James Potter and the Hall of the Elders' Crossing

by G. Norman Lippert

  “You’re both mad,” Petra said reproachfully. “You’re as bad as she is.”

  “We don’t want to kill her,” Zane replied in a wounded voice. “We just want to see her drop a few hundred feet in terror. Ridcully would levitate her at the last moment, just like the Ralphinator did for James. Honestly, you must think we’re monsters.”

  “So are we all agreed, then?” Ted asked the group. Everyone nodded and murmured assent.

  “That’s wonderful and all,” Ralph said, “but how are we going to do it?”

  Ted leaned back and stared up at the enchanted ceiling of the Great Hall, stroking his chin. Slowly, he smiled. “Does anyone know what the weather is supposed to be like tonight?”

  There was very little that the group needed to do to prepare. After lunch, Sabrina and Noah headed off to the basements to talk to the house-elves. James and Ted, both of whom had an afternoon free period, spent some time in the library studying a collection of gigantic books about Atmospheric and Weather Charms.

  “This is Petra’s thing, really,” Ted lamented. “If she wasn’t busy all afternoon with Divination and Runes, we’d be a lot better off.”

  James looked over their notes. “Looks like we’ve got what we need, though, doesn’t it?”

  “I guess,” Ted replied airily, flipping a few huge pages. A minute later, he looked up at James. “It was really tough for you to ask for help, wasn’t it?”

  James glanced at Ted and met his eyes, then looked out a nearby window. “A little, yeah. I didn’t know if I’d be able to explain it. I wasn’t sure any of you would believe it.”

  Ted furrowed his brow. “Is that all?” he prodded.

  “Well���,” James began, then stopped. He fiddled with his quill. “No, I guess not. It just seemed like��� like something I was supposed to do on my own. I mean, with Zane and Ralph’s help, sure. They were along with the whole thing from the start. But still. I kind of figured that, between the three of us, we’d be able to manage. We’d work it out. It felt a little like���” He stopped, realizing what he was about to say, surprised by it.

  “Like what?” Ted asked.

  James sighed. “Like a failure. Like if the three of us couldn’t do it on our own, we’d failed, somehow.”

  “The three of you. Like your dad and Ron and Hermione, you mean.”

  James glanced at Ted sharply. “What? No��� no,” he said, but suddenly he wasn’t sure.

  “I’m just saying,” Ted replied. “It makes sense. That’s how your dad did it. He was a big one for taking on all the responsibilities of the world and not sharing the load with anyone else. He and Ron and Hermione. There were always loads of people around who were ready and willing to help, and sometimes, they did, but not until they’d pretty much forced themselves into the action.” Ted shrugged.

  “You sound like Snape,” James said, keeping his voice level. He felt uncomfortably vulnerable all of a sudden.

  “Well, maybe Snape’s right, sometimes,” Ted said mildly, “even if he was an oily old humbug most of the time.”

  “Yeah, well, blast him,” James said, surprised to feel a prickle of tears. He blinked them away. “He was a load of help, wasn’t he? Sneaking around, working both sides, never making it clear to anybody where his loyalties really lay until it was too late. Can’t really blame my dad for not trusting him, can you? So I don’t trust him either. Maybe my dad did do most stuff with just Aunt Hermione and Uncle Ron. That was all he needed, wasn’t it? They won. He’d found two people he could trust with everything. Well, I found them, too. I’ve got Ralph and Zane. So maybe I thought I could be as good as Dad. I’m not, though. I needed some help.” There was more James meant to say, but he stopped, uncertain if he should continue.

  Ted looked at James for a long, thoughtful moment, and then leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table. “Tough thing living in the shadow of your dad, isn’t it?” he said. James didn’t reply. A moment later, Ted went on. “I never knew my dad. He died right here, on the school grounds. He and Mum both. They were in the Battle of Hogwarts, you know. You’d think that it would be hard to feel resentful of people you never knew, but you can. I resent them for dying. Sometimes, I resent them for being here at all. I mean, what were they thinking? Both of them rushing off into some big battle, leaving their kid at home. You call that responsible? I sure don’t.” Ted looked out the window as James had done a minute earlier. Then he sighed. “Ah well, most of the time, though, I’m proud of them. Somebody once said, if you don’t have something worth dying for, you aren’t really living. Mum and Dad had something worth dying for, and they did. I lost them, but I got a legacy out of it. A legacy is worth something, isn’t it?” He looked across the table at James again, searching his face. James nodded, unsure what to say. Finally Ted shrugged a little. “The reason I bring it up, though, is my dad, he left me something else.”

