“Uh oh,” he said suddenly.
“What!?” James called.
“I heard a crack,” the blonde boy called back. “I think ol’ Roberts has a bigger head than you, James. I think he broke the nose of your specs. Sorry.”
James sighed. “I have a spare,” he said, rolling his eyes. “Can you see any better?”
Zane pressed his eyes to the back of Roberts’ carved head again. There was a long, tense moment as he adjusted the glasses and struggled to pull himself into position. He was nearly riding piggyback on the statue’s leaning back now.
“It works!” he finally announced. “Sorta.”
“What do you mean ‘sorta’?” Ralph asked.
Zane adjusted the spectacles on the statue’s face again. “Well,” he called down, “I can see through Roberts’ eyes all right. The glasses work almost like a telescope. It’s just that there isn’t much to see. At least, not anything that’s very helpful.”
“What is it?” James demanded, nearly hopping with impatience.
“Roberts seems to just be staring straight down the mall toward Administration Hall,” Zane replied, still peering through the back of the statue’s head. “He’s looking right at the front doors, in fact. They’re propped open, so I can see right through the main corridor. Hey! There’s Albus and Lucy! Probably going to get an early dinner.”
James shook his head. “That can’t be the secret entrance to the Nexus Curtain. We’ve been in there a hundred times.”
“Well, that’s what’s in the eyes of Roberts,” Zane called back. “Maybe we should go snoop around in there a little more. Who knows what might be—” He stopped suddenly and pressed himself harder against the back of the statue’s head, frowning slightly.
“What?” Ralph asked impatiently. “What might be what?”
“Hold on,” Zane said. “Someone’s opening up the doors on the other end of the main corridor now. I can see straight through the whole building. Cool.”
James waited. He knew what was on the other end of the campus, behind Administration Hall. Victory Hill was the honorary home of every year’s Clutchcudgel tournament winner. According to tradition, the night of the final match was marked by the magical March of the Houses, when the winning team’s residence would magically arise from its cellar and circle the campus, coming to rest on the permanent foundation atop the hill near Pepperpock Down. Unfortunately, Zane himself had not witnessed a March of the Houses, nor had anyone else for the past ten years or so, since Team Werewolf had handily won the Clutchcudgel tournament for over a decade, thus holding onto that position of honor.
“It’s just Ares Mansion,” Zane called down. “I can only see the base of it through the back of Administration Hall, up on Victory Hill. Man, I hate those guys.”
“Is that it?” Ralph asked, exasperated.
“That’s it,” Zane replied. “Just the foundation up on Victory Hill with that big mausoleum house of theirs sitting on top of it. The only part that’s really visible is the cornerstone with that weird little ‘U’ engraved on it.”
James frowned. “Weird little ‘U’?”
“Yeah,” Zane sighed. “On the cornerstone of the permanent foundation, there’s just this odd symbol like a little letter ‘U’. Nobody knows what it stands for. ‘University’ maybe? Or ‘U are here’?”
James narrowed his eyes very thoughtfully. “Are you certain…,” he asked slowly, “that it’s a ‘U’?”
He peered up at Zane. The blonde boy looked down at him. Slowly, his eyebrows rose up onto his forehead as his eyes widened.
Ralph’s knees buckled slightly. In a strained voice, he said, “This means you can get off my shoulders now, right?”
“What do you three want?” an older Werewolf boy called from the high portico of Ares Mansion as James, Zane and Ralph approached. James recognized the speaker as Clayton Altaire, the captain of the Werewolf Clutch team.
“Oh, we’re just here to bask in your glory for a minute,” Zane replied from the footpath that circled Victory Hill. “Don’t pay any attention to us.”
Altaire scowled at them suspiciously. “What’s that you got in the bag, then?”
“Oh, this?” James asked, his face reddening. He looked down at the black velvet bag in his right hand. “It’s nothing. Just, er…”
“It’s his Technomancy homework,” Ralph volunteered. “Totally dangerous stuff. Strictly experimental magic. I wouldn’t even look directly at it if I was you.”
