“As I realized this, I knew I had but one choice: I must do what I could to rid the world of the Gatekeeper, whose very presence in this sphere was my responsibility. Having decided that, I came to know that there were those in this world who knew of the Gatekeeper, and wished to use it. These were the disciples of Slytherin, who, like him, had fooled themselves into believing the Gatekeeper could be controlled and used as a hand of vengeance. I knew of the other half of the Beacon Stone, and sensed that it was in the possession of these bent individuals. I followed their progress as they sought the Gatekeeper. I watched and waited, using this very Mirror.” He indicated the Amsera Certh, which stood hooded nearby. “My devices could sense events of dark magical power, pinpointing their location. When that happened, I watched in the Mirror. Eventually, I became involved, travelling to the place where the agents of Slytherin met the Gatekeeper. I suspect that you witnessed this, Mr. Potter, along with Miss Weasley and Mr. Deedle. I found them in an unplotted forest, at the tomb of Tom Riddle. There, the Gatekeeper had revived the memory of Voldemort, forcing it to speak through the grave statue. The Gatekeeper demanded to be led to the human who would best serve as its host. The statue told of the boy who had defeated Voldemort, and the Gatekeeper assumed that this boy, Harry Potter, would be the logical choice for its host. I sensed it turning toward you, Harry, homing in on you…” Merlin looked up at James’ father. “It located you without even leaving the grave. It sensed you in the web of humanity, and determined that it could not have you. I felt it turning you over in what passes for its mind, felt it dismiss you, not as unworthy, but as unconquerable. It knew it could never bend you to its purposes.”
Harry visibly shivered. “I remember that,” he said in a low, wondering voice. “I was in the Auror offices at the Ministry, talking to Kirkham Wood. All of a sudden, it was like I was outside myself, looking down on my body as if I’d been shoved aside while something else shuffled through the contents of my brain. It only lasted a few seconds, and then suddenly, it was over. Kirkham hadn’t noticed a thing. I decided I’d imagined it, or that I was just a bit overstressed. But it must have been that… thing… examining me.”
Merlin nodded. “It would take a powerful wizard to sense it. The Gatekeeper numbs its prey so that few ever remember its passing. Surely, that fact alone was part of why it knew it could never claim you, Harry. So it moved on. Even as that demented Lucius Malfoy spoke to it, beckoning for it to join them, telling it that they had prepared a Bloodline to be its host, I sensed it moving on, past you, Harry, looking further… looking for you, James.”
“Me?” James exclaimed, shocked. “Why?”
“It makes perfect sense if you think about it from the Gatekeeper’s view. The prophecies all claim that the host of the Gatekeeper would be a child of great loss, or an orphan. It sought out Voldemort, the orphan who most represented the Gatekeeper’s aims, and found him a corpse. Thus, it logically sought out the one powerful enough to have bested Voldemort, and found yet another orphan: Harry Potter. He, however, was too strong, and therefore of no more use to the Gatekeeper than the dead Voldemort. So it looked just a bit further, to the first-born son of Harry Potter. And it found, interestingly, that that very boy had recently experienced his own tragedy, the sudden loss of your grandfather. Further, it sensed that you were in attendance on the very night that the Gatekeeper had arrived in the earth, and that you, James Potter, had even helped facilitate its descent.”
“But I didn’t mean to!” James blurted. “I was trying to stop it!”
Merlin held up a hand. “It matters not to the Gatekeeper. I sensed it homing in on you, learning of you, all in that moment in the graveyard, even as Lucius Malfoy was speaking to it. I sensed you in its thoughts, James, and that is when I stepped out into the open, to distract it. I called to the Gatekeeper, identifying myself as the bearer of the Beacon Stone. It remembered me from my time in the Void. The first thing it did was ask for you, James. I told it as sternly as I could that you knew nothing of it, that you would never consent to be its host. But it laughed. It told me that you had already sought it out, and that you were watching at that very moment. Lucius Malfoy looked and saw you, reflected in the window of an abandoned shack nearby. He pointed at you, and the Gatekeeper smiled. It had known you’d been watching from the moment it turned its attention to finding you, James. I turned and saw your reflection for myself. I knew I had to get back, to warn you, but you closed the Focusing Book, shutting me out. It took me much of a day to get back to the castle by other methods, and by then, I had determined a rather different opinion of you, I am afraid.”
