James fumed. “All right, yeah, so we’ve gotten lucky here and there. We’ve worked really hard and been extremely careful, too. And besides, it all fits, doesn’t it? Just because the people behind the Merlin plot have been too arrogant to think anybody could catch them, doesn’t mean the plot isn’t for real. What about what happened when we opened Jackson’s case? And I didn’t even tell you what happened to me last week!”
Ralph jumped, almost knocking over his pumpkin juice. His eyes were wild for a second, and then he calmed himself. “Last week? When?”
“The night we went to see Hagrid, right after I left you,” James answered. He described the way the halls of Hogwarts had transformed into forest around him, his strange journey to the island of the Grotto Keep, and the mysterious ghostly figure that had instructed him to bring her the relic robe. Zane listened with keen interest, but Ralph’s face was pale and blank.
When James finished, Zane asked, “You think it really was a dryad?”
James shrugged. “I don’t know. It sure looked a lot like the one we saw in the forest, but different, too. It pulsed, if you know what I mean. I could feel it in my head.”
“Maybe it was a dream,” Zane said carefully. “It sure sounds like one.”
“It wasn’t a dream. I was in the corridor heading to the common room. I wasn’t sleepwalking.”
“I’m just saying,” Zane said blandly, lowering his eyes.
“What?” James prodded. “You think that whole Merlin thing was a dream, too? When I disappeared from the room right in front of the both of you, and Cedric Diggory’s ghost had to bring me back?”
“Of course not. Still, it just sounds kind of crazy. Were you in the forest or were you in the corridor? Which one was real? Were either of them real? I mean, you’ve been thinking about all of this an awful lot. Maybe���”
Ralph was studying his empty plate. He spoke without raising his head. “It wasn’t a dream.”
James and Zane both looked at Ralph. “How do you know, Ralph?” Zane asked.
Ralph sighed. “Because the same thing happened to me.”
James’ eyes widened and his mouth dropped open. “You saw the Grotto Keep? And the dryad, too? Ralph, why didn’t you say anything?”
“I didn’t know what they were!” Ralph said, looking up. “I wasn’t with you two when you went out in the forest and saw the island and met the dryad, remember? So last week, I was on my way through the cellars to the Slytherin rooms and all of a sudden, the cellars just faded out and turned into a forest, same as you described, James. I saw the island and the tree sprite lady, but I didn’t recognize them. I thought she was a ghost or something. She told me to bring the relic to her, but I was scared. I’m not used to having weird, magical, out-of-body experiences or anything. I tried to run away, but then, all of a sudden I was standing outside the door to the Slytherin common room, plain as could be. I was worried about my sanity, to tell the truth. I thought all this magical stuff was making me soft in the head. Frankly, I’m a little relieved that the same thing happened to you, too.”
“I can see why,” Zane said, nodding.
“But why you?” James asked. “You don’t have the relic. I do.”
Zane tilted his head and cinched a corner of his mouth up in that expression of comical concentration he put on when he was thinking hard. “Maybe it’s as simple as the fact that Ralph’s a Slytherin. I mean, he was in the debate against Petra and me. Maybe whatever it was thinks Ralph is the weakest link. Maybe it thinks it can get Ralph to betray you and steal the robe and then bring it to the island. Not that you would, Ralph,” Zane added, looking at Ralph.
“No way. I’m never touching that thing,” Ralph concurred.
“I guess that makes sense,” James admitted. “So why not you, then, Zane?”
Zane adopted a beatific expression, eyes raised to the ceiling, “Because I’m as pure as the wind-driven snow. And besides, I’m never setting foot on that island again. Too freaky for me by far.”
“But I couldn’t even steal the robe if I wanted to,” Ralph said, furrowing his brow. “Not with Zane’s Locking Spell on it. James is the only one who can open the trunk.”
“You could just drag the whole trunk out there, I suppose,” James replied. “Where there’s a will, there’s a way.”
