James Potter And The Morrigan Web (54 page)

“I don’t talk like that!” Victoire seethed loudly. “And it was just a weekend! Not all month!”

“Come on,” Rose said, pointing her wand at the door. “Kreacher will be back any moment.
Alohamora
!”

There was a golden flash and the lock snicked. Albus grabbed the handle and wrenched the door open. The hall beyond was dark and empty, leading to a narrow stairwell. James stopped in the doorway and glanced back. “Lil, you stay here, and I don’t want to hear a word. If we get caught sneaking out, we’ll just get in trouble. If we get caught letting
you
out, mum will destroy us.”

“You aren’t
letting
me out!” Lily protested. “I’m not a pet gerbil! I can go if I wish!”

“James is right, Lily,” Rose admonished gently. “We’ll tell you everything we hear when we get back, promise.”

“I never get to do anything fun.” Lily groused, folding her arms dramatically.

James turned to Ralph. “You coming, Ralphinator?”

Ralph shook his head, his cheeks pale. “Not this time. That elf of yours scares the hair off me. I think I’ll just sit this one out.”

“Suit yourself,” Albus agreed cheerily, sweeping past James into the hall. “Let’s get gone. We’re missing all the good stuff downstairs.”

James followed his brother out into the dark hall, closing the door behind him. It locked automatically, and James stopped as a thought occurred to him.

“Hold on a mo’. If Kreacher comes back while we’re gone, how are we going to get back inside?”

He turned toward Rose and Albus, both of whom were standing on the top step of the staircase. They glanced at each other. Albus shrugged.

“I only worked out how to sneak out,” he admitted. “Getting back in never even crossed my mind.”

“You stupid git!” James hissed. “It’s no good at all if we get caught coming
back
! Rose, get back here with your wand and unlock this thing. I forgot mine!” He stepped away from the door and pointed at it.

Rose frowned dourly but seemed to recognize the sense in James’ objection. She took one step back toward the locked door, wand in hand, when a small pop sounded in the darkness of the hall. Kreacher reappeared, his back to them, staring hard at the door as if he knew something was afoot. Slowly, he turned and looked back over his shoulder, his huge eyes sparkling in the gloom.

Without thinking, James bolted. He ran toward the stairs and was joined there by Rose and Albus. Banging shoulders and bouncing off the walls, the three scrambled to the third floor, nearly toppling into a heap on the rug below.

“There!” Albus gasped, pointing. “Split up! One a room!”

“You’re insane!” Rose objected shrilly, even as Albus lunged forward, throwing himself through an open bedroom door and ramming it shut.

“I’ll take my mum and dad’s room!” she panted, darting forward. “You take the bathroom!”

“But the lock’s broken!” James objected.

Rose, however, did not glance back. She pelted into the second bedroom and closed the door as quickly and quietly as she could. A moment later the deadbolt clacked into place. James shook his head in frustration and dove toward the dark bathroom. His feet echoed on the old tile floor as he spun around and pushed the door closed. It refused to latch, much less lock. James grabbed the rickety chair next to the sink and rammed it under the door handle, wedging it in place. He leaned against the door, then slid down to the floor and pressed an eye to the crack at the bottom.

From this vantage, he could see the length of the hall rug stretching away toward the stairs. Slowly, silently, a pair of naked grey feet padded down into view, and then stopped. James could hear Kreacher’s voice muttering quietly but clearly in the confines of the hall.

“Think they can outsmart old Kreacher, they do,” he seethed to himself. “But Kreacher has ways they know nothing of. Kreacher has means beyond any young witch or wizard.”

James couldn’t see above Kreacher’s bony ankles, but he watched the house elf’s shadow where it fell along a nearby wall. The shadow snapped its fingers and a small square object appeared in mid-air, dropping into the shadow’s open hand. The other hand unfurled its long fingers and pinched the small object, opening it like a jewellery box. Kreacher’s shadow tipped the box over.

Two dark objects fell silently to the hall floor in front of Kreacher’s feet. From James’ perspective, the objects appeared to be black marbles, glossy as Raven’s eyes in the darkness. Then, the objects began to flatten and spread, like beads of oil soaking into the nappy carpet. The drops grew, expanding and sending out long, glistening tendrils. Then, shapes began to bulge up out of the black goo. The shapes became hard, angular, transforming into jointed appendages, struggling swiftly out of the sticky black. Finally, both shapes leapt fully out of themselves, transforming into two miniature versions of Kreacher, each no more than six inches high, and each as black and liquid as ink.

