James nodded again. “Yeah, thanks for that. I know it was you who sent Cedric to help when we were going to open Jackson’s case.”
“Foolhardy and ignorant, Potter. You might’ve known better, although I admit I’d have been surprised if you had. The robe is exceedingly dangerous and you are stupendously negligent to keep it here. As much as I am loath to admit it, you should turn it over immediately to your father.”
“What do you know about the Merlin conspiracy, then?” James asked excitedly, ignoring the rebuke.
“I know little more than you do, unfortunately, other than the wealth of knowledge I’ve accumulated through my studies of the legend and the multitude of previous attempts to facilitate the return of Merlinus Ambrosius. A study I can assure you would’ve proven far more helpful to you than your current ridiculous fantasies of capturing the Merlin staff.”
“Why are they ridiculous?” Zane asked, stepping a bit closer.
“Ah, the jester speaks,” Snape sneered in a low voice. “Mr. Walker, I believe.”
“It’s a fair question,” James said, glancing at Zane. “The staff is probably even more dangerous than the robe. We can’t let it be controlled by the sorts of people who believe Voldemort was just some misunderstood sweetie who wanted everybody to be pals.”
“And who might these people be, then, Potter?” Snape asked silkily.
“Well, Tabitha Corsica, for one.”
Snape regarded James with open contempt. “Typical Gryffindor prejudice.”
“Prejudice!” James exclaimed. “Whose house is it that believes that all Muggleborn wizards are weaker stock than the purebloods? Whose house invented the term ‘mudbood’?”
“Don’t ever say that word in front of me again, Potter,” Snape said dangerously. “You believe you speak of what you know, but let me save you from your ignorance by reminding you that what you know is as limited as it is one-sided. Easy judgments about individuals based on their house of origin is another of your father’s greatest mistakes. I’d hoped that you would surpass that as well, based on your own choice of companions.” Snape’s black eyes darted to Ralph, who had hung back, watching silently.
“Well, Ralph’s different, isn’t he?” James said weakly.
Snape responded quickly, his eyes still on the larger boy. “Is he? Different from what, Mr. Potter? What, precisely, do you believe you know about the members of Mr. Deedle’s house? Or, dare I ask, Mr. Deedle himself?”
“I know what the tree sprite told us,” James said rounding on the portrait, his voice rising in anger. “I know that there is a bloodline of Voldemort alive in these halls even now. His blood beats in a different heart. The heir of Voldemort is alive and he walks among us.”
“And what makes you so certain,” Snape said sharply, “that this heir is a Slytherin? Or a male?”
James opened his mouth to answer, and then closed it again. He realized that the dryad had never actually said either of those things. “Well, it just��� makes sense.”
Snape nodded, the sneer creeping back into his face. “Does it? Perhaps you haven’t learned anything after all, then.” Snape sighed, and he seemed genuinely disappointed. “What did you come to ask, Potter? I see you are determined in your course regardless of what I say, so let’s get this over with.”
James felt small in front of the portrait of the former headmaster. Zane and Ralph stood further back, and James knew it was his question to ask. This was his battle more than it was theirs. His battle against the Merlin conspiracy, yes, but more importantly, his battle against himself and the shadow of his father.
He raised his eyes to Snape’s black gaze. “If we can’t get the Merlin staff, I need to go to the Hall of Elder’s Crossing. I need to stop them there, before they can hide the staff and the throne forever.”
James heard the movement of Zane and Ralph behind him. He turned back to them. “I won’t ask you two to come, but I’m committed. I have to try to stop them.”
Snape sighed hugely. “Potter, you really are just as foolish and preposterously self-absorbed as your father. Turn the robe over. Give it to your father or the Headmistress. They will know what to do. I will advise them. You cannot possibly hope to manage this on your own. You’ve impressed me once. Do try and accomplish that again.”
“No,” James said with conviction. “If I tell them, Jackson and Delacroix and whoever else will get away. You know it just like I do. Then two of the relics will be lost forever.”
“Without all three together, the power of the relics is broken.”
