“Mr. Deedle, then,” Merlin said. “Not just any wizard could have born the responsibility of the staff. You have heard it said that the wand chooses the wizard, and this is true. Madame Delacroix believed you were merely a vessel to bring the staff to her, but she was mistaken. The staff chose you. A lesser wizard would have been unable even to hold the staff, much less use it. But you, without knowing it, brought the staff under your own power. You had no idea of the strength of it, and yet you managed it. It obeyed you, and that is the mark of a wizard of very, very great potential. Part of this staff now belongs to you, Mr. Deedle. I have felt it. I knew that a portion of it was no longer my own, but I knew not whose it was. Now I know.”
Merlin lowered his staff so that it lay across his knee. He closed his eyes and felt along the length of the staff, his hand barely touching the wood. Faint green light moved within the runes, flickering. Merlin wrapped his hand around the lower, tapered end of his staff, then, with barely a twist, broke off the last foot of its length. He opened his eyes again and held the length of wood out to Ralph.
“You are, I believe, in need of a wand, Mr. Deedle.”
Ralph took the length of wood from Merlin. As he did, the wood became his wand again, still ridiculously fat and chunky, with the lime green painted tip. Ralph grinned, turning it over in his hands.
“I wouldn’t expect it to be quite as powerful as it once was, of course,” Merlin said, turning his staff upright and using it to stand again. The staff was noticeably shorter now. “But I suspect you will still be able to do remarkable things with it.”
“Thanks,” Ralph said seriously.
“Don’t thank me,” Merlin said, raising an eyebrow. “It’s yours, Mr. Deedle. You made it so.”
“So the wizard gives the cowardly lion his courage,” Zane said, grinning. “When does James here get some brains?”
Merlin cinched his eyebrow a bit higher, looking from Zane to James.
“Don’t pay him any attention,” James said, laughing and leading the group to the stairs. “It’s a Muggle thing. We wouldn’t understand.”
“Come on!” Ralph called, running up the steps. “I want to show Ted and the rest of the Gremlins I’ve got my wand back! Tabitha Corsica can keep her stupid broom.”
The three boys scrambled up the moving staircases, followed more sedately by Merlin and the newly reborn Dennis Dolohov.
“Will he be okay with that thing?” Dennis asked Merlin, frowning a little.
Merlin merely smiled and clacked his staff on the steps as he climbed. Unnoticed, a jet of lime green sparks shot from the tip, swirling and glowing like fireflies in their wake.
21.The Gift of the Green Box
The last weeks of the school year spun out before James like a blur, remarkably free of deathly peril and adventure, but packed nonetheless with the lesser stresses of schoolwork and final essays and wand practicals, all of which were relatively welcome in the wake of the Hall of Elders’ Crossing. To no one’s great surprise, Hufflepuff was awarded the House Cup, being the only house to avoid major point deductions for involvement in the various Merlin conspiracy skullduggeries. The broomstick caper alone had cost Ravenclaw and Gryffindor fifty points each.
On the morning of the last day of school, James was stuffing his books and extra school robes into his trunk when Noah pounded up the stairs calling for him.
“Ron Weasley’s in the fireplace. He wants to talk to you.”
James grinned. “Excellent! Tell him I’ll be right there!”
“James, look at you!” Uncle Ron cried when James tromped down the stairs a minute later, still tying his tie. “All respectable and everything. Have a good year, did you?”
James nodded. “I guess I did. Looks like I’ll pass, after all. Spent all of Monday night getting ready for Franklyn’s D.A.D.A. practical, then had the most horrible sensation that I’d forgotten everything five minutes before the test.”
“I wasn’t exactly talking about your schoolwork, you dunce,” said the face in the embers, grinning crookedly. “Your dad told me all about the Merlin conspiracy you uncovered. That’s brilliant stuff, and no mistake.”
“Yeah, well���,” James said sheepishly, “it was all pretty exciting there for a while, but it’s weird. Five weeks of schoolwork and suddenly all of that seems like it happened to someone else.”
That’s the way of it,” Ron nodded. “The dull parts of life spread out in your memory and crowd out the exciting parts until they just seem like little flashes. It’s the way your brain copes with it all, I guess. Speaking of which, how’s Professor Jackson doing?”
