“So I hear,” Zane muttered, rolling his eyes.
“But you don’t even know our names,” Ralph pointed out. “How are we on probation if you don’t know who we are?” James elbowed him in the ribs.
The head elf grinned at his fellows, who smiled back a bit disconcertingly. “We’re elves,” he said simply. “Now off with yous, and let’s hope we don’t see you again.”
The corridors leading out of the washrooms were, not surprisingly, small and short, with half-sized steps that forced James, Zane, and Ralph to mince carefully as they climbed them.
“I don’t know whether to congratulate you or kick you,” Ralph said to Zane. “You almost got us caught by Corsica and Goyle.”
“But I did get into the Slytherin girls’ sleeping quarters,” Zane pointed out with a grin. “How many people can say that?”
“Or would want to?” James added.
“Be nice or I won’t tell you what I found.”
“It better be good,” said Ralph.
“It’s not,” Zane sighed. “The girls’ quarters have big wooden wardrobes alongside each bed. Only one of them was open, but I got a peek inside. Let’s just say I’m not wondering where Tabitha keeps her broom anymore.”
They reached a larger door at the end of a flight of miniscule stairs. James pushed it open, thankful to be out of the heat and noise of the washrooms. “What do you mean?”
“Well, they’re magical wardrobes, of course, although they don’t lead to any fairy wonderlands. The one I looked into looked like a combination vanity and walk-in closet. Seemed like a boutique had exploded in there, to tell you the truth. One of those really froofy ones, but with a gothic-vampire flair to it. There was a bottle of vanishing cream on the vanity, and from the looks of it, I don’t think the vanishing part was a metaphor.”
“All the girls have a wardrobe like that?” Ralph asked.
“Sure looked like it.”
James frowned. “Our chances of getting into the Slytherin girls’ quarters again are pretty much zero. And even if we could, how would we even know which wardrobe was Corsica’s, much less even get it open?”
“I told you this was going to be right impossible,” Ralph reminded James.
“Smelled like my grandma’s dresser in there, too,” Zane said.
“Will you let off with the details?” James exclaimed. “This is serious. We still don’t know where the Hall of Elder’s Crossing is or when Jackson and Delacroix are planning to bring the elements together. For all we know, it could be tonight.”
“So?” Ralph said. “Like you said, they can’t do anything without all the relics.”
Zane sighed, turning sober. “Yeah, but if they try it and nothing works, then they’ll hide the rest of the relics and we’ll never get to them.”
Ralph threw up his hands. “Well? There’s got to be another way, then. I mean, she has to take the broom out of her wardrobe sometimes, right? We saw her with it today. What if we nick it somehow during a Quidditch match or something?”
Zane grinned. “I like that. Especially if we can do it when she’s a hundred feet or so in the air.”
“Impossible again,” James said in frustration. “Ever since my dad’s day, there’ve been protective spells all around the pitch to keep people from interfering with matches. There were a few instances where dark wizards tried to use spells to hurt him or throw him off his broom. Once, a bunch of Dementors swarmed right onto the pitch. Ever since, there’ve been boundary areas set up by the officials. No spells can get in or out.”
“What’s a Dementor?” Ralph asked, his eyes widening.
“You don’t want to know, Ralph. Trust me.”
“Well, then, looks like we’re back to square one,” Zane said dourly. “I’m all out of ideas.”
Ralph stopped suddenly in the middle of the corridor. Zane bumped into the larger boy, stumbling backwards, but Ralph didn’t seem to notice. He was staring hard at one of the paintings lining the corridor. James noticed it was the one they had stopped at earlier to ask for directions to the laundry room. The very observant servant in the rear corner of the painting had caught James’ attention on the way down, but only as someone they could get directions from. James had become almost inured to the random, watchful characters in the paintings all over Hogwarts. The servant stared sullenly out at Ralph as the knights in the painting hoisted their tankards and turkey drumsticks, slapping each other happily on their partially armored backs.