“But not destroyed,” James insisted. “They are still powerful on their own. We can’t let them be used by those who’d try to continue Voldemort’s work. We can’t risk them falling into the hands of Voldemort’s heir.”
Snape scowled. “If such a person exists.”
“That’s not a risk worth taking,” James countered. “Where is the Hall of Elder’s Crossing?”
“You do not know what you’re asking, Potter,” Snape said dismissively.
“We’ll find out somehow, James,” Zane said, stepping forward again. “We don’t need this old pile of paint to tell us. We’ve worked everything out so far. We’ll figure this out, too.”
“You’ve survived on suspicious good fortune and the interference of myself alone,” Snape growled. “Do not forget your place, boy.”
“It’s true,” Ralph said. James and Zane turned to look at him, surprised to hear him speak. Ralph swallowed and went on, “We have done pretty well so far. I don’t really know who you are, Mr. Snape, but as grateful as we are for you helping us when James put on the robe, I think James is right. We need to try to stop them and get the rest of the relics. You were a Slytherin, and you said that the things they say about Slytherins aren’t always right. Well, one of the things they say about Slytherins is that we always just look out for ourselves. I don’t want that to be true. I’m with James and Zane, even if we fail. No matter what.”
Snape had listened to this sudden speech from Ralph with a steely eye and a tight frown. When Ralph finished, he glanced at all three of the boys in succession, and then heaved another sigh. “You’re all completely daft,” he said flatly. “This is a pointless and destructive fantasy.”
“Where’s the Hall of Elder’s Crossing?” James asked again.
Snape regarded him, shaking his head minutely. “As I said, Potter, you do not know what you’re asking.”
Zane spoke up. “Why not?”
“Because the Hall of Elders’ Crossing is not a place, Mr. Walker. You, of all people, should have recognized that. If any of you had been paying even a shred of attention for the last several months, you’d know it. The Hall of Elders’ Crossing is an event. Think about it for a moment, Mr. Walker. Elders’ Crossing.”
Zane blinked. “Elders,” he said thoughtfully. “Wait a minute. That’s what the astronomers of the Middle Ages called the astrological signs. The planets. They called them ‘the Elder Ones’.”
“So the Hall of Elder’s Crossing���” James concentrated, and then widened his eyes in revelation. “The alignment of the planets! The Hall of Elders’ Crossing is when all the planets cross each other in their paths. When they��� make a hall!”
“The alignment of the planets,” Ralph agreed in an awed voice. “It’s not a place, but a time.”
Snape stared hard at all three boys. “It’s both,” he said resignedly. “It’s the moment the planets align, and it’s the place that all three of the relics of Merlinus Ambrosius are brought together. That’s when and where the return of Merlin can only be accomplished. That is his requirement. And unless I am greatly mistaken, if you mean to go through with this foolhardy plan of yours, you have less than one week.”
Zane snapped his fingers. “That’s why the voodoo queen’s been drilling us to work out the exact moment of the alignment! She said it would be a night we’d never forget, and she meant it! That’s when they mean to bring the relics together.”
“The Grotto Keep,” James whispered. “They’ll do it there. The throne is already there.” The other two boys nodded. James felt flushed with fear and excitement. He looked at the portrait of Severus Snape. “Thanks.”
“Don’t thank me. Take my advice. If you plan to go through with this, I will not be able to help you. No one will. Don’t be a fool.”
James backed away, extinguishing his wand and pocketing it. “Come on, you two. Let’s get back.”
Snape watched as James consulted the Marauder’s Map. It wasn’t Snape’s first encounter with the map. On one occasion, the map had insulted him fairly cheekily. Having assured themselves that Filch was still in his office, the three crowded back under the Invisibility Cloak and shuffled back through the door of the Headmistress’ office and into the hall. Snape considered waking Filch, who he knew was sleeping in his office with a half empty bottle of fire whiskey on his desk. One of Snape’s self portraits resided in a hunting painting in Filch’s office, and Snape could easily use that painting to alert Filch to the three boys’ sneaking. Reluctantly, he decided not to. Like it or not, such petty tricks gave him little pleasure anymore. The ghost of Cedric Diggory, who Snape had come to recognize before anyone else, closed the door behind the boys and shot the bolt.