“Fortunately, there’s no will,” Ralph said gravely.
Zane pushed his empty coffee cup away. “The dryad, or whatever it was, wouldn’t necessarily know about the extra Locking Spell on the trunk, anyway. But the fact that it happened to both of you sure proves something wants that robe, and knows we have it. If it isn’t Jackson or any of his crew, then who?”
James said, “Remember what the green dryad told us? She said that the trees were waking, but that many of them had��� how did she put it?”
Zane nodded, remembering. “She said they’d ‘gone over’, like milk past its expiration date or something. Some of the trees are bad, in other words. They’re on the side of chaos and war. You think yours and Ralph’s blue dryad was one of the bad ones trying to sound nice?”
“Makes sense,” Ralph said. “She was all beautiful and smiles and everything, but I had a pretty strong feeling that if I didn’t bring her the robe, that smile could turn hungry pretty fast. That’s what scared me. That and her fingernails.” He shuddered.
“So this is way bigger than just us and the Merlin conspirators,” Zane said seriously. “The tree spirits are involved. And who knows what else, too. For all we know, everything in the magical world might be taking a side.”
“Either way,” James said earnestly, “it proves that these relics are incredibly powerful. In the wrong hands, who knows what kind of damage they could do? That’s why we have to get the staff away from Tabitha.”
“I don’t understand why we don’t just get your dad in here,” Ralph interjected. “It’s his job to deal with this kind of stuff, isn’t it?”
“Because they have rules they have to follow,” James replied wearily. “They’d have to bring in a team of Aurors to scour the grounds. They wouldn’t just go nick Tabitha’s broom because we said it was the Merlin staff, even if we did turn over the robe. There’d be magical sweeps, investigating every unusual source of power. It could go on for days. By the time they got around to checking out Tabitha, she’d have gotten the broom out of here. Jackson and Delacroix might sniff trouble and escape, too. They might even get the whole conspiracy together to go to this Hall of Elder’s Crossing and try to bring Merlin back. It wouldn’t work without the robe, of course, but then the throne and the staff would be lost, hidden and in the control of dark wizards.”
Ralph sighed. “All right, all right. I’m convinced. So we’ll try to capture the Merlin staff from Corsica. But that’s it, all right? Then we turn it all over to your dad and his pros. They clean up the mess and we can be the heroes. Whatever. OK?”
Zane nodded. “Yeah, I’m with you. Get the broom and we’re done. Agreed?”
James agreed. “So we need a plan. Any ideas?”
“It won’t be easy,” Ralph said firmly. “If we got lucky with Jackson’s briefcase, then we’ll need an act of God to pull this one off. The Slytherin quarters are so thick with guard hexes and Anti-Spying spells that they almost hum. They’re the most suspicious lot I’ve ever met.”
“Tricksters always expect to be tricked,” Zane said wisely. “But there’s one thing we’re forgetting, and it may even be more important than capturing the Merlin staff.”
“What’s more important than that?” James asked.
“Keeping the relic we’ve got,” Zane answered simply, meeting James’ eyes. “Something out there knows we have the robe, and it’s already tried once to get it from you. I don’t know what kind of magic that was, but you both seem pretty convinced that it transported you to the island straight out of Hogwarts halls, right?”
James and Ralph exchanged looks and then nodded at Zane.
“So,” Zane contin
ued, “if Disapparition is impossible on Hogwarts grounds, then it used some other form of magic to get you there. That’s some powerful mojo. What’s to say it won’t try again?”
Ralph paled. “I hadn’t even thought of that.”
“Maybe it used up all its power the first time,” James said a little doubtfully.
“You two better hope so,” Zane said, looking back and forth between them. “Because it already tried asking nice. The next time, it won’t be so polite.”
An idea struck James and he shivered.
“What?” Ralph asked, seeing James’ face change.
