James Potter And The Morrigan Web (108 page)

Harry continued to frown at the portrait, his face etched in deep thought. Suddenly, he glanced aside at Ralph. “Your wand,” he said, “you never told the Professor that it’s…?”

Ralph shuffled his feet uncomfortably. “No. I… don’t tell a lot of people where I got it from. It’s almost better that they think it’s got a yeti whisker in it. Hard enough to get people to practice duelling with me as it is…”

Flitwick watched this exchange with mounting interest. “Well,” he chimed in, “now my curiosity is most definitely piqued! What are you talking about? Where did you get your wand, Mr. Deedle? Do tell!”

“It might be best just to show you,” Ralph sighed.

“Titus,” Harry called suddenly, raising his chin. “A moment…”

James glanced back as Titus Hardcastle limped toward them, threading carefully through the detritus of the Great Hall, his feet kicking up puffs of petals. “What is it, Harry?”

“You still have Ralph’s wand with you, yes?” Harry answered.

Hardcastle nodded as he approached. He reached into the depths of his robes and withdrew the oversized wand. He looked at it in his big hand for a moment, then, sighing, handed it over to Ralph.

“What you did,” Hardcastle said, his voice low and rumbling, “I called it foolish. But I was wrong. I was wrong about quite a lot.”

“You were doing your job, Titus,” Harry said coolly. “No one can fault you for that.”

“They can and they should,” Hardcastle said, his voice becoming a growl of self-recrimination. “I followed orders, yeah. I thought that was my duty. Now…”

Harry regarded his long-time partner seriously. James knew there was very little anyone could say. Titus had betrayed a trust in the name of duty. The two men would probably be able to work it out in time. For now, however…

Harry opened his mouth to respond, but the words never came. Instead, a bolt of red exploded against Hardcastle’s back. His hands jerked spasmodically, scrabbling for his wand, but the Stunning spell did its work. Like a tree falling in the forest, Hardcastle keeled forward. Harry lunged to catch him, throwing a shoulder under Hardcastle’s chest.

Another red bolt struck Professor Flitwick, causing him to stumble and the ugly cane’s head to drop from his hand with a clatter. “Oh dear,” he said faintly, and fell to the floor.

James, Zane and Ralph scrambled, their eyes scanning the seemingly empty Great Hall for some sign of the attacker, but there was no one in sight.

Harry lowered Hardcastle to the dais as gently as he could. “Behind me!” he ordered, scrambling for his wand. Once it was in his hand, however, he let out a startled grunt. The wand popped out of his fist, floating in mid-air. A moment later, Harry’s head jerked back as if kicked. He fell back onto Titus Hardcastle, raising a hand to cup his jaw.

A dry, rattling laugh came out of empty air right in front of James. He recognized it immediately and his eyes flew wide.

“I have to hand it to you, James,” the laughing voice said, “you were right about my dear partner Judith. She could not be trusted. Fortunately, she went insane, chased away to who knows where. But I am still here, and this presents me with a bit of a problem. Fortunately, James Potter,
my
problems…” There was a flourish of suddenly visible fabric and Rechtor Grudje stood before him, Harry Potter’s wand in one hand, his own wand and the invisibility cloak in the other. “Are
your
problems.” He favoured James with a thin, angry smile.

“Headmaster Grudje,” Harry said, climbing carefully to his feet, making no sudden movements. “We assumed you had vacated along with the others. There is a squad of Aurors seeking you at this very moment, in fact, all of them quite curious to speak to you.”

“Yes,” Grudje nodded, “and this is the crux of my problem. You see, the entire school has been locked down. The Floo network is being monitored vigilantly. Every entrance is shut and guarded. No matter what guise I take, I will not be allowed to leave the premises. And it is integral that I do so. You see, I’ve no intention to go to Azkaban. That’s why I returned to my office, procuring this very useful object,” he shook the cloak in his hand, “A gift, helpfully abandoned in my alter-ego’s office at Durmstrang. With its help, you four are going to escort me from these premises. I shall be hidden beneath, and you shall insure that all of the necessary doors are opened, allowing me to pass…”

Zane piped up, “And why are we going to do that, Headmaster, er…” He cocked his head and frowned. “Sorry, forgot your name already. I’m Zane Walker, by the way. I don’t go to Hogwarts anymore. American. Nice to meet you and all that...” He stuck out his hand as if he expected Grudje to shake it.