“Thank you, Mr. Diggory,” Snape said quietly, amidst the snores of the other paintings. “Feel free to accompany them back to their dormitories. Or not. I don’t much care.”
Cedric nodded to Snape. Snape knew the ghost didn’t like to talk to him. Something about a ghost talking to a painting seemed to disturb the boy. Nothing technically human on either end, Snape figured. Cedric dismissed himself and walked through the locked wooden door.
One of the paintings near Snape stopped snoring.
“He isn’t precisely like his father, is he?” a thoughtful, older voice said.
Snape settled back into his portrait. “He’s only like him in the worst of ways. He’s a Potter.”
“Now who’s passing easy judgments?” the other voice said with a hint of teasing.
“It’s not an easy judgment. I’ve watched him. He’s as arrogant and foolish as the others that bore his last name. Don’t pretend you don’t see it.”
“I see that he came to ask for your help.”
Snape nodded grudgingly. “One can only hope that that instinct has a chance to mature. He asked for help only when he ran out of other options. And he didn’t, you’ll notice, actually take any of my advice.”
The older voice was silent for a moment, and then asked, “Will you tell Minerva?”
“Perhaps,” Snape said, considering. “Perhaps not. For now, I will do as I’ve done all along. I will watch.”
“You believe there is a chance he and his friends might succeed, then?”
Snape didn’t answer. A minute later, the older voice spoke again. “He is being manipulated. He doesn’t know it.”
Snape nodded. “I assumed there was no point in telling him.”
“You’re probably right, Severus. You have an instinct for such things.”
Snape replied pointedly, “I learned when not to talk from the master, Albus.”
“Indeed you did, Severus. Indeed you did.”
15. The Muggle Spy
Martin J. Prescott was a Reporter. He always thought of the word as if it was capitalized. For Martin, being a Reporter was more than a job. It was his identity. He wasn’t just another face reading from a teleprompter or another name next to a dateline. He was what the producers in the age of the twenty-fourhour news cycle called ‘a personality’. He accented the news. He framed it. He colored it. Not in any negative way, or so he firmly believed. He simply added that subtle dash of flair that made news into News, in other words, something people might want to watch or read. For one thing, Martin J. Prescott had the look. He wore white button-down shirts with jeans, and he usually had his shirt sleeves rolled up a bit. If he wore a tie, it was invariably of an impeccable style, but loosened just a tad: enough to say yes, I’ve been working extremely hard, but I respect my viewers enough to maintain a degree of professionalism. Martin was thin, youngish, with sharp, handsome features and very dark hair that always looked windblown and fabulous. But, as Martin was proud of saying to the attendees at the occasional Press Club breakfast, his appearance wasn’t what made him a Reporter. It was his sense of people, and of news. He knew how to plug the one into the other in a way that produced the biggest emotional jolt.
But the last thing that made Martin J. Prescott a Reporter was that he loved the story. Where the other high-paid and high-profile news faces had long since assembled a team of lackeys to tramp far and wide, collecting footage and filming interviews while they themselves huddled in their dressing rooms reading about their ratings, Martin prided himself in doing all his own travel and research. The truth of it was that Martin enjoyed the reporting, but what he absolutely loved was the chase. Being a member of the press was like being a hunter, except that the former aimed with a camera rather than a gun. Martin liked to stalk his prey himself. He delighted in the pursuit, in the blurry jostle of handheld camera footage, the shouted, perfectlytimed question, the long stakeout of a courtroom back door or a suspicious hotel room. Martin did it all himself, often alone, often filming himself in the act, providing his viewers breathless moments of high tension and confrontation. No one else did it like him, and this had made him famous.