“Remote Physio-Apparition,” James said in a hushed voice. “That’s what Professor Franklyn called Delacroix’s power to project a wraith of herself. It’s different from regular Apparition, because she just sends out something like a ghost of herself, but the wraith can still look solid and affect things. I looked it up. The ghost makes a solid version of itself out of whatever material is handy, and then wears that like a puppet. Somehow she used it to bring the Merlin throne here and hide it on the island without being detected.”
Zane frowned. “OK. So?”
“So what if that was how Ralph and I were sent out to the Grotto Keep? Ralph, you called it an out-of-body experience. What if that’s what it really was? Maybe we were forced to have a Remote Physio-Apparition! Only a wraith of ourselves went out to the grotto, but our bodies stayed in the corridors, just sort of��� frozen.”
Ralph was clearly horrified by the thought. Zane looked thoughtful. “It seems to fit. Both of you said it happened when you were alone in the corridors. There’d be no one to see you both standing there on autopilot while your souls or whatever were strung out to the Grotto Keep.”
“But that’s Delacroix’s specialty,” Ralph said, shuddering. “You think she knows we got the robe somehow?”
James answered, “Maybe. She’s slippery as an eel. She might have figured it out and not even told Jackson. Maybe she wants all the glory for herself.”
“One thing is for sure, then,” Zane announced. “We can’t let you two be alone. My guess is that whoever or whatever is doing this doesn’t want the secret to get out. That’s why they waited until you two were alone for a few minutes. If we keep people around you, then maybe it won’t try again.”
Ralph was as white as a statue. “Unless it gets really, really desperate.”
“Well, yeah,” Zane agreed. “There’s always that possibility. But we can’t do anything in that case, so let’s just hope it doesn’t come to that.”
“That makes me feel loads better,” Ralph moaned.
“Come on,” James said, getting up from the breakfast table. “It’s getting late and the house-elves are giving us the eye. It’s time we got out of here before somebody notices we’re planning something.”
The three boys wandered out onto the chilly grounds and talked of other things for a while, then, having separate house-related obligations, went their separate ways for the rest of the day.
The next week was frustratingly busy. Neville Longbottom assigned one of his very unusual but painstakingly demanding essays. This led to James spending an inordinate amount of time in the library, researching the endless uses of spynuswort, an endeavor that was further complicated by the fact that every part of the spynuswort plant, from the leaves to the stem to the root and even its seeds, was used in any number of applications, from healing skin diseases to waxing broomsticks. James had just added the seventy-ninth entry to his scribbled list when Morgan Patonia sat down at the table across from him with a heavy sigh. Morgan, a first-year Hufflepuff, was also in Herbology and working on her spynuswort essay.
“You only need to list five uses,” Morgan stated when she saw James’ list. “You know that, don’t you?”
“Five?” James said weakly.
Morgan gave James a look of somehow delighted disdain. “Professor Longbottom only assigned us to write about spynuswort because it’s one of the three most useful plants in the magical world. If we were to write about every one of its uses, we’d be turning in encyclopedias, you silly boy.”
James’ face heated. “I knew that!” he said, aiming for aloof arrogance and hitting only wounded petulance. “I just forgot. Can’t blame me for being thorough, can you?”
Morgan tittered, obviously thrilled that James had wasted so much time. James packed up a few minutes later and moved to the Gryffindor common room, annoyed but simultaneously relieved. At least his essay was finished. In fact, since he’d already written about twenty-three spynuswort uses, he probably stood to get loads of extra credit. Just as long as Neville didn’t figure out that the thoroughness of James’ report simply meant James hadn’t been paying much attention in class.
Twice, James saw Professor Delacroix in the corridors and had the haunting sensation that she was watching him. He never actually saw her eyes on him, but since she was blind, that hardly mattered anyway. James remembered the way Delacroix had maneuvered the tureen of gumbo with her ugly graperoot wand at the Alma Aleron dinner, never spilling a drop. He had a suspicion that Delacroix had ways of seeing that didn’t rely at all upon her useless eyes. In fact, that could explain how she might have noticed that Jackson’s briefcase was different. The Visumineptio charm only worked on what people saw with their eyes, didn’t it? Still, she never said anything or even so much as paused in her stride when she passed him. James decided that he was simply being paranoid. Besides, as Zane pointed out, what difference did it make? She might be the one trying to trick Ralph and James into taking the relic robe out to the Grotto Keep, or it might be some other force entirely. Either way, they had to be on guard never to be alone, and in the end, the source of the threat didn’t really matter anyway.
