James Potter and the Hall of the Elders' Crossing

by G. Norman Lippert

  There was a round of applause, although it felt to James a little perfunctory. Not everyone in the crowd agreed with Franklyn, and not all for the same reasons. Still, it had been a good speech, and James was glad Franklyn had made it. While the crowd was still cheering, Franklyn climbed into the Volkswagen Beetle. He waved once from the open door.

  Someone tapped James on the shoulder. He turned, and then had to look up. Professor Jackson was standing behind him. Tall and dressed in black, Jackson looked more imposing than ever. He looked down his nose at James, his bushy brows low.

  “I thought you might wish to have this,” Jackson said. James noticed that the man was holding a small wooden box. Jackson looked at it in his hands, and then handed it to James. “It was found in Madame Delacroix’s quarters. I believe it belongs to you more than it does to anyone. Dispose of it as you see fit.”

  James held the box, which was surprisingly light. It was a strange greenish color, covered in deep, carven scrollwork. It reminded him of the vines on the door of the Grotto Keep. He looked up to ask Professor Jackson what it was, but the man was already striding across the courtyard toward the Stutz Dragonfly. He stopped when he reached the vehicle, and then turned, raising one hand to the assembly, his face as stony as his nickname. The crowd cheered, a much longer and more sustained ovation than even Franklyn had received. Surprisingly, Jackson had become a favorite at Hogwarts, not so much in spite of his curmudgeon-like demeanor as because of it.

  Once Jackson had climbed into the vehicle, the rest of the assembly boarded quickly. The greycloaked delegates from the American Department of Magical Administration had arrived from London the day before to join their fellows for the trip back to the States. They filed into the vehicles, nodding goodbyes to the assembly. Last were the porters, who packed the enormous pile of luggage into the apparently bottomless trunks of the vehicles, and then climbed into the front seats to drive.

  The wings unfolded from the vehicles smoothly, delicately, and began to thrash the air. The Dodge Hornet took off first. With a squeak of springs and creak of metal, it rose into the air, turning slowly. The Stutz Dragonfly and the Volkswagen Beetle followed, the low drone of their wings beating the air and rippling the grass of the courtyard. Then, with sudden grace and speed, they raced off, rising, their noses tilted toward the ground. In less than a minute, the noise of their departure was lost in the late spring wind that blew over the hills.

  Ralph, Zane, and James plopped onto a bench near the courtyard entrance.

  “So what’s in the box Jackson gave you?” Ralph asked, peering curiously at it.

  “I wouldn’t even open it, if I was you,” Zane warned. “Remember what he said about making our lives ‘interesting’? He’s the kind of guy to wait right until the moment he leaves to get his revenge on you. That way, he’s gone when the trouble starts.” He tapped the side of his head wisely.

  James frowned and shook his head slowly. He looked at the box on his lap. It had a brass latch on the front, holding the lid shut. Without a word, he flipped the catch and raised the lid. Zane and Ralph leaned in, craning to see. The inside of the box was lined with purple velvet. There was one object inside, lying atop a piece of folded parchment.

  “I don’t get it,” Ralph said, sitting back again. “It’s a doll.”

  James removed it and held it up. It was indeed a small figure, roughly made of burlap and twine, with mismatched buttons for eyes.

  Zane peered at it, his face serious. “It’s��� it’s you, James.”

  Sure enough, the figure did bear a striking resemblance. Black yarn on the head formed a good representation of James’ unruly hair. Even the shape of the head, the line of the stitched mouth, and the placement of the button eyes made an eerie portrait.

  James shuddered. “It’s a voodoo doll,” he said. He remembered the note inside the box. All three boys leaned in to read it as he unfolded it.

  Mr. Potter,

  You will surely recognize what this object is. There was no time in this year’s Technomancy curriculum to discuss the ancient art of Representational Harmonics, but I suspect you grasp the implications. This was found inside Madame Delacroix’s quarters. After some discussion with the Headmistress and the portraits of your Severus Snape and Albus Dumbledore—whom you should know have taken rather an interest in you—it was determined that you might benefit from knowing how Madame Delacroix used this object against you. The elegance of her manipulation was quite impressive, really. This figure was placed next to a much larger figure of your father, Harry Potter. On the other side of that was a candle. It seems apparent that she kept that candle lit at all times. The result, of course, Mr. Potter, was that your figure was always in the shadow of the representation of your father.

  There is always a grain of truth in the manipulations of the voodoo art.

  Delacroix knew that you would legitimately struggle with the expectations of your

  legendary father. The lesson you must learn from this, Mr. Potter, is that emotions are not bad, but they must be examined. Know yourself. Feelings always seem valid, but they can confuse. And they can, as you have seen, be used against you. I repeat, as your teacher and as your elder, know your feelings. Master them or they will master you.

  Theodore Hirshall Jackson

  “Wow!” Ralph breathed. “We didn’t call her ‘the voodoo queen’ for nothing!”