James rolled his eyes. “Nothing can keep old Stonewall down for long. He wasn’t really injured in his duel with Delacroix, even though his backup wand wasn’t as powerful as the one she broke. Apparently, he chased her through the woods for hours and finally cornered her in a clearing. He says he’d have gotten her, except that she cheated, calling on the enemy naiads and dryads to fight with her. The trees attacked him from behind, knocking him out. That’s how he got the big bruise on his forehead. Still, he was back in class the day after Prescott left, and he’s been raining fire on Zane and me ever since.”
Ron raised an eyebrow. “Can’t really blame him, I guess.”
“We gave him back his briefcase and apologized and everything. I mean, I know we ruined his lifelong quest to protect the relic robe and prevent the return of the most dangerous wizard of all time and all, but come on. Merlin turned out to be all right. Delacroix got sent back to the States to stand trial in the American wizarding courts. Everything worked out in the end, didn’t it?”
“All I can say is if I was him, I’d wish you spiders in your drawers for the rest of your life,” Ron mused. “But that’s just me. My mind tends to go that way.”
“Honestly, Uncle Ron. I want to make it right. I liked Professor Jackson at first.”
“At the risk of sounding like a responsible adult, James, actions have consequences. Apologizing is great, but ‘sorry’ isn’t a magic word. You not only ruined Jackson’s plans, you took a stab at his pride. You succeeded in foiling him. In his mind, you made a fool out of him. That’s a hard thing for a bloke like him to get over. Frankly, you can’t blame him, can you?”
“I guess not,” James agreed sulkily. “At least he didn’t fail us in Technomancy. It was a close thing, though.”
“Good man. Still, don’t get too wrapped up in classwork, you. You’ve got a reputation to live up to.”
“Or down to,” Noah’s voice quipped from nearby.
“I heard that, Metzker,” Ron said sternly. “It’s a proud Potter tradition, squeaking by in school. Started with James Potter the first. Besides, you’re one to talk, Mr. Gremlin.”
“Got high marks this year, all across the board,” Noah said primly.
Ron grinned again. “Thanks to your friend Petra, no doubt. She’s to you Gremlins what Hermione was for Harry and me. Hold on. She wants to say hello, James.”
The face in the coals sank out of sight. A moment later, Hermione’s pleasant smile and perpetually bushy hair formed. “James, you look very handsome,” she said proudly. “Don’t you listen to your uncle. He studied plenty and was just as worried about marks as anyone.”
“That’s not true!” a muffled voice called from the depths of the fireplace. Hermione grimaced.
“Well, almost anyone,” she conceded. “Anyway, your mum and dad will be very proud of you, and so are your uncle and me. Oh, I just can’t believe how fast the time goes. It seems like only yesterday that we were all still there,” she sighed, looking around the common room. “It looks almost exactly the same. We’ll have to make a point of visiting next year. It’ll be nice to see the old place again.” Even in the embers, Aunt Hermione’s eyes glistened a little. She blinked, and then returned her gaze to James. “Anyway, James. Ron’s been talking to your father, you know, and the two of them wanted to ask you something. I thought it’d be best if someone besides eith
er of them brought it up, though, because, frankly, they’re both so silly about it that they’d influence your response.”
“What is it?” James asked, squatting down in front of the fireplace.
“Don’t kneel,” Hermione chided automatically. “You’ll scuff up your pants with ash. It’s about the Headmistress. She’s planning to retire, you know.”
James didn’t know. “She is? But��� what would she do with herself?”
Hermione gave James a look that said she’d just remembered how old he was. “Minerva McGonagall has quite a life outside the walls of Hogwarts, James, as difficult as that may be for you believe. She’s even, I understand, taken Mr. Finney up on his offer of dinner in London.”
“She did?” James hooted.
“She did?” Noah chimed almost simultaneously from the couch, looking up from a book.
Hermione rolled her eyes. “It was a purely professional meeting, I can assure you both. She performed a few minor memory modifications upon Mr. Finney, not really causing him to forget his visit here, but altering it. It’s all a part of Mr. Dolohov’s programme to ‘clean’—as he calls it—the school’s security record. Still,” Hermione added, lowering her voice a bit, “she did speak rather highly of Mr. Finney. It would be quite nice to think that she might find a, er, companion for herself. After all���”
“Hermione!” Ron’s voice barked from the depths of the fireplace again.
