Zane listened with intense interest. “It makes sense,” he finally said in a low, awed voice.
“What?” James asked.
“How Merlin might’ve done it. Don’t you see? Professor Jackson himself talked about it on our first day of class!” He was getting excited. His eyes were wide, darting from James to Ralph to the ghost of Cedric, who was still seated on the edge of the bed.
Ralph shook his head. “I don’t get it. I don’t have Technomancy this year.”
“Merlin didn’t die,” Zane said emphatically. “He Disapparated!”
James was puzzled. “That doesn’t make sense. Any wizard can Apparate. What’s so special about that?”
“Remember what Jackson told us that first day? Apparition is instantaneous for the wizard whose doing it, even though it takes a little time for the wizard’s bits to fly apart then reassemble at a new place. If a wizard Disapparates without determining his new center-point, he never Reapparates at all, right? He just stays stuck in nothingness forever!”
“Well, sure,” James agreed, remembering the lecture, but failing to see the point.
Zane was nearly vibrating with excitement. “Merlin didn’t Disapparate to a place,” he said meaningfully. “He Disapparated to a time and a set of circumstances!”
Ralph and James boggled, considering the implications. Zane went on. “At the end of your vision, you said Merlin told Austramaddux to keep the relics and to watch for the time to be right. Then when the time came, the relics were supposed to be gathered again at the Hall of Elder’s Crossing. You see? Merlin was setting up the time and circumstances for his Reapparition. What you described at the very end, James, was Merlin Disapparating into oblivion,” Zane paused, thinking hard. “All these centuries, he’s just been suspended in time, stuck in everywhereness, waiting for the right circumstances for his Reapparition. To him, no time has passed at all!”
Ralph looked at the trunk at the end of James’ bed. “Then it’s for real,” he said. “They could actually do it. They could bring him back.”
“Not anymore,” James said, smiling mirthlessly. “We’ve got the robe. Without all the relics, the circumstances won’t be right. They can’t do anything.”
As soon as James had heard Zane explain it, it made perfect sense, especially in the context of the Threshold Marker vision. Suddenly, his possession of the robe had become even more important, and he couldn’t help wondering at the remarkable series of lucky circumstances that’d led to them obtaining it. From the briefcase Ralph had discovered in just the nick of time to Zane’s remarkably effective Visumineptio charm, James had the strongest sense that he, Zane, and Ralph were being guided in their goal of thwarting the Merlin plot. But who was helping them?
“By the way,” James said to the ghost of Cedric, once Ralph and Zane had fallen into an animated discussion about Merlin’s Disapparition. “You said you were sent to help me. Who sent you?”
Cedric had stood and was fading a bit, but not much. He smiled at James and said, Someone I’m not supposed to mention, although I think you can probably guess. Someone who’s been watching.
Snape, thought James. The portrait of Snape had sent Cedric to help him when he’d gotten sucked into the Threshold Marker. But how had he known? James thought about that for a long time after Zane and Ralph had headed back to their own rooms, long after the rest of the Gryffindors had climbed the stairs and plopped into their beds. No answer came that night, however, and eventually James slept.
For the next several days, the three boys went about their normal school activities in a sort of triumphant fog. James left Jackson’s bag, with the relic robe inside, locked in his trunk and protected with Zane’s Locking Spell. Considering the effectiveness of the Visumineptio charm on the fake case, they had no serious concerns that anyone would even be looking for the real briefcase. Jackson continued to carry the old red rockhound bag with the Hiram & Blattwott’s label on it to classes and meals, with no indication that he thought anything was out of the ordinary. Further, no one else spared it a second glance, even though Jackson had been seen carrying the black case with his name plate on the side for months. Finally, on Saturday afternoon, James, Ralph, and Zane met in the Gryffindor common room to discuss their next steps.
“There’re really only two questions, now,” Zane said, leaning over the table upon which they were ostensibly doing their homework. “Where is the Hall of Elder’s Crossing? And where is the third relic, Merlin’s staff?”
