James Potter and the Curse of the Gatekeeper
( James Potter - 1 )
G. Norman Lippert
JAMES POTTER AND THE CURSE OF THE GATEKEEPER
G. Norman Lippert
Based upon the characters and worlds of J. K. Rowling
Dear Reader,
A word before we begin. You don’t mind, do you? I’d like to discuss, for just a moment, who this story is for, and who it isn’t.
If you are the sort of Harry Potter fan prone to get exercised about the proper capitalization of terms like ‘Umgubular Slashkilter’, then this story is probably not for you.
If you are among that most faithful of fans who simply cannot countenance any slight discrepancy in the number of buttons on Professor McGonagall’s tartan dress robes (six; tortoiseshell) or is driven to fisticuffs about the relative pulling and carrying strengths of Thestrals (1,120 kilograms and 70 kilograms, respectively) or breaks into cold, nervous sweats at the thought of improperly scheduled dates of any given season’s Quidditch matches, (See HPL; ‘Quidditch’), then this story might not be for you.
If, in short, you are among that most delightful and vigilant cadre of HP fans who believe that the Harry Potter stories and themes exist only to support the “canon” minutae of the Harry Potter universe, and not the other way around, then this story is most assuredly and emphatically not for you.
If, on the other hand, you simply loved the Harry Potter stories and characters and were sad to see them come to an end, then welcome. If you delight in shared adventure more than solitary navel-gazing, then come ahead and join hands. If you prefer battling evil over battling one another, then you are among friends. If, in short, you believe that the story is king above all else, then this story, most definitely and affectionately, is for you. Enter and join us on the ongoing journey! I hope you have a grand time.
For the rest of you, surely there is an argument going on somewhere about who the best movie Dumbledore was. I’d hate for you to miss it.
(Note: this book is a sequel to another story called “James Potter and the Hall of Elders’ Crossing”. While this story might stand on its own with a little imaginative help from the reader, it will be much better appreciated as part of the series.)
—GNL
CONTENTS
Prologue
1. Endings and Beginnings
2. The Borley
3. The Sorting
4. Trial of the Golden Cord
5. Albus and the Broom
6. the King of the Cats
7. Amsera Certh
8. The Audition
9. The Lady of the Lake
10. The Beacon Stone
11. The Circle of Nine
12. Questions of Trust
13. Christmas at Hogwarts
14. Artis Decerto
15. Out of Hogsmeade
16. Unexpected Confrontations
17. The Bloodline
18. The Triumvirate
19. The Sacrifice
20. The Long Ride Home
For Greer A Rose by any other name.
PROLOGUE
Rain fell in great sheets, hitting the pavement hard enough to send up a blattering, dirty mist. A small man stood on the corner, under the only working streetlamp, and studied the street.
Abandoned apartment buildings lined one side, dark and hulking, like dead dinosaurs. The other side was dominated by an equally dismal factory behind a chain-link fence. Warning signs on the fence squeaked and rattled in the wind. One car was parked along the street, looking as if it had been there long enough to become part of the local ecosystem. The small man shuffled his feet, his bald head glistening with rain. He glanced back, toward the busier streets from which he’d just come, and then made a harrumphing noise. He pulled his fist out of his overcoat pocket and held it up to the light. When he opened his hand, there was a small, sodden bit of parchment inside it. He read the words on the parchment for the tenth time. Blue-inked letters spelled the street name and nothing else. The man shook his head, annoyed.
He was about to close the bit of parchment into his fist again when the words bled away in the dripping rain. The little man blinked at the space where they had been. Slowly, new words appeared on the paper, as if inked by an invisible hand: an address.
The little man frowned at the parchment, and then shoved it back into his pocket. Glancing aside, he located a number over the door of the nearest abandoned apartment. He sighed and walked out of the yellow glow of the streetlight, splashing heedlessly in the flooded gutter.
As most people who knew how to look would know, the little man wasn’t a man at all. He was a goblin. His name was Forge and he hated venturing into the human world. Not that anyone had ever noticed his unusual size or strange features. He wore boots with four-inch heels and a Visum-ineptio charm that caused people to see him as a kindly old man with a severe stoop. He simply didn’t like humans. They were dirty, inefficient, and rowdy. Forge liked his world to be like his workshop: neat, organized, and constantly swept of any useless bits. It wasn’t so much that Forge wished humans didn’t exist; he was simply glad that they had their own special world to live in, and that he rarely had to go there, rather like a zoo.
He’d almost decided not to come out tonight. Something hadn’t felt right about this appointment. Considering Forge’s unique skills, it was not unusual that he didn’t know the name of a client, but he was accustomed to a certain amount of decorum, not just a note and a number. Forge knew what the number meant however. It was the pay being offered for his services, and it was quite a surprising number indeed. Surprising enough to get Forge out of his workshop, chasing down the mysterious address in this decrepit stretch of human wasteland even in spite of his trepidation. After all, Forge was a goblin.
