James Potter And The Morrigan Web (42 page)

James looked aside at her in surprise. He could see that she meant it. He sighed with deep reluctance.

“No,” he answered finally.

“I’m sorry?” Grudje raised his voice. “Forgive me. My hearing is not quite what it used to be.”

“I said no,” James repeated miserably, standing away from the headmaster’s desk.

Grudje nodded gravely. “I see. Well then. Mr. Caretaker, the day is begun. If you hurry, you may mete out your disciplines before classes begin. No point putting off the inevitable.”

Scorpius shook his head. “But we’ve been up all night,” he said hopelessly. “And it’s breakfast. Aren’t detentions usually scheduled for a later time?”

Grudje clucked his tongue lightly. “I fear you should have thought of that before making the unwise choice to engage in lies and debauchery. But fear not, Mr. Malfoy,” the headmaster smiled benignly. “You are building character! Like young Ms. Potter, there may yet be hope for you as well. Choose your friends better, young man, and let us hope that our next meeting will be under happier circumstances.”

Hopelessly, James turned to leave, reaching to collect the Invisibility Cloak from the corner of Grudje’s desk. The headmaster moved with lithe suddenness, pinning the Cloak to the desk with his wand.

“I think I shall keep this for a while,” Grudje chided softly. “After all, it does present a rather irresistible temptation to someone of your personality. Doesn’t it, Mr. Potter?”

James could hear the smile in the headmaster’s voice. He refused to look at him. After a long, wretched pause, he released the Cloak, leaving it on the corner of the desk.

“Come along, my pets,” Filch urged cheerfully. “The headmaster is right. The day is already begun, and we have much to do. Oh yes,” he nodded eagerly, his beady eyes sparkling. “Much to do
indeed
.”

As Filch pushed them toward the door, James glanced aside at the collection of portraits of former headmasters. Merlin’s hung closest to the door, still dead as wood, its eyes staring like coins. Next to this, Severus Snape watched coolly, his black eyes imperious and smug.

Next to him, however, the portrait of Albus Dumbledore hung blank, dark, and conspicuously empty.

Filch muttered to himself as he led James, Lily and Scorpius down, staircase after staircase, to his office in the labyrinthine depths of the dungeons. Mrs. Norris ran ahead, her bushy tail held high, meowing eagerly.

Nastasia and Zane were gone, sent back to Alma Aleron via the cupboards in the Great Hall. Filch had not paused even to allow the remaining three to nip a piece of toast from the platters lining the house tables. Few other students were up this early, but the ones who were watched with pale faces and wide eyes as Filch herded the three back toward the doors, smiling thinly, his cane rapping loudly on the stone floor.

“Here we are, then,” he said with mock cordiality, shaking out an enormous key ring. It jingled like sleigh bells as he socked the long key into its hole and twisted. The door creaked open and Filch gave it an impatient shove, banging it against a line of antique wooden filing cabinets. He showed his teeth to James and raised an arm welcomingly. “After you, my pet.”

James took a deep, shaky breath and led Lily into the room, Scorpius following close behind. Filch’s office was quite small, almost unbearably stuffy, and obviously unaccustomed to visitors. In the centre of the room a tall desk stood, every inch of its surface buried under layers and layers of parchments, newspapers, cheap magazines, disused mugs and goblets, bottles, ratty quills, dry ink pots, and assorted, indecipherable odds and ends. More stacks leaned against the wall behind the desk, reaching nearly to the ceiling and looking precarious enough to fall over at the slightest breath. There was just enough of a pathway for Filch to round his desk and reach a rickety rolling chair, which he pushed aside. Its wheels screeched like angry rats.

“Well?” he demanded, eyeing the three severely. “Sit!” He gestured with one callused hand toward the row of filing cabinets which squatted behind the door. Shoved against them, half-buried in years of clutter, was a small classroom desk. Two child-sized chairs were crammed beneath it.

“Not you,” Filch growled as James approached the desk tentatively. “You’ll stand. Just there. And shut the door fast before you let all the heat out. Where are your manners?”

Reluctantly, James pushed the door shut until the lock clicked. Behind him, the tiny chairs scraped and rattled as Scorpius and Lily sat.

“I’ve got just the thing for you two,” Filch said on the tail of a sigh, as if he had been waiting years for this moment. With surprising delicacy, he reached down and unrolled a drawer from the middle of his desk. “A great man is Headmaster Grudje. A great man indeed. But he is not the first headmaster of this school to truly understand the importance of discipline. There was once a headmistress… a woman of surprising talents and admirable convictions…”

As Filch spoke, he withdrew a pair of quills from the drawer and examined them critically. Their feathers were black, matted and greasy looking. The quill tips were yellowed with age, stained an unsettling maroon at their points. Without looking up from the quills, Filch rounded the desk, approaching the students.