James nodded. “I’ve been thinking about that last one. The throne is under the guard of Madame Delacroix. The robe was under the guard of Professor Jackson. The third relic must be under the guard of the third conspirator. My guess is it’s somebody else here on the grounds, an inside person. What if it’s the Slytherin who used the name Austramaddux on Ralph’s GameDeck? They’d have to be aware of the plot if they used that name, and if they are aware of it, they’re in on it.”
“But who?” Ralph asked. “I didn’t see who took it. It was just gone. Besides, the staff of Merlin would be pretty hard to hide, wouldn’t it? If he was as big as you said he was in your vision, James, then the thing must be six feet tall if it’s an inch. How do you hide a six-foot magical lightning rod like that?”
James shook his head. “I haven’t the foggiest. Still, it’s up to you to keep a look out, Ralph. Like Ted said, you’re our inside man.”
Ralph slumped. Zane doodled on a piece of parchment. “So what about question one?” he said without looking up. “Where is the Hall of Elder’s Crossing?”
James and Ralph exchanged blank looks. James said, “No clue, again. But I think there’s a third question we need to think about, too.”
“As if the first two weren’t tricky enough,” Ralph muttered.
Zane glanced up and James saw he was doodling the gate to the Grotto Keep. “What’s the third question?”
“Why haven’t they done it yet?” James whispered. “If they believe they have all three relics, why haven’t they just gone on down to wherever this Hall of Elder’s Crossing is and tried to call Merlin back from his thousand-year Disapparition?”
None of them had any answers, but they agreed it was an important question. Zane flipped his doodle over, revealing a drabble of scribbled notes and diagrams from Arithmancy class. “I’m checking the Ravenclaw library, but between homework, classes, Quidditch, debate and Constellations Club, I hardly have two minutes left to rub together.”
Ralph dropped his quill on the table and leaned back, stretching. “How’s that coming, anyway? You’re the only one with any contact with Madame Delacroix. What’s she like?”
“Like a gypsy mummy with a pulse,” Zane replied. “She and Trelawney are supposed to be sharing Constellations Club, like Divination class, but they’ve started trading on and off instead of teaching it together. Works a lot better, since they sort of cancel each other out, anyway. Trelawney just has us sketch astrological symbols and look at the planets through the telescope to ‘ascertain the moods and manners of the planetary brethren’.” James, who knew Sybil Trelawney as a distant family friend, grinned at Zane’s affectionate impression of her. Zane went on, “Delacroix, though, she has us plotting star charts and measuring the color of starlight wavelengths, working out the exact timing of some big astronomical event.”
“Oh, yeah,” James remembered. “The alignment of the planets. Petra and Ted told me about that. They’re in Divination with her. Seems like the voodoo queen’s really into that kind of stuff.”
“She’s the anti-Trelawney, that’s for sure. With her, it’s all math and calculations. We know the date it’ll happen, but she wants us to factor out the exact timing right down to the minute. Pure busywork if you ask me. She’s a little kooky about it.”
“She’s kooky in general, if you ask me,” Ralph stated.
“I think she might be onto us,” James said in a hushed voice. “I’ve seen her looking at me sometimes.”
Zane raised his eyeb
rows and pointed at his eyes. “She’s blind, if you remember. She’s not looking at anything, mate.”
“I know,” James said, undeterred. “But I swear that she knows something. I think she has ways of seeing that don’t have anything to do with her eyes.”
“Let’s not freak ourselves out,” Ralph said quickly. “This is freaky enough already. She can’t know anything. If she did, she’d act on it, right? So forget about her.”
The next day, James and Ralph went to visit Hagrid in his cabin, ostensibly to inquire after Grawp and Prechka. Hagrid was rebuilding the wagon Prechka had accidentally destroyed and was glad of the break. He invited them in and served them tea and biscuits while he warmed himself by the fire, Trife lying over his feet and occasionally licking Hagrid’s lowered hand.
“Oh, it’s all ups and downs for them,” Hagrid said, as if the tumults of giant courtship were a quaint mystery. “They fought fer a while over the holiday. Lovers’ spat over an elk carcass. Grawpy wanted the head, but Prechka wanted to make the antlers into a bit o’ jewelry.”