“Oh, great,” Zane said, rubbing his shoulder where he’d run into Ralph. “Look what you’ve done, James. Now Ralph’s obsessed with every fifteenth painting. And not even the good ones, if you ask me. You two are the weirdest art lovers I’ve ever met.”
James took a step closer to the painting as well, studying the servant standing in the shadowy background with a large cloth over his shoulder. The figure took a half-step backward, and James felt sure that it was trying to blend further into the dim recesses of the painted hall. “What, Ralph?” he asked.
“I’ve seen that before,” Ralph answered in a distracted voice.
“Well, we just stopped at this painting not ten minutes ago, didn’t we?”
“Yeah. It looked familiar then, too, but I couldn’t place it. He’s standing different now���”
Ralph suddenly dropped to one knee, flinging his backpack onto the floor in front of him. He unzipped it quickly and dug inside, almost frantically, as if worried that whatever inspiration had struck him would flee before he could confirm it. He finally produced a book, gripped it triumphantly, and stood up again, riffling toward the back. Zane and James crowded behind him, trying to see over Ralph’s broad shoulders. James recognized the book. It was the antique potions book his mum and dad had given Ralph for Christmas. As Ralph flipped through the pages, James could see the notes and formulae that crowded the margins, crammed alongside doodled drawings and diagrams. Suddenly, Ralph stopped flipping. He held the book open with both hands and slowly raised it so that it was level to the observant servant in the background of the painting. James gasped.
“It’s the same dude!” Zane said, pointing.
Sure enough, there, in the right-hand margin of one of the last pages of the potions book, was an old pencil sketch of the observant servant. It was unmistakably the same figure, right down to the hook nose and the sullen, stooped pose. The painted version recoiled from the book slightly, and then crossed the hall as swiftly as it could without actually running. It stopped behind one of the pillars lining the opposite side of the painted hall. The knights at the table ignored it. James, watching intently, narrowed his eyes.
“I knew it looked familiar,” Ralph said triumphantly. “He was in a different position when we first came across him, so I didn’t place it straight off. Just now, though, he was in exactly the same pose as the drawing in this book. Now, that is weird.”
“Can I see?” James asked. Ralph shrugged and handed the book to James. James bent over it, flipping back to the front of the book. The margins in the first hundred pages were filled mostly with notes and spells, many with sections scribbled out and rewritten in a different color, as if the writer of the notes was refining his work. By the middle of the book, though, drawings and doodles began to crowd in with the notes. They were sketchy, but quite good. James recognized many of them. Here was a rough sketch of the woman in the background of the painting of the king’s court. A few pages later he found two quite detailed drawings of the fat wizard with the bald head from the painting of the poisoning of Peracles. Again and again, he recognized the sketches as the characters in the paintings all over Hogwarts, the secondary figures who’d been watching James and his friends with avid, unconcealed interest.
“Amazing,” James said in a low, awed voice. “All these drawings are from paintings all over the school, you see?”
Ralph squinted at the drawings in the book, then back at the painting again. He shrugged. “It’s weird, but not all that amazing, is it? I mean,
the guy who owned this book was probably also a student here, right? Sounds like he was a Slytherin, like me. That’s why your dad gave me the book. So whoever he was, he liked art. Lots of art lovers sketch from paintings. Big deal.”
Zane’s brow furrowed as he looked back and forth between the drawing of the observant servant and his painted equivalent, who was still skulking near the pillars in the background. “No, these aren’t just sketches,” he said, shaking his head slowly. “These are the originals, or so close it’s impossible to tell the difference. Don’t ask me how I know. I just know. Whoever sketched these drawings was either a master forger��� or he was the actual artist.”
Ralph thought about it for a moment, and then shook his head. “That doesn’t even begin to make sense. These paintings were painted at lots of different times. No way one bloke was responsible for all of them. Besides, a lot of these paintings are old. Way older than this book.”
