James Potter and the Curse of the Gatekeeper jp-1

by G. Norman Lippert

  “I’ll have some of whatever he’s having,” Draco said, glancing toward James and smiling a small, crooked smile. “Thank you, darling.”

  Ginny led the way between the tables and Astoria followed, glancing back once toward Harry and Draco.

  “So how are things at Gringotts, Draco?” Harry asked, making no effort to lead the pale man into the throng gathered near the house. “I understand humans are almost unheard of in the bank offices, and yet here you are, vice chairman of something or other, or so I’ve heard. We’d have had a good laugh back in our school days if someone had told us you’d end up a big wheel at the wizarding bank of England.”

  “Back in our school days,” Draco said quietly, still not looking directly at Harry, “we’d have had a good laugh if someone had told us we’d someday stand in the same yard without pointing wands at each other.”

  Harry’s smile faded. “Yes,” he admitted in a lower voice. “There is that.”

  There was a long pause. James could hear the babble of subdued voices closer to the house and the twittering of birds in the orchard. He glanced over toward Rose, who was also watching the scene with rapt interest. She raised her eyebrows and shook her head minutely.

  “You know,” Draco said in a different tone of voice, laughing a little humorlessly, “to tell you the truth, there isn’t a single thing about the way life looks today that I would have predicted during our last years at Hogwarts.”

  Harry’s smile had gone entirely. He stood and watched the pale man, his eyes unreadable.

  “We are all taught things, growing up,” Draco went on. “And rarely do we have the sheer audacity to question them. We grow to take the shape of whatever our families define for us. The weight of generations of belief presses down, and makes us in their image. And most of the time that is a good thing.” Draco finally looked Harry in the eye, and for the first time since his arrival, the sneer was gone from his face. “Most of the time, it really is a good thing, Harry. But sometimes we grow up, time passes, and long, long after any hope of rejecting those defining beliefs, we look back. And we wonder.”

  James looked from Draco to his dad. His dad’s face was still unreadable. After a long moment, Harry glanced back toward the house and sighed.

  “Look, Draco, whatever you have to say, whatever you think needs to happen here…”

  Draco shook his head. “Nothing needs to happen here. I didn’t come here to ask your forgiveness, Harry. I just came to tell you and your family that I am sorry for your loss. Despite what you might expect, I know Arthur Weasley was a strong man. He was an honorable man. My father wouldn’t tend to agree with me, but it’s like I said. We get older. Some of us look back, and wonder.”

  Harry nodded slightly. “Thank you, Draco.”

  Draco took a step closer to Harry. “There was one other reason I came today though. I think I should admit that to you. I came to prove something to myself.”

  Harry didn’t blink. “What were you hoping to prove?”

  Draco smiled a little, not taking his eyes from Harry’s. “I wanted to prove to myself that I could come and speak to you. And more importantly, that you’d hear me.”

  Draco extended his right hand. Without looking down, Harry slowly shook it. James could hardly believe what he was seeing, knowing the history of these two men. It was hardly a tearful reconciliation, and James had the distinct impression that if Draco knew anyone in his family could see it, he’d never have done it. But it was amazing, nonetheless. The handshake was over in seconds, and less than five minutes later, both Draco and Astoria had left, driving away in their very large, very black automobile. But the image of that handshake, somehow both daring and vulnerable, tenuous as a soap bubble, stuck in James’ mind for a long time.

  Most of the immediate family stayed over that night at the Burrow, and James felt a particular sadness in knowing it might be the last time the family gathered in the old home. A palpable sense of loss and coldness filled the rooms despite the bustle of evening activity. It was almost as if everyone was mentally throwing dustcovers over the furniture, taking down the pictures, and dividing up the dishes. James felt a vague, aimless anger about it. It was bad enough that Granddad had died. Now it seemed that the Burrow was dying too. Nothing felt normal or comfortable. Even the bedroom he’d shared with Albus and Lily for so many years seemed cold and empty. It had never once crossed his mind that this room might someday belong to someone else, someone he didn’t know. Worse, what if the new owners simply tore down the house and built a new one? What if they were Muggles, who wouldn’t know how to maintain such a place? He couldn’t bear the thought. Angrily, he slammed the door and began to put on his pyjamas.

