“I hear we’re having goose for dinner tonight!” Ted called to James as the bus careened through a busy intersection.
“Yeah!” James called back. “Kreacher insisted on a full course meal our first night back!”
“Gotta love that ugly little brute!” Ted yelled appreciatively. “How’s Ralph doing?”
James glanced around. Ralph was still sprawled on the bed with the sleeping wizard. “It’s all right,” he yelled, clutching the bed with both hands. “I threw up in the souvenir sleeping cap they gave me.”
The Knight Bus screamed around the corner where St. Chad’s Street met Argyle Square, then jammed to a halt. If anything, the sudden cessation of motion was as jarring as the ride itself. The gigantic purple bus sat quietly and primly, puttering a dainty cloud of exhaust. The doors shuttled open and Ted, Victoire, James, and Ralph clambered out, the latter a little drunkenly. Frank, despite the rankled look he shot Ted, stacked their trunks carefully on the sidewalk and bid them a happy Christmas. The doors cranked shut and a moment later, the Knight Bus leapt down the street, streaking around a lorry and performing something rather like a pirouette at the intersection. Three seconds later, it was gone.
“That worked as well as could be expected,” Ted said heartily, grabbing his and Victoire’s trunks by the handle and yanking them toward a line of dilapidated row houses.
“What number is it?” Ralph said, puffing and dragging his huge trunk.
“Number twelve. Right here,” James replied. He had been to the old headquarters so many times he’d forgotten that it was invisible to most people. Ralph stopped at the base of the steps, his brow furrowed and frowning.
“Oh yeah,” James said, turning around. “OK, Ralph. You can’t see it yet, but it’s right here. Number twelve Grimmauld Place, right here between eleven and thirteen. It used to belong to my dad’s godfather, Sirius Black, but he willed it to Dad. It was the headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix, back in the day when they were fighting Voldemort. They buried it with the best Secrecy Spells and Disillusionment Charms all the most powerful good wizards at the time could conjure. It was the best kept secret place of the Order, until right at the end, when a Death Eater followed my aunt here using Side-Along Apparition. Anyway, it officially still belongs to Dad, but we don’t live here most of the time. Kreacher keeps it up when we’re not here.”
“I didn’t understand about every third word of that,” Ralph said, sighing, “but I’m cold. How do we get in?”
James reached down for Ralph’s hand. Ralph gave it to him, and James pulled him up onto the first step of the landing leading into number twelve. Ralph stumbled, regained his footing and looked up. His eyes widened and a grin of delight spread across his face. James had no memory of his first visit to the old headquarters, but he knew from other people’s descriptions how the doorway revealed itself the first time you arrived, how number twelve simply pushed numbers eleven and thirteen aside like a man shouldering his way through a crowd. James couldn’t help grinning back at Ralph’s wonderment.
“I love being a wizard,” Ralph said meaningfully.
As James slammed the door, his mum strode quickly toward him from the hall, wiping her hands on a towel. “James!” she cried, gathering him into her arms and nearly yanking him off his feet.
“Mum,” James said, embarrassed and pleased. “Come on, you’re gonna melt the Chocolate Frog in my shirt pocket already.”
“You’re not too old to give your mum a kiss after being gone for four months, you know,” she chided him.
“You know how it is,” Ted exclaimed mournfully. “One moment, they’re yanking your apron strings, the next, they’re asking to borrow the broom to go snogging with some crumpet. Where does the time go?”
James’ mum grinned, turning to Ted and embracing him as well. “Ted, you never change. Or shut up. Welcome. And you too, Victoire. Adorable hat, by the way.” Ralph groaned, but James’ mum went on before Victoire could offer any pointed explanation. “And you are Ralph, of course. Harry mentioned you, and of course, James has told me loads about you in his letters. My name’s Ginny. I hear you are quite the wand master.”
“Where is Dad, by the way?” James asked quickly, cutting Victoire off again.
“He picked up Andromeda after work today. They should be home soon enough. Everyone else will be here tomorrow.”
“James!” two smaller voices chimed in unison, to the accompaniment of thundering footsteps. “Ted! Victoire!” Lily and Albus shoved past their mum. “What’d you bring us?” Albus demanded, stopping in front of James.