Martin had, as they say of the very best Reporters, a nose for news. His nose told him that the story he was chasing right now, if it panned out, if he could simply provide the real, unadulterated footage, was quite possibly the story of a lifetime. Even now, crouched among the brush and weeds, dirty and salty with two days’ worth of sweat, his fabulous hair matted and soiled with twigs and leaves, even after all the setbacks and failures, he still felt this was the story that would cement his career. In fact, the harder he’d had to work for it, the more doggedly he’d pursued it. Even after the ghost. Even after being kicked out of a third story window by a homicidal kid. Even after his harrowing brush with the gigantic spider. Martin viewed setbacks as proof of value. The harder it was, the more it was worth pursuing. He took a grim satisfaction in knowing that, had he merely hired a team of investigators to check this out, they’d have turned back months ago, when they’d first met the strange, magical resistance of the place, without a solitary blip of a story. This was the kind of story that could only be told by him. This, he told himself with satisfaction, was anchorman material. No more field reports. No more special interest segments. If this panned out, Martin J. Prescott would be able to pave his own way in any major newsroom in the country. But why stop there? With this under his belt, he could anchor anywhere in the world, couldn’t he?
But no, he told himself. One mustn’t think of such things now. He had a job to do. A difficult and outrageously demanding job, but Martin took pleasure in the sense that the hardest part was behind him. After months of plotting and arranging, planning and observing, the time had finally come for the big payoff, for all the bets to be called in. Granted, if this last phase of the hunt didn’t work out exactly as planned, he’d walk away with nothing. He’d been unable to get any usable, convincing footage on his own, except for the handheld camera video of that incredible flying contest a few months back. That might have been enough, but even that had been lost, sacrificed—reluctantly!—to the gigantic spider during his escape through the woods. It didn’t do to dwell on failures, though. No, this would work. It would go exactly as planned. It had to. He was Martin J. Prescott.
Still crouched at the perimeter of the forest, Martin checked the connections of his cell phone. Most of his field gear had gone completely buggy ever since he made it through the forest. His Palmtop barely worked at all, and when it did, it exhibited some very strange behavior. The night before last, he’d been trying to use it to access his office computer when the screen suddenly went entirely pink and began to display the lyrics to a rather rude song abou
t hedgehogs. Fortunately, his camera and cell phone had worked relatively well until the incident with the spider. His phone was nearly all he had left now, and despite the fact that the display screen showed a strange mixture of numbers, exclamation marks and hieroglyphics, it did seem to be maintaining a connection. Satisfied, Martin spoke.
“I’m huddled outside the castle at this moment, hidden in the arms of the forest that has been my occasional home during these last grueling months. Up until now, I have simply watched, careful not to disturb what might only be a simple country school or a boarding facility, despite the reports of my sources. Still, I am confident that the time has finally come for me to approach. If my sources are wrong, I will merely be met with puzzlement and that rare brand of careful good humor that is the purview of the Scottish countryside. If, however, my sources prove correct, as I suspect, based on my inexplicable experiences so far, then I may well be walking into the clutches of my own doom. I am now standing. It is midmorning, about nine o’clock, but I see no sign of anyone. I am leaving the safety of my hiding place. I am entering the grounds.”
Martin crept carefully around the edge of the ramshackle cabin near the forest. The enormous, shaggy man he’d often spied in and around the cabin was not anywhere in sight. Martin straightened, determining to be bold about his initial approach. He began to cross the neatly cropped field between the cabin and the castle. In truth, he did not believe he was in grave peril. He had an innate sense that the greatest dangers were behind him, in that creepy and mysterious forest. He had indeed camped on the fringes of that forest, far on the side opposite the castle, where the trees seemed rather more normal and there were fewer unsettling noises in the night. Still, his travels back and forth through the densest parts of that forest had been strange, to say the least. Apart from the spider, which he had only escaped by sheer good luck, he hadn’t actually seen anything. In a sense, he thought it might have been better if he had. A known monstrosity, like the spider, is far easier to deal with than the unknown phantoms conjured by Martin’s imagination in response to the strange noises he’d heard on those long woodland walks. He’d been shadowed, he knew. Large things, heavy things, had followed him, always off to the left or right, hidden just behind the density of the trees. He knew they were watching him, and he also sensed that, unlike the spider, they were intelligent. They might have been hostile, but they were certainly curious. Martin had almost dared to call out to them, to demand they reveal themselves. Finally, remembering the spider, he’d decided that, after all, maybe an unseen monster that is merely curious is better than a seen monster that feels provoked.
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