  “Hrmm!” Lily muttered, rolling over in her bed and covering her head with a pillow.

  “Never mind us,” Albus griped from the big bed in the corner. “We’re just trying to sleep. Let us know if we’re bothering you.”

  “Sorry,” James muttered, plopping onto the bed and kicking off his shoes.

  Albus sat up and stared at the door of the room. James glanced aside to where Albus was looking. They’d seen it a thousand times before: the inside of the door was covered with worn etchings and carved words. This room had belonged to many people throughout the years, and most of them had made some sort of mark on that door, to Grandma Weasley’s constant annoyance. Still, she’d made no effort to fix the door, which wouldn’t have been all that difficult for a witch. James thought he knew why. In the very center of the door, much older than the rest of the carvings, was a series of carven hash-marks, the kind used to mark off days. Above the hash-marks were the words ‘Days To Freedom!’ Below the last set of hash-marks, which was very large, the same hand had scrawled ‘Fred And George To HOGWARTS And BEYOND! Long Live Fred And George!’

  “You think Grandma will really sell the place?” James asked, still gazing at the carvings on the door.

  Albus didn’t answer. After a moment, he rolled over, facing the wall and pulling most of the covers with him.

  James stripped off his shirt and grabbed his pyjama top. He slid to the floor and padded toward the bathroom door to brush his teeth.

  The bathroom was shared by three bedrooms and the third-floor hallway. Lucy, Percy’s daughter, was sitting on the edge of the ancient claw-foot tub, studiously brushing her glossy black hair.

  “Hi, James,” she said, glancing up briefly.

  “Hi, Lucy.”

  “It’s good to see you. I missed everybody this summer,” Lucy said, drawing the brush over a lock of her hair. “Daddy says we’ll be able to spend more time at home next year. I was pretty happy about that until today. I mean, by next year…”

  James nodded. “Yeah.”

  “Did you like your first year of school?” Lucy asked, looking up. “Are you looking forward to going back?”

  James nodded and picked up the glass that stood on the side of the sink. It was packed with the family’s toothbrushes. He grimaced and turned the glass, trying to find his own.

  “I can’t wait to start school,” Lucy said, returning to her brushing. “Daddy says I should enjoy being free while I can, but it doesn’t feel free living with him and Mummy in hotel rooms for weeks at a time. Mummy says it’s best for us to travel with him on all his international trips, so we can all stay together as a family. She likes all the travelling though. She’s always dragging Molly and me out to some historical thing or other, telling us to smile while she takes pictures of us in front of this statue or that rock that some famous person from some great battle stood on or something. I write lots of letters, but not that many people write back, or at least not as often as I’d like.”

  She glanced meaningfully at James. He saw her in the mirror as he brushed his teeth.

  “What’s wrong with Albus?” Lucy asked, standing and putting away her brush.

  James rinsed his toothbrush. “What do you mean?”

  “He was awfully quiet tonight. It’s not like him.”
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  “Well, I guess everybody is a little quieter than usual,” James replied. He glanced aside at Lucy and smiled crookedly. “Well, almost everybody.”

  She bumped him playfully as she passed him. At the door, she stopped and looked over her shoulder.

  “We’ll probably be gone when you get up in the morning,” she said simply. “We have to get back to Denmark first thing, Daddy says.”

  “Oh,” James said. “Well, happy travels, Lucy. Sorry about all that. Uncle Percy’s quite the man at the Ministry, according to Dad. Things won’t always be like this, don’t you think?”

  Lucy smiled. “It won’t much matter by next year, will it? I’ll be with you, Albus, Louis, Rose, and Hugo at Hogwarts. Won’t that be fun?”