Altaire nodded skeptically toward Zane. “I know you, Walker. If you’re trying to prank us…”
“Me?” Zane asked, his face a mask of wounded innocence. “Never! Why, I’ll have you know that this here is James Potter! His brother is Albus, one of your Werewolf brethren. We’d never do anything to cause any trouble for little ol’ Al, would we fellas?” He looked back and forth between James and Ralph, who nodded silently.
“Albus,” Altaire smirked. “Yeah, our little Cornelius. I’ll tell him you ‘popped in for a chat’.” He turned and walked into the shadow of the doorway, chuckling to himself.
“Yeah, you do that, stump-head,” Zane muttered, rolling his eyes. He turned to James. “All right, come on. Let’s see if it fits.”
“I don’t like having that thing out in broad daylight,” Ralph said, following closely as James and Zane angled toward the corner of Ares Mansion, passing a rather large bronze statue of a fiercely snarling werewolf with blank amber eyes embedded into its face. James knew that the statue had been a gift from an alumnus, erected some ten years ago. Albus had told him that the members of the Werewolf Clutchcudgel team ritualistically rubbed the statue’s snarling muzzle on every game day as they made their way to Pepperpock Down. James shuddered as he passed before the glinting bronze figure, not liking that frozen, toothy growl.
As the three approached the cornerstone of the house’s permanent foundation, James saw that it was quite a large block of solid granite. At the very top of it, engraved right up to the edge, was a squat U-shape.
“It’ll only take a second, Ralph,” James said, feeling rather nervous himself. “We just need to see if it’s the same shape. If the horseshoe is the dimensional key, then this could be the keyhole. If it’s not, then we’ll just take it back and hide it under the Warping Willow again.”
Ralph gulped. “You mean if it fits, we’re going to go through into the World Between the Worlds right now?”
“Relax, Ralphinator,” Zane hissed impatiently. “We’re just going to see if it works. We’ll come back later for our big entrance if all goes as planned.”
Glancing around to assure no one was watching, James slipped the silver horseshoe from its bag. The three boys crowded around the cornerstone as he held it up next to the engraved shape.
“Well,” Ralph said hesitantly, “it fits… a little.”
“The engraved shape’s too short,” Zane said, shaking his head. “The top part’s cut off.”
James peered at the horseshoe as he held it up against the engraved U-shape. “The bottom bit fits perfectly,” he agreed. “It’s almost like the top half of the cornerstone is missing.”
“That makes sense,” Zane said. “None of the buildings are on their original foundations. Every time there’s a new Clutchcudgel tournament winner, the houses swap around. I bet nobody even remembers which house was originally built on this foundation.”
“So if we can figure out which house’s cornerstone shows the top half of the horseshoe,” Ralph ventured, “then we’ll know where the entrance to the Nexus Curtain is, right?”
“Maybe,” James said, slipping the horseshoe back into its velvet bag. “But I have a feeling that the only way the dimensional key will work is if we get the right house onto the right foundation.”
Zane shrugged optimistically. “That’s easy! Like Ralph said, we just need to find out which house has the rest of the horseshoe on its cornerstone and then make sure that that house wins the Clutch tourney. If we’re lucky, i
t’ll be Hermes Mansion. We Zombies are up for a win this year. I can feel it.”
James slumped as a sinking certainty settled over him. He shook his head slowly.
“I don’t think,” he said morosely, “that it’s going to be Hermes Mansion.”
“Wow,” Ralph said a short time later as the three boys stood in the bushes in front of Bigfoot House. “How’d you know?”
“Couldn’t say,” James answered with a sigh. “It just makes a certain kind of backward sense, doesn’t it?”
Zane nodded firmly, his lips pressed into a tight line as he stared down at the cornerstone of Apollo Mansion. Sure enough, the bottom edge of the stone showed the twin markings of the top of the silver horseshoe. “So,” he said heartily, still nodding, “in order to open the Nexus Curtain and potentially prove the innocence of our good friend Petra Morganstern, the worst Clutch team in a decade has to win the tournament against the best Clutch team in a decade. Is that about it? Do I have this straight?”
“I’m afraid so,” James answered dourly.
Zane nodded some more. “Well, then,” he said, “one thing above all else is absolutely certain.”