“It makes perfect sense,” James said, clapping the potions book shut and looking down at the cover. “Whoever painted these didn’t paint the whole paintings. Think about it: not a single one of these sketched characters is of a dominant person in any of the paintings. Every one of them is a drawing of some totally unimportant background character. Whoever drew these just added the characters into existing paintings.”
Zane cinched up the corner of his mouth and furrowed his brow. “Why would anyone do that? It’s like graffiti, but nobody would notice it except the guy who painted it. What’s the fun in that?”
James was also thinking hard. He nodded slightly to himself, looking down at the old book in his hands again. “I think I have an idea,” he said, narrowing his eyes thoughtfully. “We’ll find out for sure. Tonight.”
“Come on, Ralph!” James complained in a harsh whisper. “Quit tugging! You’re yanking it up. You can see my feet!”
“I can’t help it,” Ralph moaned, crouching down as far as he could. “I know you said your dad and his mates used to do this all the time, but one of them was a girl, remember?”
“Yeah, and she didn’t eat seven meals a day, either,” Zane said.
The three of them shuffled down the darkened corridor, crammed under the Invisibility Cloak. They’d met at the base of the staircases, and apart from one tense moment when Steven Metzker, the Gryffindor prefect and brother of Noah, had passed them in the hall singing slightly off key, they had encountered no one. When they reached the intersection near the statue of the one-eyed witch, James directed them to stop. The three of them maneuvered clumsily into a corner and James opened the Marauder’s Map.
“I don’t see why all three of us need to do this anyway,” Ralph complained. “I trust you two. You could’ve just told me about it tomorrow at breakfast.”
“You seemed plenty excited about it when we planned this, Ralphinator,” Zane whispered. “You can’t lose your nerve now.”
“It was daytime then. And I wasn’t born with any nerve, just so you know.”
“Shh,” James hissed.
Zane bent over the map. “Is anyone coming?”
James shook his head. “No, looks safe. Filch is in his office downstairs. I don’t know if he ever sleeps, but for now, at least, the coast is clear.”
Ralph straightened up, pulling the Invisibility Cloak a foot off the floor. “Then why are we under this thing at all?”
“It’s tradition,” James said without looking up from the map.
“Besides,” Zane added, “what good’s having an Invisibility Cloak if we don’t use it to float around the halls unseen every now and then?”
“There’s nobody to see us, anyway,” Ralph pointed out.
James directed them toward the right angle of the intersection and they shuffled on. Soon enough, they came to the gargoyle guarding the stairway to the Headmistress’ office. James could tell it was watching their feet under the raised cloak even though it remained perfectly still. James hoped that the password hadn’t changed since he’d accompanied Neville to the Headmistress’ office a few months earlier.
He cleared his throat and said quietly, “Er, Gallowater?”
The gargoyle, which was relatively new, having replaced the one that had been damaged in the Battle of Hogwarts, stirred slightly, making a sound like a mausoleum door grating open. “Is that the one with the forest green field and the sky blue and red patterns?” it asked in a carefully measured voice. “I can never remember.”
James conferred in harsh whispers with Ralph and Zane. “Forest green field? I don’t even know what it is! It’s just the word Neville used to get in!”
“How’d he answer the question, then?” Zane asked.
“It didn’t ask him any questions!”
“It’s a tartan pattern, I think,” Ralph rasped. “My grandmum is mad about them. Just say yes.”
“Are you sure?”
“Of course I’m not sure. Say no, then! How should I know?”
James turned back to the gargoyle, which seemed to be staring fixedly at James’ shoes. “Er, yeah, sure.”
The gargoyle rolled its eyes. “Lucky guess.” It straightened and stood aside, revealing the entry to the spiral staircase. The three boys shuffled toward it and clambered onto the lower steps. As soon as all three were on it, the staircase began to rise slowly, carrying them up with it. The hall outside the Headmistress’ office lowered into view before them, and they stumbled into it, swearing and jostling each other under the cloak.
“That’s it,” Ralph said in an annoyed voice. He yanked at the cloak, struggling out from underneath it, and then let out a stifled shriek. James and Zane pulled the cloak off their heads and glanced around nervously, looking for whatever had startled Ralph. The ghost of Cedric Diggory was standing in front of them, smiling mischievously.