  James nodded. There was something rather disquieting about talking to Cousin Lucy. It wasn’t that he didn’t love her. In many ways, he liked her better than many of his other cousins, particularly Louis. She was just so different. It made sense that she would be different, since she’d been adopted by Uncle Percy and Aunt Audrey back when they believed they couldn’t have kids of their own. Talking to Lucy, much like talking to Luna Lovegood, was a rather literal affair. She was extremely, almost eerily, intelligent, but unlike most people, Lucy didn’t much joke or tease. She always said exactly what she was thinking.

  “Write me a letter or two this year, won’t you James?” she said, her black eyes serious. “Tell me how school is going. Make me laugh. You’re good at that.”

  James nodded again. “OK, Lucy. I will. I promise.”

  Gently, Lucy closed the door to the bedroom she shared with her sister. James turned toward the door to his own bedroom when a movement caught his eye. He stopped and glanced aside, following the motion. It had been in the hall adjacent. The door was slightly open, but the hallway beyond was dark. Someone was probably waiting outside for him to finish. He pushed the door open and leaned out.

  “I’m done,” he announced. “Bathroom’s all yours.”

  The hallway was empty. James looked in both directions. The stairs at the end of the hall were notoriously creaky; he’d surely have heard someone on them. He frowned, and was about to turn away when the movement came again. It flickered in the moonbeams cast by the landing’s large window. A shadow danced for a moment and then went still.

  James stepped out of the bathroom, keeping his eyes on the pale window shape cast across the floor and wall. He could no longer see whatever had moved. He took a few steps toward the landing and his foot creaked on a floorboard. At the sound, a shadow leapt in the moon-glow. It scampered over the shape of the window like some kind of lizard, but with much longer, many-jointed arms and legs. There was a suggestion of a large head and pointy ears, and then, suddenly, the shape was gone.

  James stopped in the hall, the hairs on his arms prickling. The shadow had made a noise as it moved, like dead leaves blowing on a stone. As James strained his ears, he could still hear it. A faint scuttling came from the stairs below the landing. Without thinking, he followed.

  As always, the stairs were unbearably creaky. James had completely lost the sound by the time he reached the main floor. The Weasley family clock ticked to itself in the darkness of the parlor as he crept through, heading for the kitchen. One candle guttered in a volcano of wax on the windowsill. Moonlight played across the room, reflected from the dozens of pots and pans that hung over the counter. James stopped and cocked his head, listening.

  The scuttling came again, and he saw it. The tiny shadow flickered and jumped over the fronts of the cabinets, flashing in and out of the moonlight. It seemed to scamper up the pantry. James glanced around quickly, trying to locate the figure that was casting the shadow, but he couldn’t find it.

  The shadow stopped in a corner of the ceiling and seemed to look down at James for a moment. The tiny shape looked a little bit like a house-elf except for the proportions and the unusual number of joints in the arms and legs. Then it leapt again, out of the shadow. James lunged in the creature’s direction, sensing the thing was heading for the back door. To his surprise, the back door was wide open.

  James jumped out into the cooling night air. He looked around wildly, straining his ears for the tiny, scuttling sound. There was no sign of the tiny shape.

  “Good evening, James,” a voice from behind him said, and he nearly barked in surprise. He spun around and saw his dad seated on the woodpile, a small glass in his hand. Harry laughed.

  “Sorry, son. I didn’t mean to startle you. What are you so wound up about?”

  James looked around again, his brow furrowed. “I thought… I thought I saw something.”

  Harry glanced around as well. “Well, there’s a lot of somethings to be seen in this house, you know. There’s the ghoul in the attic, and the garden gnomes. They usually stay out of the house, but there are always a few brave ones that’ll sneak in at night and nick a turnip or two. They think harvesting the vegetables is stealing from them, so they get a little mercenary about it sometimes.”

  James padded over to the woodpile and climbed up next to his dad.

  “What are you drinking?” he asked, peering at his father’s glass.

  Harry laughed again, quietly. “It’s more a question of what I’m not drinking. It’s Firewhisky. Never got much of a taste for the stuff, but tradition’s tradition.”

  “What’s the tradition?”