James had begun to realize just how hard it was to never be alone. He would’ve thought, in a school the size of Hogwarts, it would’ve been quite rare, anyway. Now that he was paying attention, he realized he’d been on his own on the grounds or in the halls several times each day, whether crossing the grounds to get to Neville Longbottom’s Herbology class after Transfiguration or just going to the bathroom in the middle of the night. Arranging to never be alone even in these circumstances was an annoying chore, but Zane, to James’ surprise, was consistently adamant about it.
“Even if we did capture that robe by a string of completely freakish lucky breaks, I’m not gonna let it slip out of our hands because we got careless,” he told James one day, walking him to the Herbology greenhouses. “It’s the Merlin conspirators’ carelessness that’s been working for us. I’m not gonna do them any favors like that.”
One day, James introduced Ralph and Zane to the Protean Charm as a means of communicating if ever an emergency chaperone was needed. James had ordered three novelty rubber ducks from Weasley’s Wizard Wheezes, giving one each to Zane and Ralph.
“The Protean Charm means that if I squeeze my duck, both of yours will sound as well,” James explained, giving his duck a tweak.
“Sod off!” all three ducks quacked in unison.
“Excellent,” Zane said, giving his own duck a firm squeeze, resulting in a chorus of happy insults. “So if either of you find yourselves alone or need me to take you to the bathroom, you just honk on this and I come running, eh?”
“Ugh,” Ralph said, staring at his duck with distaste. “I hate this. It’s like being three years old again.”
“Hey, if you want to go getting zapped off to meet with some unhappy tree spirit again���,” Zane said, shrugging.
“I didn’t say I wouldn’t do it,” Ralph replied, annoyed. “I just hate it, is all.”
Zane turned back to James. “So how will I know which one of you quacked for me?”
James produced a black marker and drew a small J on the bottom of his duck. “Take a look at yours, now. Anything we do to a single duck will show up on all of them. When you hear the quack, just check the bottom of the duck and see whose initial shows up.”
“Very t
ight,” Zane said approvingly. He raised his duck and tweaked it as if he was saluting with it.
“Eat doxie poo!” the ducks quacked gaily.
“All right,” James said, putting his own duck in his backpack. “This’ll only work if we only use them in an emergency. Got it?”
“Why don’t they just squeak?” Ralph asked as he pocketed his.
“Ask a Weasley,” James answered dismissively.
At first, having to have Zane or somebody else around at all times was as annoying to James as it was to Ralph, but eventually, James got used to it and even began to like it. Zane would sit on a chair in the corner of the bathroom while James bathed, quizzing him on defensive spell pronunciations or Transfiguration terminology and restrictions. James learned that many of his Herbology classmates, including Morgan Patonia, had Charms class before Herbology. Knowing this, James was able to hurry from his Transfiguration class to the Charms classroom and then accompany Patonia and her friends to the greenhouses, thus avoiding the solitary trek across the grounds. Constantly being near people became an easy habit for James, and eventually, he nearly forgot he was doing it. In this fashion, the weeks melted past. The rawness of winter began to thaw into the fragile warmth of spring. Still, neither James, Ralph, nor Zane had come up with a plan to get Tabitha Corsica’s broomstick. Eventually, they determined, albeit reluctantly, that some group reconnaissance was required.
“I’m not liking this,” Ralph said as he led the other two to the door of the Slytherin common room. “I haven’t seen anyone other than Slytherins in here for months.”
James Potter and the Hall of the Elders' Crossing Page 36