Millie bristled slightly. “I didn’t say I find the idea offensive.
Just a little barmy.”
James moved to the curb, catching up to Merlin. “So, you think there may be something to what Millie’s grandmother says? About the Black title being responsible for some huge elemental… something?”
Merlin shrugged. “I merely say that the idea has ancient precedent. One cannot immediately dismiss it.”
“Did the Viscount Blacke that you knew have powers like that?
Was he in charge of some element of human nature?”
“The Viscount Blacke was famously reticent regarding details about himself or his holdings. Meeting him in an inn, he would lament that he had barely two coppers to rub together. And yet the opulence of his robes and carriage made it clear that his wealth was incalculable. I never wasted the breath to ask him about the rumours of his title.”
“But there were rumours?” James prodded, looking up at the headmaster.
“There are always rumours.” Merlin nodded.
“So…?” James pressed again, glancing back at his father, annoyed at the lack of interest he saw there. “What do you think the Black title is in charge of?”
“I haven’t the faintest notion,” Merlin replied simply. “And that is the truth. But I expect the name itself provides some minor hint.”
“Black?” James frowned.
“It is as you say, Mr. Potter. All the titles are colours. And yet what do we know of the colour black?”
James shrugged. He didn’t always appreciate the headmaster’s baroque conversational style. “I don’t know. It’s dark?”
Millie suggested, “It’s not truly a colour, is it? It’s the absence of all colour.”
Merlin cocked his head slightly. “It depends upon how you look at it. Black may not be a colour unto itself. But it absorbs every other hue. It is, in fact, every colour combined.”
James’ eyes widened slightly at the thought. In a quieter voice, he asked, “So… what does that mean for the elemental guardianship of the Black title?”
Merlin turned to look aside at him again as he walked. “Haven’t the foggiest notion, Mr. Potter.”
“It means,” Harry said from behind, “That if there is some enormous dangerous potential inherent in our title, then like all such things, it is best left buried, untouched, and safely forgotten. After all, we Potters don’t have the greatest record with handling huge, earth-shaking responsibilities.”
“That is a topic of possible debate,” Merlin countered with a wry look.
James was about to reply when a sudden noise startled him.
Some small but heavy object clanged off the side of Norberta’s truckish shape. It struck the footpath and fumbled to a halt against a fire hydrant. James looked and saw that it was a chunk of old brick.
“What the—” Millie started, when another brick struck Norberta, bouncing off her high bonnet. She groaned and hissed her hydraulics, shuddering on her huge tyres.
“Over there,” Harry said, pointing with his wand to a narrow alley on their left. “Someone in there is having a bit of sport.”
Another brick sailed through the air, missed the refuse truck, and broke into pieces on the road at Merlin’s feet. He looked up from it calmly, but with a grim twinkle in his eye, following the trajectory back to the dark alley.
“Muggle vandals?” Harry asked, stepping alongside Merlin.
“I think not,” Merlin answered quietly. “I smell something else entirely. Guard our charge for a moment.”
And with that, he stalked away, his robes swaying in the cold air, his feet silent on the slushy road. James watched as the huge wizard strode into the shadows, putting out his hand as he did so, producing his staff out of thin air. A moment later he was gone, vanished into the depths of the alley.
Harry watched. James stood next to him, eyes wide. Millie peered from just behind his shoulder, silent. The three barely breathed.
Behind them, Norberta the refuse truck chugged idly, revving her engine with rhythmic impatience.
No more bricks lobbed out of the alley.
Suddenly, a flash of blue light flickered from the throat of its depths. The glare illuminated trash bins and doorways in a bright stutter, and then darkness fell again, as seamless as a well.
“What’s he doing?” Millie whispered.
“Why isn’t he coming back?” James added.
Harry merely watched, his wand in his fist, pointed at the pavement next to his feet.
Another flash came, more dimly this time, as if from a distance.
Barely heard over the constant drum of nearby traffic, a deep bellow sounded. Merlin’s voice, shouting something. Harry tensed but remained in place.