  Zane asked, “What are you going to do with it, James? I mean, if you destroy it, will you be destroyed, somehow?”

  James stared at the small, unattractive caricature of himself. “I don’t think so,” he replied thoughtfully. “I don’t think Jackson would’ve given it to me in that case. I think he just means for me to remember what happened. And to try to make sure it never happens again.”

  “So?” Zane repeated. “What are you going to do with it?”

  James stood, stuffing the doll into the pocket of his jeans. “I don’t know. I think I’ll keep it. For a while, at least.”

  With that, the three boys meandered into the school, intent on doing as little as possible with their last day of the school year.

  Late that night, unable to sleep from the excitement of the next day’s departure, James got out of bed. He crept down the stairs into the common room, hoping someone else might still be up for a game of wizard chess or even Winkles and Augers. By the glow of the banked fire, the room appeared to be empty. As he was turning away, something caught James’ eye and he looked again. The ghost of Cedric Diggory sat near the fire. His silvery form was still transparent, but was noticeably more solid than the last time James had seen him.

  “I was trying to think of a name for myself,” Cedric said, smiling as James threw himself onto the couch nearby.

  “You’ve got a name already, haven’t you?” James answered.

  “Well, not a proper ghostly name. Not like ‘Nearly Headless Nick’ or ‘the Bloody Baron’. I need something with some panache.”

  James considered it. “How about ‘the Chaser of Annoying Muggles’?”

  “It’s a little long.”

  “Well, can you do any better?”

  “I was thinking—you’d better not laugh,” the ghost said, giving James a stern look. “I was thinking of something like ‘the Specter of Silence’.”

  “Hmm,” James replied carefully. “But you aren’t silent. In fact, you sound a lot better now. Your voice doesn’t sound like its being blown in from the Great Beyond anymore.”

  “Yeah,” Cedric agreed, “I’ve become quite a bit more��� here, sort of. I’m as ghostly as the rest of the school ghosts, now. I was silent for a long time, though, wasn’t I?”

  “I guess so. But still, with a name like ‘the Specter of Silence’,” James said doubtfully, “it’s going to be hard to make that stick if you go around chatting people up all the time.”

  “Maybe I could be all broody and quiet a lot of the time,” Cedric mused. “Just do a lot of floating around and looking dour and everything
. And then, when I pass by, people would whisper to each other, ‘Hey, there he goes! The Specter of Silence!’”

  James shrugged. “It’s worth a shot. I guess you have the summer to practice the whole brooding silence bit.”

  “I guess so.”

  James suddenly sat up. “So do you think you’ll be the new Gryffindor ghost?” he asked. “I mean, with Nearly Headless Nick gone on to wherever ghosts go, we don’t have a House ghost anymore.”

  Cedric thought for a moment. “I don’t think so, really. Sorry. I was a Hufflepuff, remember?”

  James slumped back. “Yeah. I forgot.”

  A few minutes went by, and then Cedric spoke again. “That was a pretty great thing you did, going out and calling Merlin back to help us out when it seemed like he’d left for good.”

  James lifted his head and looked at the ghost. He frowned a little. “That? Well, it was just a shot in the dark, really. It was all my fault Merlin was brought to this time at all. I thought I was doing the world this big favor, standing in the way of Delacroix’s and Jackson’s evil plan. Turns out she was using me all along and Jackson was actually a good guy.”

  “Well?” Cedric countered. “You learned something, then, didn’t you?”

  “I don’t know,” James said automatically. He thought for a moment and then added, “Yeah, I guess I did.”

  “There is one way that you and your dad are one and the same, James,” Cedric said.

  James laughed a little humorlessly. “I can’t see what it is. All I learned is that my way of doing things isn’t Dad’s. If I try to do it his way, I screw everything up. If I try to do it my way, I might help things scrape by on sheer luck. Dad’s way was the way of the hero. My way is the way of the manager. My best talent is asking for help.”

  “No, James,” Cedric said, leaning forward to look James directly in the eye, “your best talent is inspiring people to want to help. You think that’s no big deal? The world needs people like you, because most of the people out there don’t have the courage or the passion or the direction to be heroes. They want to be, but they need someone to tell them why, and to show them how. You have that gift, James. Your dad was a hero because he was the Boy Who Lived. He had a destiny. It wasn’t an easy road for him, but it was an obvious road. There was Harry and there was Voldemort. He knew where he stood and what he had to do, even if it killed him. You, though��� you are a hero because you choose to be one, every day. And you have the talent to encourage others to choose that, too.”

  James stared into the banked coals of the fire. “I’m no hero.”

  Cedric smiled and sat back again. “You only think that because you think heroes always win. Trust me on this one, James. A hero isn’t defined by winning. Loads of heroes die in the effort. Most of them never get any recognition. No, a hero is just somebody who does the right thing when it would be far, far easier to do nothing.”

  James turned to look at the ghost, smiling crookedly. “Maybe we should call you ‘the Specter of Cheesiness.’”