Grudje levelled his wand instead. “I really only
need
the elder Potter,” he said threateningly. “The rest of you I have no qualms about killing right now. What shall it be, Harry Potter, Mr. Head Auror? Assist me? Or do I start uttering curses?”

“No, Ralph!” Harry commanded suddenly, his eyes darting to the side. Ralph, James saw, had been surreptitiously drawing out his wand. Harry went on urgently, “The Headmaster is quite serious. He will kill to get his way. Don’t do anything foolish. Give it to me, Ralph…”

Ralph looked at Harry in surprise, frozen in the act of withdrawing his wand.

“Mr. Potter speaks wisely,” Grudje said. “Obey your elders, boy. Pass the wand over to me before anyone else wanders into the Hall and becomes an unwitting hostage…” He stowed Harry’s wand into an inner pocket, flung the invisibility cloak over his shoulder, and held out his free hand, palm up, still threatening them with his own wand.

Reluctantly, Ralph passed his wand to Harry. Harry took it carefully.

“To me, Mr. Potter,” Grudje commanded in a low voice. “Slowly…”

Harry sighed deeply and turned. Still making no sudden movements, he held the wand out, extending it slowly toward Grudje’s reaching hand. Just as the headmaster made to grab it, however, Harry pivoted, turning the wand away and touching it, with a dull
thunk
, to the unmoving canvas of Merlin’s portrait.

There was no response.

“What are you doing?” Grudje demanded, growing impatient and angry. “Give me the wand! Give it to me or your son dies first!”

In answer to this, a tiny noise emanated from the portrait. Every eye turned toward it. Suddenly, for no apparent reason, the portrait had ripped. The tear emanated from the tip of Ralph’s wand and stretched upward, crossing over the front of painted Merlin’s chest, slashing his face, and stopping just past the top of his head. It looked, more than anything, as if the canvas had been stretched too tight and the pressure of the wand had caused it to split.

James’ heart sank. Whatever his father had done, it hadn’t made matters better.

“The
wand!”
Grudje ordered, raising his own wand to James’ face. James cringed back.

“Here,” Harry said, taking the wand away from the torn portrait and handing it over, his face grim.

Grudje reached for it.

Suddenly, soundlessly, light pierced the torn painting. Grudje startled so abruptly that he jumped back, leaving the wand in Harry’s hand. James peered around his father’s shoulder at the Merlin portrait. Inexplicably, the tear glowed like a bolt of lightning, sending out living, shifting beams of light. The rip widened, tearing the canvas further. The frame creaked and popped, its corners beginning to separate as the canvas bulged.

“Back away,” Harry muttered, not taking his eyes from the splitting portrait, but pushing James, Ralph and Zane behind him, manoeuvring them away slowly, carefully.

Across from them, Grudje’s face was frozen in a pained rictus, his lips pulled into a tight frown, his brow lowered over bulging, tense eyes. His wand was still raised in his hand, only now, slowly, he turned it toward the brightly glowing, splitting portrait.

The frame snapped and broke. The portrait fell forward, flipped off its easel, and dropped to the floor face up, so that the beams of light from its ruptured canvas cut straight up into the air, making the rest of the Great Hall seem positively dark by comparison. And still the rift widened, creaking, tearing the canvas apart with a soft, purring, ripping noise. A sound emanated from the lightning bolt-shaped rift. It was like wind, or like distant voices, echoing, indecipherable, blowing and overlapping and teasing at meaning. James found himself leaning forward to hear, to understand…

“Stop,” his father said, softly but sternly. “I’ve heard that before…”