  Ted was quiet for almost a minute, thinking, apparently debating with himself. Finally, he spoke again. “Dad was a werewolf. I guess it’s as simple as that. You didn’t know that, did you?”

  James tried to keep his face from showing it, but he was quite shocked. He knew there had been something secret about Remus Lupin, something that had never been explained to him or even mentioned outright. All James knew for sure was that Lupin had been close friends with Sirius Black, James Potter the First, and a man named Peter Pettigrew that had eventually betrayed them all. James knew that Lupin had come to teach at Hogwarts when his dad was in school, and that Lupin had taught his dad how to summon his Patronus. Whatever the secret of Remus Lupin’s past, it couldn’t have been anything terribly serious, James had reasoned. He had thought perhaps Ted’s father had been in Azkaban for a while or that he had once flirted with the Dark Arts when he was young. It had never crossed James’ mind that Remus Lupin might have been a werewolf.

  Despite James’ attempt to mask his shock, Ted saw it on his face and nodded. “Yeah, quite a secret, that was. Your dad told me the whole story himself a few years back, when I was old enough to understand it. Grandmum never talks about it at all, even now. I think she’s afraid. Not so much of what was, but��� well, what could be.”

  James was a little afraid to ask. “What could be, Ted?”

  Ted shrugged. “You know how it is with werewolves. There’re only two ways to become one. You can get bitten by one or you can be born of one. Of course, nobody really knows exactly what happens when only your mum or dad is a werewolf. Your dad said that my dad was pretty upset when he found out Mum was going to have a baby. He was scared, see? He didn’t want the kid to be like him, to grow up an outcast, cursed and hated. He thought he never should’ve even married my mum, because she wanted babies, but he was afraid to pass on the curse to them. Well, when I was born, I guess everybody breathed a big sigh of relief. I was normal. I got my mum’s Metamorphmagus thing, even. They tell me I was always changing my hair color as a baby. Got no end of laughs about that, Grandmum says. I can still do it today, and a few other things, too. I usually don’t, though. Once you get known for stuff like that, it’s hard to be known for much else, if you know what I mean. So I guess Dad died feeling a bit better about having me, then. He died knowing I was normal, more or less. I’m glad of that.” Ted was staring out the window again. He took a deep breath, and then looked back at James. “Harry told me how your Grandfather James, Sirius Black, and Pettigrew used to run with my dad when he changed, how they’d change into animal forms and accompany him around the countryside under the full moon, protecting him from the world and the world from him. I even started thinking it was all sort of adventurous and romantic, like those dopey Muggles who read those werewolf stories where the werewolves are all handsome and seductive and mysterious. I started almost wishing I had got the werewolf thing after all. And then���” Ted stopped and seemed to wrestle with himself for a moment. He lowered his voice and went on. “Well, the thing is, nobody really knows how all this werewolf stuff wor
ks, do they? I never gave it a second thought. But then, last year��� last year, I started having insomnia. No big deal, right? Except it wasn’t any normal insomnia. I couldn’t sleep, but not because I wasn’t tired, exactly. I was��� I was���” He stopped again and leaned back in his chair, staring hard at the wall by the window.

  “Hey,” James said, feeling nervous and embarrassed, although he didn’t quite know why, “you don’t have to tell me. Forget it. No problem.”

  “No,” Ted said, returning his gaze to James, “I do need to tell you. As much for me as for you. Because I haven’t told anybody else yet, not even Grandmum. I think if I don’t tell somebody, I’ll go nutters. See, I couldn’t sleep because I was so hungry. I was starved! I lay there in bed the first time it happened, telling myself that this was just crazy. I’d had a nice big dinner and everything, just like normal. But no matter what I told myself, my stomach just kept telling me it wanted food. And not just anything. It wanted meat. Raw meat. Fresh-off-the-bone meat. You see what I’m getting at?”