“Direct from Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry,” James said grandly, “I bring you both��� hugs!” He grabbed Albus in a bear hug. Albus pushed and struggled, simultaneously laughing and annoyed.
“No! I wanted some Drooble’s Best Blowing Gum from the cart lady! I told you!”
Ted squatted down and squeezed Lily. “I got you something you’ll love, my dear.”
“What is it?” she asked, suddenly shy.
“You’ll have to wait until Christmas, won’t you? Your mummy’s all stocked up on dragon kibble, isn’t she?”
“Ted Lupin!” Ginny snapped. “Don’t get her hopes up, you rogue. Now come on, all of you. Kreacher’s been in the basement all afternoon preparing what he calls ‘a fitting and proper tea service’. Don’t fill up, though, or you’ll not be hungry for the goose he cooked, and he’ll sulk all week.”
Harry and Ted’s grandmum, Andromeda Tonks, arrived half an hour later, and the rest of the evening was a whirlwind of food, happy laughter, and catching up. Harry and Ginny, it turned out, hadn’t even listened to the Hogwarts debate, despite what James had assumed. Andromeda Tonks had, though, and was full of endless vitriol for Tabitha Corsica and her team. Fortunately, she had no idea whatsoever that Ralph had also been on the team, and Ralph was all too happy to allow her to continue in that ignorance.
“Don’t worry,” Ted murmured to Ralph over dessert, “if anybody says anything, I’ll tell her you were a spy operating undercover. She loves espionage, does the old dear.”
Kreacher hadn’t changed a single iota. He bowed low to James, one hand over his heart, the other spread wide. “Master James, come back from his first year of schooling, he has,” he warbled in his bullfrog voice. “Kreacher has prepared Master’s quarters just the way he likes them. Would Master and his friend care for a watercress sandwich?”
Kreacher had, as usual, kept the house in exceptional order, and had even gone to the trouble to decorate for the holidays. Unfortunately, Kreacher’s concept of good cheer was a bit rustic, and the result would have amused Zane endlessly. The severed heads of the previous house-elves, which still hung in the hallway as a testament to the original pureblood owners of the estate, had been dressed with fake, white beards and conical, green caps with jingle bells on the tips.
“Kreacher had bewitched them to sing holiday songs, too, he did,” Kreacher told James and Ralph a bit petulantly. “But the missus decided that that was perhaps a bit too��� festive. Kreacher liked it, though, just the same.” He seemed to be angling to be allowed to reinstate the caroling heads. James assured Kreacher that it had been a wonderfully inventive idea and he’d talk to his mum about it. He was, in fact, morbidly curious to see and hear the heads in action.
Both Lily and Albus followed James and Ralph around most of the night, begging to see what the boys could do with their newly learned skills.
“Come on, James!” Albus demanded. “Show us a levitation! Levitate Lily!”
“No!” Lily cried. “Levitate Albus! Fly him out the window!”
“You both know I can’t do magic once I’m off the train and officially out of Hogwarts,” James said wearily. “I’ll get in trouble.”
“Dad’s Head Auror, you git. You probably won’t even get a warning.”
“It’s irresponsible,” James said seriously. “You get older and you’ll know what that means.”
&
nbsp; “You can’t do it, can you?” Albus taunted. “James can’t do a levitation! Some wizard you are. First Squib in the Potter family. Mum will die of shame.”
“You’re the same Albus-blabbus you ever were, you little skrewt.”
“Don’t call me that!”
“What, skrewt or Albus-blabbus?” James smiled. “You know Albus-blabbus is your real name, don’t you? It’s on your birth certificate. I saw it.”
“Albus-blabbus!” Lily sang, dancing around her older brother.
Albus jumped on James, wrestling him to the floor.
Later, as James and Ralph headed to James’ bedroom for the night, they passed a curtain that seemed to be drawn over a section of wall. A sleepy muttering came from behind it.