The portrait exploded apart. Bits of canvas and broken frame spun from the dais. But the glowing rift remained, bigger now, as if freed from its boundary. Light speared toward the Great Hall’s dark, enchanted ceiling. James squinted into it, sure there was something moving inside that light-- a thin shadowy shape, growing wider, darker, more substantial, like a figure walking out of some brilliant, blindingly hot furnace. The haunting, whispering voices grew clearer, louder…

Grudje levelled his wand at the piercing beam of light. He was backing away from it, slowly, warily, his face a mask of restrained terror.
What is he so afraid of?
James thought.
It’s not frightening… if anything… it’s beautiful
…

Finally, with a blare of golden fire and a rush of gathering voices, a figure emerged from the light. The rift collapsed behind it, closing and vanishing with a sound of roaring wind.

James felt eerily ready for what he saw. It was is if he had been expecting something like this-- pining for it so deeply and so secretly that he’d not even been consciously aware of it. Only now, as it happened, did he realize that it was a fulfilment of his unspoken hopes.

“Merli-- !” he began, and then stopped suddenly, his breath catching in his throat.

The figure that resolved out of the blinding light, now standing before him as real as he himself, resplendent in a conical hat and rich purple robes, was
not
Merlinus Ambrosius. It was an old man with flowing white beard, a thin, kindly face with a long, crooked nose, and wearing, over his bright blue eyes, a pair of half-moon spectacles. The old man turned resolutely to Grudje, as if he’d been looking for him.

Grudje’s face paled so quickly and completely that he appeared to transform into a ghost before James’ eyes. His wand was still held out before him, but it trembled so violently that he could barely hold onto it. He seemed to have completely stopped breathing. He did not fire-- seemed suddenly completely incapable of firing.

The old man with the flowing white beard regarded him sadly. “Nephew,” he said.

And Grudje ran. He leapt from the dais, stumbled in panic, and, righting himself, bolted toward the doors, leaving a trail of disturbed flower petals scattering in his wake.

“
Accio wand!”
Harry called, flicking Ralph’s wand at the retreating figure.

Grudje stumbled again, turning on the spot as Harry’s wand ripped from his robes, spiralling away through the air. Grudje barely seemed to notice. He pivoted back, ran into the door desperately, and clambered through.

The old man on the stage turned and glanced over at Zane, Ralph, and James, finally raising his kindly blue eyes to Harry Potter, who deftly caught his wand. He smiled and his eyes twinkled behind his half-moon spectacles. A moment later, with a loud
CRACK,
he vanished.

“After him!” Harry exclaimed, tossing Ralph his wand, leaping down from the dais and running toward the Hall doors. “Grudje can’t be allowed to escape or obtain any more hostages!”

“That was…!” James cried faintly, scrambling to follow his father, his mind spinning so fast he could barely keep up with it. “That was…! Was that…?”

“What?” Zane asked frantically, running to keep up and pushing Ralph ahead of him. “Who? What’d I miss? Who’s the oldster with the specs?”

“It can’t be who it looked like it was…” Harry said as he ran, shoving through the double doors in pursuit of Grudje. “But it was. I’d know that face anywhere. That…” he said, shaking his head in dark wonder, “was Albus Dumbledore.”

James followed his dad up the staircase at a dead run. “Where do you think he was going?” he called up to him.

“There!” Harry exclaimed, pointing to the top of the stairs.

James craned to look as he ran. A robed figure was just dashing around the upper banister, shoving aside a gathering of students as he went.

“Stop him!” Harry called, his voice echoing sternly up the stairs.

“But--” Cameron Creevey stammered, pointing after the fleeing figure. “But, that was the Headmaster…!”

Harry rounded the bannister and blew past Cameron, who turned to watch him pass. “And that was Harry Potter!” he added excitedly.

James and Zane followed, with Ralph panting in the rear.

“What’s going on, mates?” Cameron called, cupping his hands to his mouth and hopping on his toes. “Another adventure? Can I come?”

Harry pelted, swerving around knots of students. James had seen his father in Auror mode before, but never like this. He barely seemed to be breathing as he ran, his hands flattened into blades, scissoring the air, his feet seeming to cross acres with each swift step. He was pulling away from James even as James ran flat out to keep up with him.