced back as James and Ralph hobbled into place behind him, and his eyes bulged.
“Whoa, whoa, wh
oa!” he hissed suddenly, alarmed. “What are you doing? Get off, quick, before anyone sees you!”
James blinked at his friend and then scrambled to get off of the odd broom. Ralph did the same, but seemed to be rather stuck. He tilted sideways, nearly falling off the broom onto the platform.
“You guys are lucky I’m the only one that saw that,” Zane rasped urgently. “If anyone else saw you sitting on a skrim…!” He shook his head speechlessly.
“What?” James exclaimed in a hushed voice. “Wood said grab a broom! What’s wrong with these?”
Zane rolled his eyes and smacked a palm to his forehead. “These aren’t brooms!” he said, exasperated. “They’re skrims! It’s an American thing! I mean, look at them!”
“So what’s the difference, exactly?” Ralph asked, annoyed.
“For one thing,” Zane replied, “you don’t straddle a skrim. You stand on it. For another thing, they’re designed specifically for Clutchcudgel matches, not regular flying around!”
James threw up his hands. “How were we supposed to know? They were right there in plain sight!”
Zane sighed, still straddling his own broom. “Well, I guess there’s no rule against using a skrim in class. It’s just not something anyone does.”
From across the open air of the course, Professor Wood’s voice called out. “Hurry it up, you three! We’re one lap down already.”
“They’ve got skrims!” a girl cried incredulously. “I bet they don’t even know which end’s the front!”
There was a chorus of laughter as the line of students circled the platform, looping back toward the intersection. James watched and they watched him back, many of them smirking and shaking their heads. He glanced back at Zane, who shrugged and raised his eyebrows.
“Well, it’s your funeral, mate. Go for it.” With that, he kicked off himself, merging with the rest of the class.
“You aren’t serious,” Ralph asked in a low voice. “Are you?”
“Do they even teach flight at that poofy European school of yours?” one of the Werewolf students called out, grinning.
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