Ralph took a break from blowing steam off his tea. “She wanted to make jewelry out of elk antlers?”
“Well, I say jewelry,” Hagrid said, raising his huge palms. “It’s a tricky concept. Giants use the same sound fer jewelry an’ weapons. Comes to the same thing when yeh’re twenty feet tall, I s’pose. Anyway, they worked that all out and now they’re happy as can be again.”
James asked, “Is she still living up in the foothills, Hagrid?”
“Sure she is,” Hagrid said, a little reproachfully. “She’s an hon’rable girl, is Prechka. And Grawp, why, he bides his time in his hovel most days. Got ‘imself a right nice firepit and a lean-to of birches. These things take time. Giant love is��� well, it’s a delicate thing, don’cher know.”
Ralph coughed a little on his tea.
“Hey, Hagrid,” James said, changing the topic. “You’ve been around Hogwarts for a long time. You probably know lots of secret stuff about the school and the castle, don’t you?”
Hagrid settled into his chair. “Well, sure. Nobody knows the grounds s’well as myself. Except maybe Argus Filch. I started out as a student, I did, a-ways back before even yer dad was born.”
James knew he had to be very careful. “Yeah, that’s what I thought. Tell me, Hagrid, if somebody had something really magical they wanted to hide in the castle somewhere���”
Hagrid stopped petting Trife. He turned his great shaggy head toward James slowly. “And what would a first-year pup like yerself be needin’ to hide, might I ask?”
“Oh, not me, Hagrid,” James said quickly. “Somebody else. I’m just curious.”
Hagrid’s beetle black eyes twinkled. “I see. And this somebody else, I’m wond’rin’ what they might be up to, then, hidin’ secret magical items here and there���”
Ralph took a large, deliberate sip of the his tea. James looked out the window, avoiding Hagrid’s suddenly penetrating gaze. “Oh, you know, nothing particular. I was just wondering���”
“Ah,” Hagrid said, smiling slightly and nodding. “Yeh’ve been told a lot of stories about old Hagrid from yer dad and Aunt Hermione and Uncle Ron, I’m guessing. Hagrid used to let slip some details that maybe he was supposed to keep secret. S’true, too. I can be a bit thick sometimes, forgettin’ what I should and shouldn’t be saying. Yeh may recall stories about a certain dog named Fluffy, among others, yes?” Hagrid studied James intently for a few moments, and then heaved a great sigh. “James, m’boy, I’m a good bit older than I was then. Old Keepers of the Keys don’t learn much, but we do learn. Besides, yer dad clued me in that you might be getting up to dickens and asked me to keep an eye out for yeh. Soon as he noticed yeh’d, er, borrowed his Invisibility Cloak and the Marauder’s Map, that was.”
“What?” James blurted, turning so quickly he almost knocked over his tea.
Hagrid’s bushy eyebrows rose. “Oh. Well, there yeh go, then. I don’t s’pose I was meant to tell you that.” He frowned thoughtfully, then seemed to dismiss it. “Ah, well, he didn’t actually tell me not to mention it.”
James sputtered, “He knows? Already?”
“James,” Hagrid laughed, “yer dad’s the Head of the Auror Department, in case yeh forgot. Talked to him about it last week right in me own fire, here. What he’s most curious about is whether or not yeh’ve gotten the map to work yet, since so much of the castle’s been rebuilt. He forgot to test it when he was here. So, had any luck, then?”
In the adventure of capturing the Merlin robe, James had completely forgotten about the Marauder’s Map. Sulkily, he told Hagrid that he hadn’t tried it yet.
“Prob’ly for the best, yeh know,” Hagrid replied. “Just ‘cause yer dad knows yeh nicked it, doesn’t mean he’s happy about it. And so far as I was able to gather, yer mum doesn’t know about it at all, yet. If yeh’re lucky, she won’t, neither, although I can’t imagine yer dad keepin’ that kind of secret from her fer long. Best just to keep yer contraband packed away rather than hidin’ it anywhere on the grounds. Trust me, James. Keepin’ suspicious magical items around the school can cause a lot more trouble than it’s worth.”