“What’s that?” Ralph asked, a little hesitantly.
Zane looked gravely at both James and Ralph and then answered, “You’re gonna need a bigger Gauntlet.”
Over the following weeks, James approached Team Bigfoot’s Clutch magic practices with renewed vigor. They did indeed expand the Gauntlet, adding a gyroscopic flight pad section where players could mount a skrim and fly in place with simulated wind, turns, and, most important of all, attacking clockwork opponents. Using this, players practiced Artis Decerto in flight, learning to perform midair flips, barrel rolls, horizontal leans, and an entirely new maneuver, known as the Drop, in which a player would fall flat onto the length of their skrim, their fingers curled over the front edge, reducing their target area and wind resistance, and effectively transforming themselves into missiles. In this posture, the player was able to use his or her skrim as a shield, deflecting spells by pulling the leading edge upwards, forcing the spells to bounce off the bottom.
“Wow!” Gobbins cheered as Jazmine performed an impressive dropping barrel roll through a group of clockwork Bullies, complete with mechanical Cudgels. “Way to thread the needle, Jaz!”
“I gotta admit, James,” Norrick said, shaking his head, “I wasn’t buying into this whole Artis Decerto thing at first. But between the new magic we’ve been practicing and these crazy new moves, I think we might just have a chance to get into the tournament.”
“Get into it nothing,” Wentworth exclaimed, his eyes boggling behind his huge glasses. “We’ve got a chance to win that baby! Especially now that the Pixies and Igors have been knocked out of the playoffs! It’s down to the Werewolves, Vampires, Zombies and us! And we haven’t even started using any of these new moves yet!”
“Let’s not get too confident,” James warned despite his own cautious confidence. “It’s one thing to do these maneuvers in the Gauntlet. It’s another thing entirely to pull them off on the course. Besides, our next match is sudden death against the Zombies and they’ve been practicing in the Gauntlet same as we have, thanks to the fact that we needed Zane and Professor Cloverhoof ‘s help to build it.”
“I watched them practice on it yesterday,” Jazmine gasped, jumping off her skrim as Ralph halted the Gauntlet around her, “from the window on the upstairs landing. They aren’t taking it all that seriously. They didn’t use the flight pad at all.”
“Graarph,” Mukthatch agreed, hopping onto his skrim and piloting it into position for his own turn on the pad. “Wurgh raffwabffle.”
“What’d he say?” James asked Norrick behind his hand.
“He says the Zombies’ weakness is the fact that they don’t take anything seriously. They prefer tricks and surprise to discipline and practice.”
“Wow,” Ralph said, blinking. “He said all that?”
“Sasquatchian is a very economical language,” Norrick replied, nodding wisely. “I’ve been taking it since grade school. They have a hundred words for dirt, but no word for quit. Kind of tells you everything you need to know about ‘em, doesn’t it?”
James nodded.
Later, on the night before the Bigfoots’ last match against Team Zombie, James met Zane on the porch of Hermes Mansion.
“Did you try to talk to them about it?” he asked the blonde boy, who shook his head grimly.
“It’s a pride thing,” Zane explained in a low voice, glancing back at the house behind him. “Team Zombie hasn’t been beat by the Foots since, like, forever. That tie game you handed them last match was bad enough. And this is a playoff death match! The winner goes on, the loser goes home! I can’t just tell them, ‘Hey fellas, why don’t you throw this thing to the Bigfoots, eh? I can’t tell you why, but it’ll keep some girl you don’t know from being sent to Fort Bedlam and who knows, maybe even save the universe from collapsing in on itself because of some missing thread! Whaddaya say?’ Sorry James, you know I’m on board with you, but there’s no way that Bludger will fly.”
James shook his head in exasperation. “Can you, like, slip a dose of Weasley’s Silly Serum into their morning coffees or something? Or hex some invisible weights onto their skrims?”