  Harry sighed. “It’s just a way to remember. A sip to commemorate your grandfather and all he meant to us. I did this with Grandfather and George on the night we buried your Uncle Fred.”

  James was silent for a while. He looked out over the yard and the dark orchard. Just below the crest of the hill, the peak of the garage could be seen in the moonlight. Crickets chirred their constant summer song.

  “I’m glad to have you out here with me, James,” Harry said.

  James glanced up at him. “Why didn’t you come and get me, then?”

  Harry’s shoulders lifted once. “I didn’t know I wanted you here until you appeared.”

  James leaned back against the smooth stone of the house’s foundation. It was pleasantly cool after the warmth of the day. The sky was unusually clear. The misty band of the Milky Way stretched like an arm across the sky, reaching down toward the glow of the village beyond the orchard.

  “Your granddad was like a father to me, you know,” Harry said. “I was just sitting here thinking about that. I used to call him that all the time, of course, but I never really thought about it. I never realized how true it was. I guess I didn’t need to, until now.”

  James looked up at the moon. “Well, it would make sense. I mean, your own dad died when you were just a baby. You never even knew him.”

  Harry nodded. “And my Uncle Vernon… well, I wish I could say he did his best to be a father to me, but you’ve heard enough about how things were with them to know that’s not true. Honestly, I never even knew what I was missing. I just knew that things weren’t the way they were supposed to be.”

  “Until you married Mum and became an honorary Weasley?”

  Harry smiled down at James and nodded. “I suppose.”

  “You suppose?”

  The smile faded slowly from his dad’s face. He looked away again, out over the darkness of the yard.

  “There was Sirius,” Harry said. “He was the first father I ever knew. Technically, he was my godfather, but I didn’t care. He asked me to come and live with him, to be family. But it didn’t work out. He ended up on the run from the Ministry, moving from place to place, always in hiding. Still, he did his best. Bought me my Firebolt, which is still my favorite broom of all time.”

  Harry stopped. He reached up and took off his glasses. James remained silent.

  “So I was just sitting here thinking about how Granddad is really the third father I’ve lost, that I’m back to where I started. If you want to know the truth, son, I was sitting here feeling sorry for myself. Sirius was killed before we had the chance to take even
a single family picture to remember him by. Sometimes, I can barely remember what he looked like, except for in his wanted poster. But the hole he left in my heart has never been filled. I tried to fill it with my old Headmaster Dumbledore for a while, but then he was killed, too. Granddad made me forget for a long, long time, but now, even he’s gone. I mean, honestly, this should be a bit easier for me. I’ve had… I’ve had practice. And yet, if you want to know the truth, I think your mum is handling it even better than me. I’m angry, James. I want the people back that I’ve lost. I can’t seem to just move on like the rest. Just now, I was sitting here thinking that Granddad was just one too many. I didn’t want to accept it anymore. But what could I do? There’s no way to bring them back, and wishing for it just makes us bitter. I was thinking all those things, and then do you know what happened?”

  James looked up at his dad again, his brow furrowed. “What?”

  Harry smiled slowly. “You jumped out that door like a jack-in-the-box and scared me so that I nearly dropped my glass.”

  James smiled back, and then laughed. “So when you startled me, you were just getting back at me, eh?”

  “Perhaps,” Harry admitted, still smiling. “But I realized something in that moment, and that was why I was glad you came out here, that you sat down with me. I remembered that I have another chance at the father and child relationship, but from the other side. I have you, and Albus, and Lily. I can try my best to give you three what I missed for so much of my life. And you know what’s really magical? When I do, I get a little of it back, like a reflection, from all three of you.”

  James looked hard at his dad, frowning a little. He thought he understood, but only very dimly. Finally, he looked down at the glass in his dad’s hand.

  “So are you going to drink that?”

  Harry lowered his eyes to the glass of Firewhisky, and then raised it. “You know, son,” he said, examining the moon through the amber liquid, “I think it’s time to start some new traditions. Don’t you think?” He held the glass a little higher, at arm’s length.