And then, half a minute later, a shadow stumbled out of the alley. It wasn’t Merlin. James could see that right away. It was very small, very thin, with huge, limp ears. The shadow stumbled to its knees, caught itself with its arms, and then raised its large head, as if to look up at them.
Harry finally broke away and ran to the figure, wand out, but not pointing at it. James hurried to join him.
It was a house elf dressed in a knotted tea towel. James recognized the huge head and sad, anxious eyes. It was Piggen, the elf he had last seen stoking the fire in Gryffindor tower weeks earlier.
Harry dropped to crouch next to the elf, concern and wariness etched onto his face.
“Why are you here?” he asked, “Are you all right? Have you been injured?”
Still hunkered on all fours over the curb, the elf peered up at Harry with his huge, glistening eyes. Then, he turned his gaze to James.
“Piggen is sorry, Master Potter,” he said with heartbreaking sincerity. “Piggen is a bad, bad elf.”
Behind James and Harry, Millie screamed.
James spun around clumsily, still half-kneeling behind his father.
Harry was quicker, however, launching back to his feet and sweeping his wand around in a blurred arc.
“Lumos!” he barked, and his wand flared to blinding light, illuminating the street like daylight, casting leaping black shadows behind every object.
The refuse truck was rearing onto its front wheels, bulging and creaking, tilting its gaping compactor toward the sky. With a convulsive lunge, a ball of orange flame erupted from its metal guts. James realized that Norberta the refuse truck was quickly transforming back into Norberta the dragon. The rubber tyres stretched and burst into sinewy legs. The mouth of the compactor gnashed, grew long fangs and elongated onto an accordion neck, rising up between the buildings. The rumble of the engine grew to a sustained roar, and fire once again burst into the sky, streaming from the dragon’s unhinged jaws.
Another elf was riding on the back of Norberta’s neck, clinging tight with long, agile fingers, its mouth moving quickly as it spoke to the dragon, provoking it.
It was Heddlebun.
A lance of red light struck Norberta’s flank, exploding into sparks. Dimly, James realized that his father was firing at her, trying to Stun her. He fumbled his own wand out and aimed wildly, but before he could utter a single spell, Norberta reared, unfurled her wings, and clapped them down again, sending a wave of gritty wind washing over the street, rocking the parked cars on their springs. The dragon leapt upwards, scratched and clawed her way up a nearby parking structure, tearing loose great chunks of concrete as she went, and clambered onto its roof with a flick of her long tail.
“Wingardium Leviosa!” James’ father called, stabbing out his wand again and arresting a huge chunk of concrete an instant before it could bash itself to bits on the street below. Hunched in the hovering concrete’s shadow, Millie lifted her head from beneath her clasped arms.
Eyes bulging, she looked up at the slowly revolving hunk of building, and then scrambled sideways, out of its range.
With a grunt of released effort, James’ dad lowered his wand.
The concrete completed its fall, shattering liked a dropped plate.
But Piggen wasn’t there.
Footsteps rang from the depths of the alley, not retreating but approaching. Merlin reappeared, his staff held before him, its runes glowing with fierce red light.
Breathing hard, the sorcerer looked from James to Harry.
“Which way did she go?”
Harry nodded to the scarred façade of the parking structure.
“Diagon Alley. Has to be.”
“Then let us not spare a moment!” Merlin commanded, already moving forward. He broke into a run, reached to grasp Millie’s hand where she stood dumbfounded in the street, and then vanished with her in tow, leaving the crack of their disapparation echoing down the canyon of the street.
“Well, James,” his father announced, reaching out with his left hand, raising his wand in his right. “You said you wanted to be a Junior Auror-in-training, yes? Here’s your chance.”
With a gulp, James raised his own wand and grasped his father’s hand.
The world whip-cracked away, spinning into a blur of oblivion.