“Three escaped charges,” Kreacher croaked with satisfaction. “And three of Kreacher. Only fair, isn’t it?”

With that, the three shapes began to pad along the hallway, making no noise at all on the threadbare carpet. They split up, each approaching one door. Kreacher stepped toward the bedroom that Rose had hidden inside. One of the Ink Kreachers stalked purposefully toward the bathroom door beyond which James crouched. Then, suddenly, it paused. It seemed to spy James’ eye peering from beneath the door. It bent over slightly, almost playfully, as if to get a better look. Then, it straightened, raised one hand into a fist, and extended its index finger toward the ceiling. The finger wagged back and forth in a shaming gesture.

The Ink Kreacher could, James realized, slither right beneath the bathroom door if it wanted.

He clambered upright as the thought fully struck him. He cast around the dark room desperately. Suddenly, being caught by the horrible Ink Kreacher seemed the very last thing on earth he wanted. The bathroom provided no hiding place, however. The ancient claw-foot tub was huge and rust-stained, its curtain rod long barren of any curtain. The pedestal sink glowed ivory in the dimness.

A shadow moved in the bar of light beneath the door. A subtle liquid squelching sound reached James’ ears as the Kreacher began to slither through. James backed away and bumped against the tile wall between the sink and the tub. His hand knocked against a wooden object, producing a hollow clunk. He glanced aside. A small door was set into the wall, latched with a tiny doorknob. Beyond that door, James knew, was the laundry chute, a dark shaft that led down between the walls, through three floors and into the cellar. Was it possible? Was it, in fact, any safer?

The Ink Kreacher squelched into the darkness of the bathroom, one arm waving blackly as the rest of its body squeezed through. Horribly, James heard a high, muttering voice emanating from it. The words were indecipherable, but the tone was the same monotonous ramble Kreacher always seemed to employ under his breath. It squeaked and prattled to itself as it poured into the room like black syrup.

James yanked the laundry chute door open, gave the darkness beyond a cursory examination, and then climbed up onto the edge of the tub. He had just rammed his right foot into the chute when the Ink Kreacher finally popped fully from beneath the door. It stood erect and regarded him with its ebony eyes. It was like being stared down by a particularly hideous, bipedal spider.

James slid his other foot into the darkness of the chute, gripped its upper ledge with both hands, and began to shimmy swiftly through the narrow opening. The Ink Kreacher leapt after him, but the door swung shut behind James, causing the tiny imp to bounce off it with a wet
splat
.

James fell into seamless, whooshing dark, only now fully realizing that he had just thrown himself off a very narrow, forty foot ledge. He jammed out his knees and elbows, desperately trying to arrest his fall. With a juddering screech, he caught himself after a few dozen feet. A narrow ledge snagged his heels, which popped through into some unknown space. His entire body followed, jouncing painfully through the opening into the very cold, very hard embrace of some cocoon-like shape. He banged his head against it and heard the slam of another small wooden door behind him.

“Ow!” he rasped to himself, rubbing his head with both hands. He glanced around and at first saw only blank whiteness. Finally, he realized that he had kicked his way inadvertently through the lower laundry chute door, ending up in the first floor bathroom. The tub had caught him, which was fortunate, because the rest of the room was a cramped shambles, almost unrecognizable in its current state. Of course it was. This was the bathroom that had given up most of its space to the engorged dining room immediate next to it. As a result, the sink was crammed right up next to the tub, leaning over it like a vulture. The toilet was hunched in the narrow closet, whose door jutted open like a broken wing. There was no longer any exit, the main door being buried behind the accordioned walls, thus explaining aunt Hermione’s earlier discomfiture.

For now, James was glad there was no door. It meant there was no easy way for Kreacher, or even his horrible ink doppelgangers, to get in and catch him.

And then, beyond the wall on James’ left, he heard the dim echo of voices.

“I’m sure it was nothing,” a man’s voice announced-- was it his father? “We had to enlarge the dining room rather a lot to accommodate us all. The house is likely settling a bit. Do carry on, Draco.”