He stopped walking and stared up at the number of the apartment next to him. He glanced across the street, furrowing his brow. The factory fence had ended half a block earlier. In its place was an empty lot, choked with weeds, blowing trash and broken bottles. An abandoned lorry leaned drunkenly in the corner, settling into the mud and tall grass. A wooden sign in the center of the lot had half fallen over. ‘Future Home of Chimera Condominiums and Recreational Complex’, it read in faded letters. Forge took his fist out of his pocket again and opened it. The address was gone from the parchment. Two new words spelled themselves out:
Turn around.
Forge dropped his fist to his side. He stared at the vacant lot, chewing his lips. Was he being warned to go back? Part of him hoped so, but he doubted it. Slowly, he turned around on the spot so that he stood in the center of the deserted street, looking up at the dark bulk of the apartment building. A broken window stared down at him like the eye of a skull. The wind gusted, lifting the curtains of the broken window, making them flutter. Forge sighed and looked down at the parchment again:
Walk. Backwards.
“Well,” Forge muttered to himself, “in for a Knut, in for a Galleon.” He began to walk backwards, lifting his boots carefully to avoid tripping over the curb or the piles of rotting trash. He stepped carefully onto the footpath and continued, feeling for the muddy weed bed of the vacant lot. The footpath seemed wider than he’d expected. Each step backwards found solid, smooth stone. Forge glanced down. There were worn, carefully laid flagstones beneath his boots instead of the rough cement slabs of the footpath. He looked up again and drew in a whistling breath. Two monstrous shapes leered down at him. They were gargoyles, each perched atop a stone pillar. Rain splattered and ran down their horrible faces. Between the pillars was a tall wrought-iron gate. As Forge watched, it swung shut
with a rattling, resounding crash, closing him inside. He turned on the spot, his heart pounding, and saw that the wrought-iron formed a fence all around the lot. It was six feet tall and spiked with angry points. Nor was the lot any longer filled with trash. It was a lawn, carefully cropped, each blade of grass eerily sharp and exactly the same length as its fellows. The rain beaded on the grass like crystal. Where the abandoned lorry had stood was now a long, black carriage, immaculately shiny and covered with gothic scrollwork. There were no yokes for horses on the carriage. Forge shuddered, and then looked up toward the center of the lot.
In the place of the leaning sign was a house. It was not huge, but it was almost unnaturally tall. Its shuttered windows looked twenty feet high and the mansard roof that topped it almost seemed to rake outward, like a vulture brooding. Pillars framed the front door, which was painted black and had a giant brass door knocker in the center. Forge swallowed, drew himself up, and approached the door.
As he climbed the steps, Forge wasn’t surprised to see that the brass door knocker had been crafted to resemble a coiled snake with glittering emerald eyes. Nor was he surprised to see it stir to life at his approach. The head rose from its brass coils and flicked a golden tongue.
“You bear the parchment?” the snake hissed.
“You best believe I do. Open the door before I catch my death in this rain.”
“Sssshow ussss.”
“I didn’t come all this way to argue with a bit of enchanted metallurgy. Open the blasted door and tell your master I’ve arrived.”
The snake’s head rose very slightly so that it looked down at Forge’s head. The eyes glowed green and the tongue flickered. “Sssshow ussss the parchment.”
Forge looked up at the snake’s head. It weaved slightly, flicking the air with its tongue. Forge had grown up with a metalsmith father and knew how enchanted ornaments were made. Even so, there was something about the weaving brass head and the flickering golden tongue that worried him. He stuffed his hand into the pocket of his coat and retrieved the parchment.
“Here. See?” he said, trying to keep the tremor out of his voice. “Now open the door.”
The snake stretched out toward the parchment in Forge’s hand. It reared, and then spat a bolt of green flame. Forge yanked his hand away, yelping as the flame consumed the parchment in midair. The snake’s eyes glowed brighter as it uncoiled even further from the door, leaning out toward Forge’s face. Forge wouldn’t have thought it was possible, but the sculpture seemed to grin at him.
“Prossssccceeed,” it said. The door unlocked and swung ponderously open.
Forge entered slowly, peering around. He found himself in a long hallway, laid with rich, if rather threadbare, red carpet. There were thick doors on either side, lacquered to a mirror-black shine. All of them were closed except for the one at the very end. Voices came from beyond, echoing so that Forge couldn’t quite understand them. He opened his mouth to announce himself when the door suddenly slammed shut behind him. Startled, he glanced back at it, his eyes wide, and then listened again. The voices were still speaking. The masters of the house must have heard the slam of the door; therefore, they must know he’d arrived. Water dripped steadily from the tail of Forge’s overcoat as he walked quietly down the hall, toward the open door and the voices.
Beyond the door was another dark room. There was a bench along one side and a long, ornately framed mirror on the other. A second open door showed a corner of a third room. Forge thought it looked like a library. Firelight flickered on the walls and shadows moved. The voices had become more distinct.
“It is very dark,” said a woman’s raspy voice. “We are rather far away, my lord. It is impossible to be certain.”
“Pray do not say that,” a man’s voice replied. “‘Impossible’ is such a very… final word. Perhaps you would care to be a bit more nuanced, madam.”
“Yes,” the woman said quickly. “I err, my lord. Let me look again.”
There was a stirring, as of someone moving in a large chair, and a different man’s voice spoke impatiently, “Just tell us what you see, woman. We will decide what it is.”