An instant later, it sprang back into place, leaping up to smack James’ heels as he landed next to his father. He looked around, pointing his wand frantically. They were in another street now, this one wider but even less illuminated. Before him was an old pub with mullioned windows and a heavy wooden door beneath a swinging sign: The Leaky Cauldron.
Harry stepped swiftly into the dark street and raised his eyes, looking out over the nearby rooftops.
Merlin burst through the front door of the Leaky Cauldron, his staff leading, still pulsing with red light.
“There!” he announced, pointing to James’ right.
James spun to look, even as he heard the grating roar of the dragon’s approach.
A decrepit apartment building, four floors high, stood on a wedge of footpath between two angled streets. James craned to look up at its roofline. There, an old wooden water tower stood on posts.
Startlingly, the water tower exploded, disintegrating into flying planks, flinging metal braces, and a torrent of unleashed water. Norberta’s head plunged through the water and bashed aside the remains of the tower.
Her wings pumped and she leapt from the building’s roof, sailed over empty space, kicked off a lamp-post, and grappled up the face of a soot-stained factory, shattering rows of windows as she went.
A blare of horns sounded from the connecting streets. Voices began to shout in alarm.
“Damn and drat!” Harry breathed urgently, lifting his wand to fire Stunning bolts at the scrabbling dragon. It was no use.
Merlin called magical spells in his guttural tongue, and lances of vivid purple light spat over the street. Even these merely bounced off Norberta’s scaly skin. Using her wings for leverage, she clawed and tore her way to the roof of the factory, and then loped along its top. James watched, horrified, as the great dragon lowered her head and plowed between a pair of brick smokestacks, pulverizing their bases.
Ponderously, the smokestacks leaned toward each other, kissed their surfaces with a sustained crunch, and then began to collapse, disintegrating into themselves.
“Damn and drat!” Harry said again, this time in a half-shout.
He raised his wand nearly straight up, waiting for Norberta to appear between the factory and the block above the Leaky Cauldron.
A bell clattered nearby and the door of the pub swung open.
James glanced aside to see a grizzled old wizard with a nose the size and color of a blood orange peer out at them.
“Whassall this, then?” he said, his black eyes glimmering in the dark. “Whassall the noise?”
Harry fired several shots in quick succession, even as Merlin leapt backwards into the street, pointing his staff at the roof above, unleashing a torrent of crackling energy.
The building shook. Grit and chunks of masonry broke from above, raining down and clattering to the street all around.
The grizzled wizard jerked his head back into the door, which slammed shut.
“She’s beyond the roof!” Harry called, lowering his wand and lunging toward the door of the pub.
It was locked tight, rattling with bolts and chains. Without so much as a backward glance, Harry simply stepped aside and gestured briefly with his wand. After you, the motion seemed to say.
Merlin dipped his staff. Its runes flashed green and the door of the Leaky Cauldron blew open, taking the remains of an iron deadbolt and chains with it. The bell overhead gave an alarmed clatter and broke loose. Harry led the way with Merlin immediately behind. James scrambled to follow, passing the grizzled wizard with the blood orange nose who stood huddled in the corner, fuming speechlessly at his demolished door.
James had been inside the Leaky Cauldron on many occasions and assumed that it never technically closed. Indeed, even at this late hour, the pub was crowded with patrons of all shapes and sizes, most gathered around a long bar cluttered with glasses, steins, and bottles.
Eyes turned to follow Merlin, Harry, and James as they rushed past, pounding toward the rear exit, wands and staff raised. Millie stood away from the bar, her eyes wide and terrified. She moved to follow James, hunching her shoulders and ducking low in his wake.
Darkness filled the pub’s back hall and the staircase leading up to rental rooms. A moment later, bluish light bloomed as the rear door blasted open. The four poured out into a tiny courtyard, turning immediately to the enchanted brick wall that separated Muggle London from Diagon Alley.
But the wall was barely still there. Bricks pattered down from an enormous, ragged, dragon-sized hole. Beyond this, the dragon herself loped and careened down the winding wizarding thoroughfare of Diagon Alley, her wings tearing at eaves, her tail bashing aside signs and awnings. Witches and wizards leapt into doorways as she thundered past.