“Anyway,” Hermione said, turning businesslike. “Yes, the Headmistress does plan to retire, possibly as soon as this summer, assuming a suitable replacement could be found. Most likely, she will stay on to teach Transfiguration and help the new headmaster, whoever he or she might be. Some had suggested Neville Longbottom, but the Ministry feels he might be a bit young for the post, which is just silly, but politics being what they are���”
“Merlin!” James exclaimed. “You’re all thinking of asking him to be the new headmaster!”
A whoop of happy triumph emanated from the depths of the fireplace. Hermione scowled.
“You can leave me out of this, thank you very much. This is all your father’s and uncle’s idea. But I can see you are as mad about it as they are.”
“But how can he be the headmaster?” Noah asked, jumping off the couch and crouching in front of the fireplace. “Sorry,” he added quickly. “Couldn’t help overhearing and all that.”
“Really?” Hermione replied a bit archly. “Here, I had assumed you were suitably entrenched in that Arithmancy textbook. How silly of me. Please do keep it a secret, though, the both of you. Oh, what am I saying? Ron, you might as well explain this.” She sighed and blew her bangs out of her face in a gesture James remembered from his earliest memories of Aunt Hermione. She gave a bemused smile. “James, have a good trip. We’ll see you in a week. Rose and Hugo say hello and to buy them some Cauldron Cakes on the train. Good day, Noah.”
She disappeared from the embers and Uncle Ron’s face appeared again. “Excellent idea, eh?” he announced, looking from Noah to James enthusiastically.
“But how?” Noah asked again. “I mean, the bloke was the most potentially dangerous wizard in the history of the planet a few weeks ago, wasn’t he? And now you think the Ministry will put him in charge of a bunch of kids?”
“Not without lots of oversight,” Ron said quickly. He had obviously thought a lot about it. “That’s where McGonagall and Neville come in. They’ll watch him and help out, sort of like a board of directors. McGonagall has already agreed to it, although we had to push her a bit on it. She’s afraid she’ll still basically be doing all the work, but with Merlin getting the credit. Might happen, too, I guess, but your dad and I don’t think so. Merlin seems the sort of guy born to lead, you know?”
“Yeah,” James agreed. “But still, he comes from a time when leading meant telling people which guillotine had the shortest queue. I can’t imagine that the Ministry will agree to put him in charge of Hogwarts.”
“Your Merlin’s a surprisingly quick study, James,” Ron said seriously. “He’s already been all over the Ministry, meeting people and having big, long discussions about the way things work in this day and age. He’s warming up to it, I have to say!”
“So why wouldn’t they put him somewhere there, then?” Noah asked. “I mean, most famous wizard in the world and all. Seems like he’d be in line for Minister of Magic, if nothing else.”
Ron grinned a bit maliciously. “I suppose you are both too young to understand the implications of the phrase ‘overqualified and underexperienced’. Basically, no department wants him. A guy like Merlin doesn’t work well behind a desk, for one thing. And it’s hard to imagine that any department head who hired him would stay the department head for very long afterwards.”
“You mean he’d take over, right?” James confirmed.
“Take over, at the very least. He’s a bit of a loose cannon. Sure, he’s probably the most powerful single wizard alive today, but with a thousand-year gap in his work experience. As fast as he picks things up, he’s sure to be a poor fit in the red tape world of the Ministry. Your dad can hardly stand it, James. Think about what it’ll be like for a bloke who’s used to being able to banish his enemies to the netherworld with a glance. The fact of the matter is that the Ministry is looking for an out-of-the-way place to stick the old man. Someplace prominent enough to fit a wizard of his stature, but far enough away not to threaten anyone, metaphorically speaking. Or maybe even not metaphorically speaking. One never knows.”
“And Hogwarts just happens to be in need of a new headmaster,” Noah said, grinning.
“Well?” Ron said, meeting Noah’s grin. “It does seem a little too perfect, doesn’t it?”
“Even if the Ministry does agree to it, you think he’ll do it?” James asked.