“Old Mrs. Black,” James explained. “Crazy old nutter. Wigs out about people desecrating the house of her fathers and stuff every time she sees any of us. Dad and Neville have done everything they could think of to get the old bat off the wall, but she’s stuck there right good. Even considered cutting out the section of wall with the portrait on it, but it’s a main wall. Cutting her out would probably bring the next floor right down on top of us. Besides, strange as it may seem, Kreacher’s rather attached to her, since she was his old mistress. So I suppose she’s part of the family forever.”
Ralph peeked tentatively behind the curtain. He furrowed his brow. “Is she��� watching television?”
James shrugged. “We discovered that a few years back. We had the front door open because we were moving in a new sofa. She saw a telly through the window across the street and shut right up for the first time in weeks. So we hired a wizard artist to come and paint one right into her portrait. Crazy old bat loves the chat shows. Ever since then, well, she’s been a lot more bearable.”
Ralph slowly let the curtain drape back over the portrait. A man’s voice behind it was saying, “And when did you first notice that your dog had Tourette’s syndrome, Mrs. Drakemont?”
Kreacher had arranged a cot for Ralph in James’ room. His trunk was placed neatly at the end of it, and there was a ribbon-wrapped pinecone on each pillow, apparently Kreacher’s idea of a Christmas mint.
“This used to be my dad’s godfather’s room,” James said sleepily, once they had settled down.
“Cool,” Ralph muttered. “Good guy, was he? Or was he a nutter, like the old witch in the portrait?”
“One of the best guys ever, according to Dad. We’ll have to tell you about him sometime. He was wanted for murder for over a decade.”
There was a minute of silence, and then Ralph’s voice spoke in the darkness. “You wizards can be pretty bloody confusing, you know that?”
James grinned. A minute later, both of them were asleep.
11. The Three Relics
After the initial excitement of travel and arrivals, Christmas break at Grimmauld Place became rather humdrum. James introduced Ralph to everyone, and Ralph very shortly became simply one more of the throng of friends and family that crammed the house. On the Wednesday before Christmas, Uncle Ron and Aunt Hermione arrived, along with their children, Hugo and Rose. They were followed shortly thereafter by Uncle Bill and Aunt Fleur, Victoire’s parents. James was very fond of them all, and even though the house was beginning to feel rather strained to capacity, he was thrilled they were staying over through the break.
“It’s a good thing Mum and Dad are off with Charlie this year,” Ron commented, lugging his and Hermione’s luggage up the steps to their third-floor bedroom. “This place seems so much smaller than it did when we were kids.”
“It’s just you who’s bigger, Ron,” Hermione chided, elbowing him affectionately in the stomach. “You’ve got no room to complain.”
“I’m not complaining. At least we get a room. If Percy was here, he’d have to bunk in with Kreacher.”
James and Ralph, along with James’ siblings and cousins, spent their days by the fire, playing wizard chess with Uncle Ron or roaming the nearby streets, performing last-minute errands and Christmas shopping with Ginny or Aunt Hermione. Fleur and Bill enlisted James and Ralph’s help in picking out and transporting a Christmas tree, which had looked merely charmingly plump outside, but had taken up twothirds of the main hall when they’d brought it in.
“Seems a shame to do it,” Bill said, producing his wand and pointing it at the tree. “Reducio!”
The tree shrunk by a third, but managed to maintain its density, so that it ended up looking rather more like a Christmas bush than a tree. Ralph, James, Rose, and Victoire spent most of the day before Christmas Eve stringing popcorn, decorating the tree, and wrapping presents. That night, Hermione gathered the entire household with the intention of bundling everyone up and going Christmas caroling. Neither Ron nor Harry, however, were particularly overjoyed about the idea.
“Give us a break, Hermione,” Harry said, dropping into an easy chair by the fire. “We’ve been on our feet all day.”
“Yeah,” Ron chimed in, bolstered a bit, “it’s just the start of the holiday. We haven’t even had a chance to sit down yet, have we?”
“Ronald Weasley, you get your bottom into your coat and hat,” Hermione replied, tossing Ron’s things onto his lap. “We only get the whole family together once a year anymore, if we’re lucky, and I’m not going to let you sit on your bum all night just as if you were at home. Besides,” she added a bit truculently, “you said on the way here that you thought caroling sounded fun.”
“That was before I knew you were serious,” Ron muttered, climbing to his feet and shrugging on his coat.