Zane looked aghast. “Sabotage the Zombies?” he hissed, mortified. “Look, mate, I’m on your side and all, but rule number one of Zombie House is that you never ever prank your own house.” Zane stopped and glanced aside thoughtfully. “Well, actually, rule number one is to always keep the cellar door locked from the outside so the ghoul doesn’t sneak upstairs at night and have parties with all the other house ghouls. Boy, do they make a terrible mess. And do they eat? Sheesh. Last time there wasn’t anything left but a box of dried leech chews and half a jar of El Salsa Grenado. But not pranking your own house is definitely rule number two. Without a doubt.”
“But…!” James began, but Zane cut him off with a raised hand.
“Sorry, James. I just can’t do it. We Zombies may not have much of a code of ethics, but the few ethics we do have, we stick to like glue. Capiche? You guys’ll just have to win it fair and square.”
James sighed deeply and nodded. As he turned to leave, however, Zane tapped him on the shoulder.
“But I’ll be rooting for you guys,” he whispered with a crooked smile. “You can do it. Keep between Warrington and Hurst, eh? I can’t tell you why, but if you do that—stick between those two like beetle butter between two slices of white bread—then you’ll do just fine.” He winked conspiratorially and then turned back to his house, whistling an innocent tune.
The afternoon of the match turned out to be bright and warm, resulting in a very exuberant turnout of spectators. The grandstands were packed to overflowing, crowded with waving banners and handmade signs. To James’ surprise, there seemed to be nearly as many Bigfoot colours and banners as there were Zombie supporters. The two factions jostled amiably on the high rampart bleachers, competing against each other with small displays of firework spells in team colours.
“This is it, team!” Wood hollered as the players huddled around him atop the platform. His voice was nearly lost in the roar of the excited crowd. “I know this is a sudden death match, but don’t let that spook you! We’ve played an amazing season and I am proud of each and every one of you! Do your best, keep it clean, and try to have fun! If we lose, we may be out of the playoffs, but we’ll still have a better record than Team Bigfoot has racked up in over ten years! You’re all winners in my book, eh? So let’s keep our chins up! Ready?”
The team joined in, piling their hands atop Wood’s outstretched fist. “GooOO FEET!”
As the team assembled along the platform edge, Wentworth moved alongside James, his skrim at his side.
“If I didn’t know any better,” he muttered under his breath, “I’d almost think Wood expected us to lose.”
James glanced at the boy next to him. Wentworth looked up.
“I’m just sayin’,” he shrugged.
“Well, I expect us to win,” James replied. “Remember, just keep an eye on Warrington and Hurst. If they line up…”
“Yeah, yeah,” Gobbins agreed grimly from James’ other side. “We squeeze in between them like Mother Newt chaperoning a Valentine’s dance.”
A sharp whistle pierced the air over the figure eight course. Professor Sanuye floated over the center ring in his official’s tunic, his whistle protruding from between his teeth.
“Number Six Hippogriff,” Jazmine announced, launching from the platform for the warmup lap. The rest of the team began to stream out behind her, assembling into Hippogriff formation.
“This is it,” Norrick called seriously, dropping his skrim and preparing to launch from the platform. “Sudden death, everyone! Do or die!”
“Do or die!” the others echoed, as if it were a battle cry. James joined them, feeling a drunken mixture of excitement, apprehension, and secret confidence. “Do or die! Let’s go!”
One minute later, Sanuye blew a long note on his whistle. The match began.
Two hours later, Team Bigfoot was gathered in the Kite and Key, jostling raucously around two tables which they had pushed together.
“Victory!” Norrick cried, hoisting his Butterbeer. The rest mimicked his toast, making sure to shout loud enough for the Zombies gathered dourly in booths on the other side of the bar to hear. “Victory!” they cried jubilantly, clanking their mugs and tankards together, slopping their drinks all over the tables between them.
“It was a close one,” Gobbins admitted to James as the cheers broke up into enthusiastic chatter. “I was a little worried at halftime with them up by four points.”
James nodded and shrugged, but the truth was that he knew it had never really been a close match at all. One minute before the halftime whistle had blown, Team Zombie had succeeded in walloping home a string of quick goals ,thanks to the combined efforts of Warrington and Hurst, who, despite the Foots’ best efforts, had managed to cluster into a piledrive formation, carrying all three Clutches between them and flanked by the remainder of their team.
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