  James understood. “It was���,” he began, and then had to clear his throat. “It was a full moon?”

  Ted nodded grimly, slowly. “Eventually, I got to sleep. But since then, it’s gotten worse. By the end of last school year, I finally started sneaking down to the kitchens below the Great Hall, where all the elves work. They have a big meat locker down there. I started to��� well, you know. I ate. It tends to be a bit of a mess.” Ted shuddered, and then seemed to shrug it off. “Anyway, the point is, obviously I didn’t completely skip the whole werewolf thing. My dad gave me his own shadow to live in, didn’t he? I don’t blame him for it. For all I know, this is the worst it’ll ever get. And this isn’t all that bad. Helps me bulk up for Quidditch season, at least. But��� it’s scary, a little. I don’t know how to manage it yet. And I’m afraid to tell anyone about it. People���” Ted swallowed and looked hard at James. “People don’t respond well to werewolves.”

  James didn’t know whether to agree with that or not. Not because it was untrue, but because he wasn’t sure Ted needed any more affirmation of it. “My dad could help you, I bet,” James said. “And me, too. I’m not afraid of you, Ted, even if you are a werewolf. I’ve known you my whole life. Maybe we could, you know, work it out like your dad and his mates did. He had his James Potter to help him, and you have yours.”

  Ted smiled, and it was a huge, genuine smile. “You’re a brick, James. I’d hate to have to eat you. Learn how to turn yourself into a giant dog, like Sirius did, and maybe being a werewolf wouldn’t be so bad after all, with you trotting along next to me. But I almost forgot why I brought this up at all.” Ted leaned forward again, his eyes serious. “You have the shadow of your dad to grow up in, just like me. But I can’t choose whether I’m like my dad or not. You can. It’s not a curse, James. Your dad’s a great man. Pick the bits of who he is that are worth being like, and be like them, if you want. The other parts, well, that’s your choice, isn’t it? Take it or leave it. Those are the places where you can choose to be even better. Your dad didn’t much ask for help, did he? But that’s not because he didn’t need it. The fact that you asked for help doesn’t tell me you’re worse than him. It tells me you learned something he never learned. That’s you being you, not just a copy of your dad. I think that’s pretty cool, if you ask me. And not just because it means I get to help pull a fast one on Tabitha Corsica.”

  James was speechless. He simply stared at Ted, unsure what to feel or think, unsure if what Ted was saying was true or not. He knew only that it surprised him and humbled him, in a good way, to hear Ted say what he had. Ted closed the gigantic book in front of him with a loud clunk.

  “Come on,” he said, standing and gathering the books together. “Help me get these to the common room so Petra can look them over before the match. She’s going to have to help me get this right or we’re doomed for sure. Dinner is in an hour, and after that, we’re going to be pretty preoccupied for the rest of the night, if you know what I mean.”

  The afternoon of the last Quidditch match of the season was cool and misty, covered with a veil of restless, grey clouds. Silent and unusually somber, the Gremlins trooped through the tunnel behind the statue of St. Lokimagus the Perpetually Productive. When they reached the steps that led up to the interior of the equipment shed, Ted slowed and tiptoed. By now, Ridcully had probably already retrieved the Quidditch trunk from the shed, but it didn’t hurt to be careful. Ted peered around the cramped space, saw only some dusty shelves and a few broken brooms, and then beckoned the rest to follow him up.

  “It’s all clear. We should be safe in here, now that Ridcully’s been and gone. He’s the only one that uses the shed.”

  Ralph climbed the steps and looked cautiously around. James remembered that Ralph hadn’t been along the night he and the Gremlins had used this secret tunnel to go raise the Wocket. “It’s a magic tunnel. It only works one way,” he whispered to Ralph. “We can get back through it because it’s the way we came, but anybody else would just find the inside of the equipment shed.”

  “Cool,” Ralph breathed meaningfully. “That’s good to know.”

  James, Ralph, and Sabrina pressed against the rear of the shed to peer through the single, grimy window. The Quidditch pitch lay behind the shed, and they could clearly see three of the grandstands, already mostly filled with banner-waving students and teachers, all bundled against the unseasonable chill. The Ravenclaw and Slytherin teams were gathering along opposite sides of the pitch to observe their captains shaking hands and listen to Ridcully’s traditional recital of the basic rules of play.