On the way back to the castle, bundled against the windy cold, Ralph asked James, “What’s he mean about getting the map to work? What’s it do?”
James explained the Marauder’s Map to Ralph, feeling vaguely worried and annoyed that his dad already knew about his taking it and the Invisibility Cloak. He’d known he’d get caught eventually, but had assumed he’d get a howler about it rather than a ribbing from Hagrid.
Ralph was interested in the map. “It really shows everybody who’s in the castle and where they are? That’d be seriously useful! So how does it work?”
“You have to say a special phrase. Dad told me a long time ago, but I can’t remember it off the top of my head. We’ll give it a try some night. Right now, I don’t want to think about it.”
Ralph nodded and let the subject drop. They entered the castle through the main portico and parted at the stairs leading to the cellars and the Slytherin quarters.
It was getting late and James found himself alone in the corridors. The wintry night was cloudy and starless. It pressed against the windows and sucked at the light of the hall torches. James shivered, partly at the cold and partly at a sense of icy dread that seemed to be seeping into the corridor, filling it like a heavy fog from the floor up. He walked faster, wondering how it could be that the halls were so dark and empty. It wasn’t particularly late, and yet the air had a sense of chilly stillness that felt like the dead of morning or the air of a sealed crypt. He realized he’d been walking rather farther than the corridor should have allowed. Surely he should have come to the intersection with the statue of the one-eyed witch by now, where he’d turn left into the reception hall, leading to the staircases. James stopped and glanced back the way he had come. The hall looked the same, and yet wrong somehow. It looked far too long. The shadows of it seemed to be in the wrong places, teasing his eye somehow. And then he noticed there were no torches on the walls. The light hung empty, ghostly, bleeding its color from flickering yellow to shimmery silver, fading even as he watched.
Fear leaped onto James’ back, icy cold and undeniable. He spun back to the front, meaning to run, but his feet failed him when he saw what was ahead. The corridor was still there, but the pillars had become the trunks of trees. The ribs of the vaulted ceilings had turned to limbs and vines, with nothing beyond but the vast face of the night sky. Even the pattern of the tiled floor melted into a lacework of roots and dead leaves. And then, even as James watched, the illusion of the school corridor evaporated completely, leaving only forest. Cold wind barreled past him, whipping his cloak and threading the hair back from his temples with ghostly fingers. James recognized where he was, even though the last time he’d been here, the leaves had still been on the trees and the crickets had been singing their chorus. This was the wood bordering the lake, n
ear the island of the Grotto Keep. The trees groaned, rubbing their bare branches together in the wind, and the sound was like low voices moaning in sleep, wrapped in fever dreams. James realized he was walking again, moving toward the edge of the trees, where the reeds swished and bobbed at the edge of the lake. A great, dark mass rose beyond, blotting out the view. As James approached, apparently helpless to stop his plodding feet, the moon unveiled from a bank of dense clouds. The island of the Grotto Keep revealed itself in the moonglow, and James’ breath caught in his chest. The island had grown. The impression of a secret fortress was stronger than ever. It was a gothic monstrosity, decked with grim statues and leering gargoyles, all somehow grown from the vines and trees of the island. The dragon’s maw of the bridge lay before him, and James forced himself to stop there, without setting a foot onto it. He remembered the gnashing wooden teeth as it had tried to devour him and Zane. In the silvery moonlight, the gates at the other end of the bridge were quite visible, as well as the words of the poem. When by the light of Sulva bright I found the Grotto Keep. The gates suddenly shuddered and flung open, revealing blackness like a throat. A voice came out of that blackness, clear and beautiful, pure as a chiming bell.
“Keeper of the relic,” said the voice. “Your duty is satisfied.”
As James stood and watched, looking across the bridge into the darkness of the open doorway, a light formed there. It condensed, solidified, and assumed a shape. It was, James recognized, the gently glowing shape of a dryad, a woman of the wood, a tree sprite. It wasn’t the same one he had met before, however. That one had glowed with a green light. This one’s light was pale blue. She pulsed slightly. Her hair flowed around her head as if in a current of water. A quiet, almost loving smile was on her lips and her huge, liquid eyes twinkled gently.
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