The woman moaned, either in fear or concentration. “There are three figures… small. They are… no, they are not small. They are young. One is larger, another is fair-haired. They are… there is commotion. Fighting.”
Forge listened, unsure of what he was supposed to do. He looked around the darker antechamber of the library and saw a coat rack standing next to the door. He shrugged off his overcoat and hung it there. Water pattered from it to the wooden floor. Apparently, he was meant to wait until this current interview was over. He approached the bench but did not sit on it. In the mirror across from the bench, Forge could see a reflection of the library beyond the doorway. Three large chairs were turned to face the fireplace. He could only see their backs.
“There is another figure,” the woman’s voice rasped. “Thin and tall. A wraith, if I know my psychic signatures. The boys are fighting her. I see… I see a cloud of embers descending. I fear I am losing the vision…”
“Let me look,” the impatient voice demanded.
“Be still, Gregor. Divination isn’t your strong suit,” the first voice said silkily. “Let the woman exercise her talents.”
In the mirror, Forge saw a hand moving on the arm of one of the chairs. It was very white and had a large black ring on it. The shadow of the woman moved on the wall of the library. Forge recognized the stoop and hat of a hag. She was bent over her crystal ball.
“No…,” the hag breathed, now lost in her work. “This is not the fog of distance or any sort of Confusion Hex. This is something else. Something is descending on the place. Something is… forming.”
There was a tense silence. Forge felt it, and knew that the two men were listening very intently.
“The fight is done…,” the hag said in a singsong voice, now completely immersed in her divination. “There is a ghost now as well… it is assisting the wraith… or perhaps it is the other way around. There is much conflict in the ether. But the fog has descended. It is forming… it is making a… a…”
The hag suddenly gasped. Forge saw her shadow lurch backwards, clapping her hands to her head. There was clatter and a crash as something fell.
“Keep looking!” the impatient voice, Gregor, shouted. “Look and tell, or so help me…”
“Stop,” the other man’s voice said, almost playfully. There was a smile in it. “Gregor, leave the poor woman alone. Obviously, she has seen something that has upset her a great deal.”
The hag was panting, and then, strangely, horribly, another voice spoke. It was very thin, high, cold, but nonsensical. Forge couldn’t hear its actual words, but it seemed gleeful, somehow. The few remaining hairs at the base of Forge’s neck stuck straight up.
“What did you see?” Gregor demanded, ignoring the thin, muttering voice. “What was it?”
“Let us not overtax the poor woman,” the first voice said. “She has performed her services quite well. We shall see that she receives payment as agreed. Thank you, madam.”
“It was a man,” the hag panted, her voice trembling. “But then…”
“Yes, thank you,” the man’s voice said soothingly. “I believe we’ve heard enough. Gregor, perhaps you’d be so kind as to show our guest—”
“Horrible,” she keened, and then sobbed hugely. Forge watched the hag’s shadow dip, and then another shape, a fat man, jumped up, supporting her.
“Yes,” the first voice said, dismissing her. “He was horrible, this man. Thank you.”
“No!” the hag shouted. Forge saw her shadow lunge, pulling away from the shadow of Gregor. “Not the man! He was awful enough, but then…”
There was a pause as the hag seemed to crumple again. The white hand on the arm of the chair rose slightly. The black ring twinkled in the firelight. “And then?”
The hag shuddered.
“Something else. Something… came through… it was…”
She didn’t seem able to continue. The white hand on the arm of the chair remained still, poised in a gesture that looked almost like a benediction. Firelight flickered and snapped. The horrible, otherworldly voice buzzed and gibbered quietly to itself.
“Smoke,” the hag finally said. Her voice had gone high, nearly falsetto. She sounded like a child. “Black fire. Ash and… and… eyes… and nothing. Living nothing.”
There was a pause, and then the white hand closed into a loose fist. “Well,” the first man’s voice said casually, “that changes things a bit. Perhaps you should like to be paid here and now, madam. Tonight. Lemuel, please escort our guest… er… some place else, won’t you? You’ll find a proper place to pay her, I’m certain.”
Shadows moved. A heretofore unseen figure arose and led the hag away from the firelight. Forge felt a sudden panic that they would come through the antechamber and find him, and then he remembered he was supposed to be here. They were expecting him. He wondered fleetingly if it was too late to sneak back out. Price or no price, this was looking to be a very bad group with which to get involved. To Forge’s relief, Lemuel led the hag out through another door at the back of the library. Lemuel moved like a trained servant, though rather older than Forge had expected. The hag lolled as she walked, her eyes grey and blank. Neither of them paid Forge any mind.
“Then it is done,” Gregor said as the rear door of the library closed. “Merlinus is returned. Your plan is complete.”
“The plan is far from complete, but yes, up to this point, everything has proceeded as expected. The Delacroix woman will be disposed of. The Potter boy will be mortified to know that he was the tool to bring about our ends. And Merlinus Ambrosius is loosed upon the world yet again. But, Gregor, you should be careful in calling this my plan. You know whose design this is. I’ll not take credit for the work of the Dark Lord.”
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