  “I forgot all about this,” Sabrina said quietly. “The whole handshaking thing. That Zane is a pretty sharp fellow.”

  James nodded. It had been Zane’s idea to stage the broom caper during the opening moments of the match, in those few minutes when both teams came out of their holding pens beneath the grandstands to watch the opening ritual. It was a genius idea, because it was the only time when the teams’ brooms were separated from their owners, left behind in the holding pens until the teams collected them for their big flying introductions.

  “It’s time,” Ted said, tapping James once on the shoulder. “There’s Corsica already.”

  James swallowed past a lump in his throat that felt like a marble. His heart was already pounding. He pulled the Invisibility Cloak out of his backpack, shook it open and threw it over his and Ralph’s heads. As they neared the door of the shed, Petra whispered harshly, “I can see your feet. Ralph, duck down some more.” Ralph hunkered and James saw the edge of the cloak meet the ground around his feet.

  “Stay low and move fast,” Ted instructed. He turned and peered between the planks of the door. The equipment shed was positioned at a corner of the pitch, just inside the magical boundary erected by the match official. The door faced away from the pitch, visible only to the Slytherin grandstands right next to it.

  “Looks clear enough,” Ted said, his face pressed to the cracks in the door. “Let’s just hope

  everybody’s looking at the pitch and not this shed.” With that, he pushed the door open and stepped aside. James and Ralph shuffled through and James heard the door clunk shut behind them.

  The wind was shifty and unpredictable. It barreled across the pitch and swatted restlessly at the Invisibility Cloak, flapping it about the boys’ legs.

  “Somebody’s going to see my feet,” Ralph moaned.

  “We’re almost there already,” James said under the noise of the crowd. “Just stay close and keep down.”

  Through the transparent fabric of the Invisibility Cloak, James could see the dark mouth of the doorway into the Slytherin holding pen. The great doors were swung wide open, latched to the walls of the grandstand to keep them from blowing shut. The Slytherin players were lined up along the pitch on the other side of the doorway, close enough that a careless word or a flicker of their shoes might be noticed. James held his brea
th and resisted the urge to run. Slowly, the two boys sidled past the nearest Slytherin player, Tom Squallus, and slipped into the shadow of the doorway. Inside, the wind fell away and the cloak hung still. James let his breath out in a careful hiss.

  “Come on,” he whispered almost soundlessly. “We don’t have much time.”

  James knew what the Gremlins were planning, even though he wasn’t going to see any of it. Zane, who was watching along with his teammates on the Ravenclaw side of the pitch, told him all about it later. As Tabitha and Gennifer Tellus, the Ravenclaw Captain, walked to meet Ridcully at the centerline of the pitch, a strange sound began to build in the air overhead. All day, the sky had been low and sluggish, packed with grey clouds, but now, as the spectators and players glanced up, the clouds had begun to circle ponderously. There was a bulge in the clouds directly over the pitch, spiraling in on itself and lowering even as the crowd watched. The general noise of the assembly quieted, and the sound of the clouds in that silence was a deep, vibrating groan, long and menacing. With only his eyes, Zane glanced toward the equipment shed at the far corner of the pitch. He could just see the shapes of Ted and Petra, ducked low in the corners of the tiny window, their wands raised, teasing the cloud shapes. He smiled, and then, when the timing was perfect and the entire pitch had fallen silent, he called out across the pitch, “Quidditch is never called on account of weather, right, Gennifer?”

  There was a nervous ripple of laughter across the nearer grandstands. Gennifer glanced at Zane for a moment, then looked back up at the funnel lowering over her. As a Gremlin, Ted had told her of their plan, but Zane could tell that her nervousness wasn’t hard to fake. Neither Ridcully nor Tabitha Corsica seemed prepared to move. Corsica merely looked up at the clouds, her hair whipping wildly around her face, her wand visible in her hand. Ridcully’s expression seemed to be one of grim determination.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” Damien’s voice echoed throughout the grandstands from his place in the announcer’s booth, “we seem to be experiencing some sort of highly localized weather phenomenon. Please stay in your seats. You are probably safe there. Those on the field, please remain where you are. Cyclones cannot see you if you don’t move.”