“You too,” Ginny smiled, grabbing Harry’s hand and pulling him out of the chair. “You can lounge around all Christmas day if you wish. Tonight, we’re going to have some fun, whether you like it or not.”
Harry groaned, but allowed Ginny to work his coat onto him. She punched him playfully in the stomach and he grinned, grabbing his scarf. To Ron’s and Harry’s apparent annoyance, Bill was raring to go, performing scales in the hallway, his hand on his chest. Fleur, dressed as resplendently as her daughter, smiled adoringly at him. As they headed out the door, James heard Uncle Ron mutter to his dad, “I swear he acts like that as much to spite us as to impress her.”
The night had turned out so perfectly and quintessentially Christmas-like that James wondered if his mum and Aunt Hermione had somehow bewitched it. Fat, silent snowflakes had begun to fall, muffling the distant city sounds and blanketing the grimy walls and sidewalks with sparkling white. Hermione passed out sheets of music, and then arranged everyone so that the youngest were in front and the oldest and tallest were in back. “If Mum weren’t still around,” Ron said to Harry in a low voice, “I’d swear Hermione was channeling her.” During a practice chorus, Hermione became annoyed at Ted, who insisted on singing amusing variations of the lyrics, to the great delight of Albus and Hugo. Finally satisfied, she led the troupe through the streets surrounding Grimmauld Place, ringing doorbells and directing the choruses. Most of the Muggles who answered their doors stood and listened with something like strained amusement on their faces. Once, an old man with a large hearing aid yelled at them that he didn’t support any charities except the Hortense Home for Feral Felines, and then slammed his door.
“McGonagall owes him a Christmas card, then,” Ted said, barely missing a beat.
James waved a hand at Ralph before he could ask. “Animagus. I’ll explain later.”
Christmas morning dawned with dazzling brightness, the sun turning the snow-frosted windows into blinding tableaux. Ralph and James met Albus and Rose on their way down the steps to breakfast.
“It’s no use,” Rose said dolefully. “Mum swears she’ll Crucio anyone who tries to open a present before breakfast.”
James blinked. “Aunt Hermione said that?”
“Well,” answered Albus, “not in so many words. But she’s really in a snit ever since she caught us using a pair of Uncle George’s z-ray spectacles on the presents to see what was in them. She
just about turned Dementor on him. It was scary!”
“Uncle George is here?” James asked, trotting down the rest of the stairs and heading for the kitchen. “Excellent!”
“Yeah, but he brought Katie Bell with him,” Albus said, pronouncing the name with his most ingratiatingly snarky voice. Albus didn’t so much disapprove of Katie Bell as he disapproved of anyone threatening to alter George Weasley’s impish bachelorhood.
As James and Ralph turned the corner into the old kitchen, they heard George’s voice saying, “That’s the sort of publicity that has allowed triple W to grow to two locations and become the wizarding world’s leading joke shop, you know. You can’t turn down a primo showstopper at a broadcast event like the debate. It’s all about the spectacle.”
Katie Bell, an attractive woman with long brown hair, stirred her tea. “You should’ve heard the way Myron Madrigal described it on the wireless,” she said, stifling a smile.
Ted scowled, then his curiosity got the better of him. “What’d he say?”
“He called it ‘a puerile display of monumental poor taste’,” George said proudly, raising his juice glass in a toast.
“That’s beautiful!” Ted grinned, clinking his glass to George’s.
“James, good to see you!” George said, clapping his juice onto the table and patting the seat next to him. “Have a seat and tell us how the old alma mater is treating you.”
“Great,” James said, sitting down and grabbing a piece of toast. “George, this is my friend, Ralph.”
“Oh, we know all about you, don’t we?” George said, leaning toward Ralph and tapping the side of his nose. “Our man on the inside, eh? Infiltrating the slimy underbelly of the Slytherin war machine. Spying and sabotaging left and right, no doubt.”
Ralph rolled his eyes at Ted.
“I didn’t say anything,” Ted said primly. “I happened to mention to him that you were on Team B, way back when we ordered our little surprise package. He figured out the rest on his own when he found out you were here.”
James Potter and the Hall of the Elders' Crossing Page 28