“As I was saying,” another man’s voice said with a note of impatience, “Ms. Morganstern may indeed be a formidable witch, but her sense of stealth is surprisingly lacking.” James frowned where he lay in the bathtub, concentrating on the muffled voice. Was that Draco Malfoy, his dad’s old school nemesis, and the father of Scorpius? He recognized the man’s lazy, indifferent drawl from two years ago, at Granddad’s funeral, when Draco and his wife had come to pay their rather cool respects.

“Stealth stems from a sense of danger,” a woman’s voice, Professor McGonagall, spoke up. “It may be that Ms. Morganstern feels no such apprehension. She may not conceal her movements simply because she does not fear capture. Her power, whatever its source, may give her an illusion of invulnerability.”

“After what happened last summer,” Uncle George’s voice commented darkly, “I’m not sure it’s an illusion.”

Kendrick Debellows harrumphed. “She’s powerful, no question. But everyone is vulnerable. She was captured once, after all, and by those layabouts in the American Wizarding Administration. She can be captured again.”

“Those ‘layabouts’, as you call them, are among the finest professional law keepers in the world.” The speaker was Alma Aleron’s Professor Jackson, whom James recognized by his steely tone and his American accent. “And it took seven of them simultaneously to subdue her. Not to mention that they had the advantage of surprise. Ms. Morganstern will not be surprised again, I would wager. Before last summer, she was merely a mysteriously gifted young witch. Now, she is the world’s most wanted magical fugitive, single-handedly responsible not only for the revelation of the magical world, but for the theft of a priceless and powerful artefact, the crimson thread from the Vault of Destinies. Its continued absence has untold, and frankly unknowable, effects on our world, increasing every moment of every day.”

James sat up in the bathtub and stared unseeingly into the darkness, straining his ears. This was the last thing he’d expected his father and the rest of the adults to be discussing. Was Petra really Undesirable Number One, the most wanted criminal in the entire magical world? And was the missing Crimson Thread, lost in the World Between the Worlds, truly altering the destiny of the world every day? He recalled the words of Headmaster Merlin from last year, as they had all stood gazing at the stopped magical loom, its enigmatic weaving of destiny halted by the missing thread:
this changes everything
. It was more than James could begin to comprehend. A sense of deepening dismay and worry fanned out in his veins as the conversation continued.

“Coming to the point,” James heard his father say calmly. “Does this mean, Draco, that you have been able to trace some of Petra’s movements?”

“Marginally,” Draco admitted. “The difficulty is not in following her via her transactions. It is in doing so without getting caught by my superiors. Gringotts goblins are notoriously neutral in the legal affairs of the wizarding world, but their sense of professional propriety is a law of its own. If they discovered I was using bank records to track a fugitive, getting sacked would be the least of my worries.”

“We all appreciate the risk you are taking,” Professor Flitwick assured in his tiny voice. “But your information is the best we have. It’s a pity that the Ministry rejects it.”

“They don’t just reject it,” Harry lamented. “They deem it patently illegal. And perhaps they are right to. Gringotts’ coin tracking enchantments are powerful goblin magic, capable of dangerous exploitation in the wrong hands. Fortunately, goblins are as above ill-gotten gain as they are civic conscience.”

“Well, I think that may be a bit harsh,” McGonagall tutted.

Harry sighed. “You’re probably right. Apologies for your co-workers, Draco.”

“No apologies necessary,” Draco said lightly. “They would agree with you. They believe such things as civic duty, morality and social conscience are plain hindrances to proper banking. They go out of their way to avoid such sentiments.”

Professor Longbottom asked tiredly, “What have you discovered, Draco?”

“Not a lot, but what I do know is quite curious,” Draco said, clearly enjoying being the centre of attention. “She is traveling extensively, visiting all manner of establishments. She does not stay long, and she buys very little. What money does change hands does so almost exclusively under the guise of tips.”

“Tips for what?” Angelina asked. “If she isn’t buying anything?”

“Tips for information,” Harry answered, almost to himself. “She is looking for something. Or someone.”

“Any ideas what?” Aunt Hermione asked, her voice serious. “What would she be seeking that was so important she had to travel the world to find it?”