“You’d decided I was on the Gatekeeper’s side?” James asked, perplexed.
“Not consciously,” Merlin answered. “No more than Petra Morganstern was on the Gatekeeper’s side. I decided you were being manipulated by it, and by your own desires. I regret to admit this, James, but I feared that your desire to be like your father was being exploited, used by the Gatekeeper and the forces of chaos. When your mother’s Howler went off, telling us all that she believed you’d stolen the Invisibility Cloak and the Marauder’s Map, it further convinced me that you were, in fact, working toward the Gatekeeper’s ends. I decided to watch and to wait, hoping that I was wrong about you. And then, when your own sister went missing on the night of the play, I knew that it was the moment of truth. I could scarcely believe you’d harm her, but those in the thrall of deception have done even worse things than murder their sisters. I planned to take you away from the school, removing you from whatever plan the Gatekeeper had for you. You foiled me, of course, by the simple expedient of being young and quick. Even then, I could have taken you had I truly wished to. In my deepest heart, however, I had decided to trust you—and fate. It was my own trial of the cord, much like your test, James, in the cave of my cache. You chose to hold onto the golden cord even though letting go would have been far easier. Thus, I chose to hold onto the one thin cord of trust in you as well. If I did so foolishly, then the world would not last long enough to blame me. As it turns out, however, that moment of trust was indeed wise. In fact, I believe it saved us all.”
James blew out a sigh. “Wow. So that was why you were so secretive and scary that day in your office.”
“The portrait told me it was a mistake,” Merlin admitted, glancing aside. “Dumbledore did not approve of my attitude toward you, and told me so upon your departure.”
From the wall behind James, Dumbledore’s voice spoke. “I was nothing if not respectful, Merlinus. But yes, I did warn you that you doubted the boy at your own peril.”
Merlin nodded. “Yes, you made your point quite clear, as I recall.”
“I am cursed with the burden of helping those who’ve succeeded me to not make the same mistakes I did,” Dumbledore said, looking at Merlin, then Harry. “I myself only learned these lessons mere days before my death. Too late to make much of a difference, although I did what little I could.”
Harry nodded, unsmiling. “So what is to be done with Petra Morganstern, then?”
Merlin shrugged, returning to his desk. “She is guilty of possession of stolen property in the form of the Invisibility Cloak and kidnapping Lily Potter. As Head Auror, the owner of the Cloak, and the girl’s father, Harry Potter, I might ask you the same thing.”
Harry thought seriously for a long moment. Finally, he looked at James. “I won’t be pressing any charges,” he said. “James, do you agree?”
James nodded. “She didn’t know what she was doing, Dad. And when I showed her how she was being deceived, she turned things around really quickly. She doesn’t want to hurt anyone.”
“Be very aware of what you are doing, my friends,” Merlin said quietly. “Miss Morganstern is a very complicated young woman.”
“But she isn’t evil,” James said emphatically.
“No more than you are, James, or your father, or I myself. And yet I, at least, have wrought great evil, all in the name of love. We are al
l capable of evil, depending on the choices we make and the philosophies we embrace. The greater the potential for good in any of us, the greater the opposite potential for wickedness. Miss Morganstern has, to say the very least, great, great potential. The only question is how she will choose to invest it.”
“But she did the right thing,” Harry said. “In my experience, those who choose to do right usually get addicted to it. The soul of Voldemort has a toe-hold in her, yes; she can’t help that. But she has proven that it isn’t enough to rule her.”