In the fireplace, Ron seemed to shrug. “Who can tell? Nobody has asked him yet. But first thing’s first.” Ron grew serious and studied James. “You know him best, nephew. You were there when he came out of the past. You were the one who talked him into coming and helping Hogwarts and the wizarding world. What do you think? Do you think he’d be a good headmaster? Do you think we should ask him?”
Noah leaned back against the base of the couch, looking at James, waiting for his response. James knew he should think about it, but he already knew his answer. Merlin was a complicated man, and he wasn’t exactly what anyone could call ‘good’, not in the sense that Albus Dumbledore or even Minerva McGonagall were good. But James knew one thing for sure: Merlin wanted to be good. It was hard to tell if it was better to have a headmaster who was good by nature or one that was good because he had to try to be so every day, but James was old enough to know that it was a risk worth taking. Besides, the Gremlin part of James whispered, it might be fun having a headmaster who’d banish someone like Tabitha Corsica to the netherworld with a glance.
“Ask him,” James said, nodding once, emphatically. “If the Ministry goes for it, ask him. And I hope he accepts.”
“Woo hoo!” Noah hooted, throwing his hands in the air.
“Keep it to yourselves, for now,” Ron said sternly. “If word gets out before your dad and Hermione arrange things at the Ministry, it could spoil everything. Got it?”
Noah nodded. James smiled agreement.
“Your dad took back the cloak and the map, did he?” Ron asked James, changing the subject.
“Yeah. And I’m apparently going to be grounded when I get back. Two weeks off my broom.”
Ron clucked his tongue. “Just when you were getting pretty good on it, I hear. Ah well. You know your dad has to keep up the look of the thing, punishing you and all, but he’s proud of you. Take it from me.”
James’ smile widened and his cheeks flushed.
“Not that I’d try it again, mind you,” Ron said, his grin vanishing. “Once is a charm. If you pull something like that again, Ginny will probably decide to home school you in the basement. Take it from me, she’s no one to fiddle with, Ja
mes.”
Later that afternoon, James met Zane and Ralph outside as the Alma Alerons gathered to disembark. As they watched, the three flying vehicles were driven out of the Garage, and then the Garage was broken down and packed inside the trunk of the Dodge Hornet.
“There’s something deep and mystical about that, but I can’t quite put my finger on it,” Zane said thoughtfully.
“What? The Garage being packed into what it was housing a few minutes ago?”
“No. The way Professor Franklyn seems to get more and more popular with the girls the closer it gets to his departure.” It was true. Franklyn was quite popular with the ladies, from the oldest staff matron to the first-year girls, who giggled when he passed them, touching each lightly on the head. The only women he seemed to have no effect on were the Headmistress and Victoire, who claimed to believe he was a pompous old blowhard. Ted had explained that one of the benefits of being old was being free to flirt with any girl you wanted, because none of them took you serious enough to get offended. Zane found this remarkably instructive.
“When I get old, I’m going to flirt like that,” he said wistfully.
“He’s not even flirting,” James said, narrowing his eyes. “He’s just smiling at them and acting all self-effacing, like he always does.”
“That just shows what you know about flirting.”
Ralph rolled his eyes. “I’m surprised you aren’t taking notes.”
“He should offer a class,” Zane said seriously, watching Franklyn bow and kiss Petra Morganstern’s hand goodbye. Petra grinned and glanced aside, her cheeks reddening a little. When Franklyn straightened, she leaned in and gave him a chaste little peck on the cheek.
“Ladies and gentlemen of Hogwarts,” he said, turning to address the crowd, “it has been our distinct pleasure to serve you this year. It has been, as I knew it would be, a remarkably instructive year for us. We have strengthened our resolve to work with the European magical community to maintain fairness and equity worldwide, not only for the magical world, but for all humanity.” He scanned the crowd, beaming, and then took off his glasses and sighed. “We are, I suspect, at the beginning of challenging times. The winds of change are blowing. On both sides of the ocean, we face forces that would shake our culture to its foundations. But we have made friends, you and us, and united we will stand, regardless of what may come. I have been around for a very long time, and I can say with some degree of confidence that change is always in the wind. The challenge of good men is not to thwart change, but to mold it as it comes, so that it may benefit rather than destroy. After this year, I am indeed confident that we may succeed in that endeavor.”
James Potter and the Hall of the Elders' Crossing Page 54