Merlin disapparated again, vanishing into a pinpoint of light, this time leaving Millie behind.
“The circus!” Harry announced, pointing. Beneath the dark sky, James could just see the peaks of coloured tents and fluttering banners over a line of nearby gabled roofs. “Stay here!” his father commanded, shooting him a steely glance. A moment later, he vanished with a ringing crack.
“Like bloody hell I’m staying here,” James said, turning to Millie. He reached for her hand.
She recoiled from it in surprise, her eyes glassy in the dimness.
“What are you doing!?”
“I’m apparating to the circus!” he said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. “Come on!”
“But I don’t want to go to the circus!” she cried, nearly hysterical with fear and confusion. “And you don’t know how to apparate yet!
I’m… I’m being the voice of reason!”
“I’ve apparated once before!” he insisted, pushing his hand toward her again. “Er, sort of.”
“I’m not going!” she said firmly, and stamped her foot. “You’re all crazy! Do you know that!? Crossing streets is one thing! But this is just… just…!”
James slumped helplessly, and then gave up on her. He glanced up again to the fluttering banners and illuminated peaks of the circus tents. They were barely a quarter mile away. He tried to pinpoint where exactly they were, calling up a mental map of Wizarding London.
He decided, somewhat haphazardly, that the circus was erected in the square where Diagon Alley and Sartori Alley intersected. With this picture firmly established in his mind, he stepped away from Millie, fisted his hands, squeezed his eyes shut, and flexed the mental muscle that he had last used when trying to cross a Hogwarts classroom.
There was no Edgar Edgecomb to toss a firecracker at him this time. He felt the world twang away, unreeling in a blur. Then, just as it had with his father a minute before, it reasserted itself around him. His feet struck down on hard stone and he swayed only slightly, sticking out his arms for
balance.
He opened his eyes and looked around. He was standing in the dead center of the square formed by the intersection of Sartori and Diagon Alleys. He’d apparated into a fountain, in fact, though one fortunately drained for the winter. On both sides, enormous tents, striped orange, blue, and white, stretched up into darkness, their canvas sides fluttering in the cold wind.
The noise of Norberta’s approach was behind him. The ground trembled with her pounding footsteps. The air rang with her feverish roar.
James turned on the spot and clambered over the ledge of the empty fountain, running out of the space between the tents, his wand in his outstretched hand. At the nearest corner, Gringotts bank loomed, its pillars reaching high to the marble cornices of its roof. As James looked, a corner gargoyle broke loose, tumbled end over end, and smashed to bits on the cobbles below. Norberta barreled around the corner, stepped and slid on the remains of the gargoyle, then dug in her claws and thundered straight toward James, her eyes blazing, her jaws open to show her rows of dagger teeth.
Heddlebun was still clinging to her neck, speaking to her, exploiting her dragonish nature and driving her to frenzy.
James skidded to a halt as the dragon’s shadow loomed over him.
Scrambling, nearly falling backwards, he began to retreat.
Bolts of red and purple light erupted from the alley behind Norberta. Merlin and James’ dad, it seemed, were still giving chase, aiming to stop Norberta’s rampage. Soon, they would have to resort to killing curses. Avada Kedavra might not be enough to destroy a dragon, James thought hectically, but Merlin surely knew a spell that would.
Remembering his own wand, James struggled to aim it. He tripped, fell to the cold cobbles, and felt the stampede of Norberta’s claws closing in on him. He threw himself onto his back, aimed his wand into the air, and shouted, “Expeliarmus!”
It was a purely instinctive reaction, culled from his many dueling sessions in Professor Debellows’ classroom. Norberta had no weapon to be expelled, of course. And yet, suddenly, her feet dug into the pavement, grinding over the cobbles as she skidded and slewed to a halt, plowing a cloud of dust before her.
James Potter and the Crimson Thread Page 46