“It is enough to divide her,” Merlin answered. “And she will never conquer that one small part of her that belongs to him. It will always be there, wheedling, poisoning, tempting, lying. Further, his power is her power. She has shown that she uses that power—granted, for good, so far, such as in healing Albus’ leg—but how long will she be able to control it? Even now, she leaves these walls to return to a loveless and bitter life. She has denied herself the return of her own parents so that Lily and you, James, might live. Meanwhile, she watches you go home to loving parents and a life she can only dream of. Don’t think that, despite her actions, she will not lie awake on cold, lonely nights, pining hopelessly for her dead parents, and wondering, wondering, if on that fateful night in the Chamber of Secrets she made the wrong choice.”
James shook his head, not wanting to believe it. “She’d never think that. Petra is good.”
“She wants to be good,” Merlin agreed. “I will grant you that, James. Let us hope that that is enough.”
Harry approached James and put his hand on his son’s shoulder. “Scorpius has agreed to help us locate his Grandfather Lucius. He’s actually a little more enthusiastic about it than I’m comfortable with, to tell you the truth, but his grandfather’s lies and manipulations have turned the boy into quite a valuable ally for us. Still,” he said, turning his attention to Merlin, “what of Tabitha Corsica? She’s returned the map. Apart from Stunning Ralph, she hasn’t technically done anything wrong whatsoever, despite her best efforts. I have no jurisdiction over her at all.”
“Leave her to me,” Merlin replied, sitting down at his desk again. “She is not so far gone that she cannot be helped. I have known someone like her.”
“You’re kidding!” James said, getting to his feet as his father prepared to leave. “You think Petra’s going to go all Dark Lord on us, but you think there’s hope for Corsica just because you’ve ‘known someone like her’?”
Merlin looked up at James, his brow lowered. “Perhaps I misspoke,” he said, his voice rumbling. “What I meant to say was I have been someone like her.”
James stared at the Headmaster, frowning in consternation, but Harry steered him away with his hand. “Come on, son,” he said, smiling a little. “The Headmaster has a lot to do. I saw your performance on the Omnioculars, by the way. You’re quite the little actor. Makes me wonder about the time you told me you had nothing to do with that broken clock in the parlor, eh?”
James changed the subject as quickly as he could. “So are you heading home right away?”
“No, actually,” Harry answered, closing Merlin’s door. “I’m going to check in on Albus down in the Slytherin quarters. And then I, er, owe someone a visit, apparently.”
James began to tromp down the spiral staircase. “Who’s that?”
“Moaning Myrtle,” his dad sighed, smiling. “Rose insisted. She said she promised. Just come and get me if I’m in there for more than an hour, all right?”
20. THE LONG RIDE HOME
The last week of school went by as if blown by a hard wind. Zane stayed over, spending a night both with James and Ralph in their dormitories, sleeping on cots provided by the house-elves, and staying the rest of the time in his old house dormitory. The Ravenclaws were happy to see him, and Horace Birch proudly proclaimed him a lifelong Ravenclaw “despite the fact you’re a ruddy Yank and a coffee drinker, even though everybody knows all true Ravenclaws live on tea and Butterbeer.”
To James’ delight, a review of The Triumvirate appeared in the Daily Prophet, carefully glossing over the kidnapping of Lily as ‘an unfortunate scare involving a temporarily lost child’ since she had turned up later that evening apparently unhurt and perfectly cheerful. The review had called the play a ‘surprisingly inventive and entertaining bit of academic theatre’ despite the somewhat controversial Muggle production techniques implemented by the director, Muggle Studies professor Tina Grenadine Curry. This was blithely forgiven when the reporter had discovered that the Muggle generators, which were purportedly operating the stage lights, were running rather mysteriously without a drop of petrol in them, therefore rendering the nonmagical claims of the production completely moot.