“In the good old days,” he said quietly, almost to himself, “we had thumbscrews and racks. I thought I understood punishment. But that headmistress showed me the
subtle
art of discipline. Sometimes, it is the softest voice that speaks the loudest. Sometimes, the lightest lines cut the deepest…”

Filch sighed disconsolately, lost in memory. Finally, he looked down at the students again. “I had a picture of that headmistress for quite a long time, hung right next to my desk there. Had to take it down.
Some
people thought it a bit…
impolitic
. She was imprisoned by that time, after all, however unjustly. She died there, in Azkaban.”

Filch stared at the blank spot on the wall for a long moment. James had the unsettling suspicion that there were tears glimmering in the old man’s eyes. He made no effort to wipe them away.

Finally, he sniffed hugely, turned, and held up the quills. “But in some ways she lives on. These once were hers, left behind upon her rather abrupt departure. I claimed them, of course, knowing there would be a day when they would prove useful once again. Here you go, my young miss…” With a stiff bow and a moist-eyed smile, he handed one of the quills delicately to Lily. She took it with great trepidation, pinching its feather between her thumb and forefinger.

Filch nodded approvingly, and then proffered the second quill to Scorpius. James felt a deepening sensation of coldness in his stomach, despite the warmth of the room.

“Lines, my pets,” Filch announced, turning away. He collected his cane where it leant in the corner, then pointed it at back at Scorpius and Lily, who flinched. “
Exorier
!” he spat fervently. With a pop, large sheets of blank parchment appeared before the seated students.

Filch lowered his cane proudly and scratched his chin. “Let us see. How about ‘I… will… not… associate… with… troublemakers’. Yes,” he nodded, narrowing his eyes at James. “I think that will do nicely. One hundred repetitions, if you please. That means
two
hundred for you, my pet, since you are assuming your brother’s portion. Morning classes are barely an hour away. If you cannot finish the task before then, you will return this evening for one hundred more.”

Scorpius rolled his eyes irritably. “Fine,” he sighed. “Ink, please?”

“Oh,” Filch smiled broadly. “Ink won’t be necessary.” Suddenly, a thought seemed to strike him. He leaned close to Lily. A moment later, she hissed in pain and withdrew her hand. She looked down at it in alarm. A tiny scratch had appeared on the smooth skin of the back of her hand, already welling blood.

“It won’t heal,” Filch said, still smiling encouragingly, “until you finish the entire line.”

“Look,” James spoke up, stepping forward to get between Filch and Lily. “I’m the one who did wrong. Not her. I should be the one doing lines. She’s just a first year!”

“
Step… back
!” Filch commanded, raising his voice to a hoarse roar. He placed his hand against James’ chest and shoved him firmly backwards. “You’ll stand there and watch or I will double her lines this moment. Understood?”

James felt a nearly undeniable urge to shove the old man’s hand away. He wanted to brandish his wand and curse Filch right in the face. His hands balled into hard fists at the very thought. Behind Filch, Lily watched, her face draining of colour, cradling her wounded hand.

Filch leaned closer to James, his brow lowering. “You had your chance to run back to your daddy, Potter,” he breathed. “Now, your only choice is to submit. Or perhaps you are thinking of a duel?” He raised his stubbly chin, a mean smile curling the corners of his mouth. “In the past, poor old Squib Filch would have been no match. But now… things have changed a bit, haven’t they?”

He rapped his cane menacingly on the floor. Without taking his eyes from James’ face, he stepped backwards, watching.

“
Write
!” he commanded.

Lily jumped. She leaned over her parchment, lowered the quill once again in her trembling, bleeding hand, and began to write once more. James listened, his fists still trembling at his sides, as her quill scratched over the parchment. Blood-red words began to glisten in her neat, slanting handwriting. Blood-red scratches dug magically into the pale skin of her hand.

When the line was finished, she jerked her hand back from the paper. Instantly, the bloody cuts began to fade from her skin, healing as James watched. She exhaled shakily, and then looked up at him.

“It’s all right,” she said quietly. “It’s just for a little while.”

“Silence,” Filch ordered, returning to his desk and lowering into his rickety chair. “You have fifty-four minutes. The clock is ticking.”

Scorpius looked from James to Lily, his mouth pressed into a pale line of rage. He began to write, quickly, as if pain was something he was used to enduring.

Lily saw this, seemed to draw bravery from it, and leaned over her parchment again. Two quills scratched loudly in the tiny office.

James watched, anger boiling in his chest, throbbing like a pulse in the corners of his eyes. He could scarcely believe this was happening. Filch had always seemed merely a vaguely comic nemesis, never a real threat. Only now did James realize that the old man’s viciousness had only been kept in check by his powerlessness, and the good judgment of his superiors.

Those days were apparently over.

At the moment, James cared no longer whether he got expelled from Hogwarts. His sister’s safety had been entrusted to him, and despite that he had allowed her to get into this mess. He would tell his parents everything, first thing, as soon as this ordeal was over.

And somehow, some way, Filch would pay.

8. THWARTING GRUDJE

As the Saturday morning sun burned the dew into mist, James, Scorpius and Rose picked their way across the grounds toward Hagrid’s hut. The half-giant was already outside, whistling cheerily and sawing a hunk of freshly lumbered wood into a rough beam.