“You’ve really got to stop doing that,” Ralph said breathlessly.
Sorry, Cedric said in his far-off voice. I was asked to be here.
“Who asked you?” James inquired, trying to keep the annoyance out of his voice. The hair on the back of his neck was still prickling. “How would anyone know we were coming here tonight?”
Cedric just smiled and then gestured toward the heavy door that led into the Headmistress’ office. It was shut tight. How’d you plan to get past that?
James felt his face heat a little in embarrassment. “I forgot about that,” he admitted. “Locked, is it?”
Cedric nodded. Don’t worry about it. That’s why I’m here, I guess. The ghost turned and walked effortlessly through the door. A moment later, the three boys heard the sounds of the lock being unbolted. The door swung open silently and Cedric grinned, welcoming them in. James entered first, and Zane and Ralph were surprised to see him turn immediately away from the Headmistress’ massive desk. The room was extremely dim but for the reddish light of the banked fireplace. James lit his wand and held it up.
“Get that thing out of my face, Potter,” a voice drawled quietly. “You’ll wake the rest with it, and I suspect that this is meant to be a private conversation.”
James lowered his wand again and glanced around at the rest of the portraits. All of them were sleeping in various poses, snoring gently. “Yeah, you’re right,” James agreed. “Sorry.”
“So you deduced a version of the truth, I see,” the portrait of Severus Snape said, his black eyes locked on James. “Tell me what you believe you know.”
“It wasn’t much of a deduction, really,” James admitted, glancing at Ralph. “He figured it out. He’s got the book.”
Snape rolled his eyes. “That dratted book has been more trouble than it was ever worth. I should’ve destroyed it when I had the chance. Do continue.”
James took a deep breath. “Well, I knew something was going on when I noticed all those characters in the paintings watching us. I also knew they all looked a little familiar, even though they were all really different. I don’t think I’d have made the connection if Ralph hadn’t shown me the drawings in the potions book, though. I k
new the book had belonged to a Slytherin my dad had loads of respect for, so I thought of you and it all just came together. You painted all those characters into the paintings all over the school, and every one of them is a portrait of you, but in disguise. That’s how you’ve been watching us. You spread yourself out through all those paintings. And since you are the original artist, nobody else can ever destroy the portraits. It was your way of assuring you could always keep an eye on things, even after death.”
Snape studied James, scowling. Finally he nodded slightly. “Yes, Potter, quite true. Few knew it, but I had some natural inclination toward the task. Being adept at potions, mixing the necessary enchanted paints was the simple part. It did take me quite some time to hone my rendering skills enough to modify the paintings, but as with any other art, painting was mainly a matter of practice and study. I agree with you, however, that you’d have never made the connection if it weren’t for my own blind arrogance in allowing that book to continue to exist. I may have been a genius, but pride has been the downfall of greater geniuses than myself. Nevertheless, it has proved to be a very successful endeavor. I have been able to observe you and the rest of this school’s operations rather freely. So tell me: why do you come to me now? To gloat over your luck?”
“No,” James said firmly, and then paused. He didn’t want to say what he’d come to say. He was afraid Snape would laugh at him, or worse, refuse their request. “We came��� we came to ask for your help.”
Snape’s expression didn’t change. He regarded James seriously for a long moment. “You came to ask for help,” he said, as if confirming he’d heard James correctly. James nodded. Snape narrowed his eyes slightly. “James Potter, I’d never have suspected it, but you have finally impressed me. Your father’s greatest weakness was his refusal to seek assistance from those better and more knowledgeable than him. He always required their help in the end, but usually to their great, and sometimes final, detriment. You seem to have thrown off that weakness, albeit reluctantly. If you had come to this realization a few weeks ago, we might not have had to rely on pure fortune and good timing to save you from a fate worse than death.”
James Potter and the Hall of the Elders' Crossing Page 38