“Here we go,” Rose said, pointing at the newspaper at breakfast on the last day of school. “‘James Sirius Potter, portraying the part of the beloved Treus, proved that neither youth nor inexperience can prevent a delightful performance in someone so well-trained and obviously inspired. Young Mr. Potter’s surprising Thespian talent leads this reporter to muse that, in his case, the apple certainly did not fall far from the tree, even if it did perhaps fall in an entirely different vocational orchard.’”
“That’s the fifth time you’ve read that,” James said, grinning and red-faced.
“Not that you mind,” Zane said, nudging his friend.
Ralph asked, “What’s it mean about James falling down in a different orchard?”
“It means James is as talented as his father,” Rose proclaimed, folding the paper, “Just in some quite different ways. No one could ever imagine Harry Potter performing in a play, could they?”
“I suppose not,” James agreed, still grinning sheepishly. “But I think that’s about enough acting for me.”
Zane shook his head. “You say that now, but you just wait. Pretty soon, you’ll start missing the spotlight. You know, my dad works in the Muggle film industry. He could probably hook you up with a part in a movie. There’s even talk of remaking the movies based on that magical book series. You’d be perfect for it!”
“Not a chance,” James insisted, but he was drowned out by the chorus of enthusiastic agreement. He decided not to fight it, and in the end, everyone agreed that, in fact, Albus would probably better fit the part, despite the fact that he couldn’t act as well as James.
“I’d do it though,” Albus said seriously. “I could even do my own spells! Would they allow that, you think?”
Zane shook his head as everyone laughed.
That night, James enlisted Zane’s help in removing the lightning bolt scar from his voodoo doll. Carefully, Zane used his wand to magically scrub the marking from the tiny burlap forehead. Strangely, James could feel the progress of it. It tingled, and the tingle diminished as the scar vanished. Finally, Zane handed James the doll, nodding at a job well done.
“Clean as the wind-driven snow,” he proclaimed.
James examined it. Sure enough, there was no sign that the scar marking had ever been there. He wrapped the doll in a cloth and put it in the bottom of his trunk. He wasn’t sure what he would do with it now that he knew it could be used rather dangerously, but he suspected he would simply give it back to his mum. Now that she knew to keep an eye on it, he felt confident that there was no one who’d take better care of it.
At dinner on the last day of school, Gryffindor was awarded the House Cup, primarily because of late points added to their score by Merlin for James and Petra’s performance in the play. James was very happy about the award, and as the Gryffindor table exploded into applause, congratulating James and Petra, he felt, perhaps for the first time, that he was living up to his father’s legend as a Gryffindor. At the end of the Gryffindor table, floating uncertainly but with a nervous smile on his face, the ghost of Cedric Diggory waved at him. The Grey Lady wafted next to him, her pale face inscrutable but apparently content.
For the evening’s entertainment, the Hufflepuffs put on a very amusing puppet show rendition of Th
e Triumvirate, making affectionate fun of everyone involved. James laughed until tears ran from his eyes. When he looked to share the joke with Petra, however, her seat was empty. He didn’t see her at all the rest of the night.
Finally, the next morning, it was time for the trip home. Zane had his small bag packed, whistling lightly as James lugged his trunk out to the steps.
“It’ll be great to ride the train again,” Zane said, smiling happily. “I miss that old cart lady. She wasn’t there when I rode into Hogsmeade with your mum, you know that? Apparently, she only works the official Hogwarts Express runs. Better profit margin, I guess.”
“Hmph,” James said, plopping onto his trunk. “I didn’t know that.”
“I bet she’ll be there more often, though, once they open up the new route. I saw the place where they’re expanding the track through the mountains. It’ll connect with some new wizarding village over on the other side of some gorge. I can’t remember the name of the gorge or the village, but your mum said once they finish the track, it’ll save travelers loads of commute time and Floo powder. I bet the cart lady’ll have a lot more customers then.”
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