  “Ha, ha,” the ghost replied.

  James stood up again. “Thanks, Cedric. That��� helps.”

  Cedric nodded. James headed back for the stairs, but stopped with his foot on the bottom step. “One thing still bothers me, though, Cedric. Maybe you know something about it, being a ghost and all.”

  “Maybe. Ask me.”

  “The dryad in the forest said that there was an heir of Voldemort. She said that this person was alive and nearby, right here on the school grounds.”

  Cedric nodded slowly. “I was there when you told Snape about it.”

  “Well, whoever that is, I think that’s who took Ralph’s GameDeck and used the name Austramaddux. If that hadn’t happened, none of this would’ve come about. Whoever it is had to have been working with Miss Sacarhina from the very beginning.”

  Cedric looked away, out a nearby window. “You think you know who it is?”

  “Tabitha Corsica,” James said flatly. “I thought it might be her after I talked to Snape and I still think it could be her. So her broom wasn’t the Merlin staff. There’s still something scary about it. And about her in general.”

  Cedric stood and walked through the chair, apparently without noticing he was doing so. “I’ve felt something, James. I’ll admit that to you. There is a sense of He Who Must Not Be Named here still. It lingers within the halls. It’s like a smell, like something rancid and oozing and��� purple, somehow. Maybe I am more sensitive to it than the other ghosts. After all, he was responsible for my death.”

  “Yeah,” James said quietly. “I hadn’t forgotten.”

  “But James, things are rarely as obvious as we’d like to think they are. In the real world, at least in our time, if not in Merlin’s, evil wears many masks. It’s confusing. You have to be very careful. Sometimes, even good people can look bad. A lot of us, your father included, made that mistake when it came to Professor Snape.”

  “So did I,” James admitted. “With Professor Jackson.”

  Cedric nodded.

  “But I would’ve sworn that Tabitha was involved in the whole Merlin conspiracy. What do you think the real story is with her and her broom?”

  Cedric looked at James for a long moment, studying him. “Did it ever occur to you that her broom might be exactly what she says it is?”

  “What?” James scoffed. “A ‘Muggle artifact’? That’s just a ruse she came up with, isn’t it?”

  Cedric shrugged, but it looked more like the shrug of someone who knows more than he intends to tell. “The scariest people in the world are not always the ones who are bent on evil, James. Sometimes, the scariest person is the one who mistakes their own lies for the truth.”

  James blinked. “You mean��� Tabitha Corsica believes all that stuff she said in the debate? About Voldemort actually being a good guy? That he was squashed by the Ministry and the magical ruling class because they couldn’t have him changing the status quo? She can’t really believe that, can she?”

  Cedric looked back at James, and then sighed. “Honestly, I don’t know. But I do know that lots of people do believe it. And she seems pretty sincere about it. That broom of hers may have some scary mojo built into it, but it’s nothing compared to the dark magic someone might conjure if their heart is crooked enough to twist a lie into something they believe is truth.”

  As James climbed quietly back into his bed, his mind raced. He had never even considered that Tabitha Corsica might believe the things she said. He had assumed that she was supporting the Progressive Element propaganda because she fully accepted and endorsed their ultimate, dark goals. For a moment, he felt vaguely sorry for her. It was awful to think that someone like her might believe she was morally in the right, and that he, James Potter, and his father, were the evil ones. It was almost unthinkable, but not entirely. Outside, the moon was full and bright. James fell asleep with its beams on his face, pale and cool, his brow still slightly furrowed.

  The next day, James, Zane, and Ralph rode the Hogwarts Express back to Platform Nine and Three Quarters. Zane’s parents were there, along with his younger sister, Greer, who watched the gigantic crimson engine with naked awe. Standing near them, James spied his mum and dad, herding Albus and Lily along with them. He grinned and waved. It felt like hardly a week ago that he’d watched them from the train as it had pulled out of the station, carrying him to the uncertainty of his first year at Hogwarts. Now he was home again. Hogwarts was wonderful, he thought to himself, but he was glad to be back, after all. Next year, he’d be accompanying Albus on the train, taking him to his first year. He’d tease Albus endlessly about what house he’d end up in. It was going to be his summer’s project, in fact. But he wasn’t worried about it. Even if Albus wasn’t a Gryffindor, he’d be okay. James knew that if Albus was indeed sent to another house, part of him, James, would even be a little jealous of him. But only just a little.

  As he joined the throng exiting the train, James fell in behind T
ed. Ted, James noticed, was holding Victoire’s hand.

  “You’re going to cause a load of trouble, you know,” James said, grinning.

  “It’s a tough job, being this controversial,” Ted said humbly, “but we all have our burdens to bear.”

  “My parents must not see us together,” Victoire commanded. “Ted Lupin, don’t you ruin everything. You know they won’t approve. You will keep your mouth shut, too, James.”

  “Her accent is much more prominent when she’s harping, isn’t it?” Ted asked James.

  James grinned. It was true.

  James stopped inside the open door of the train, looking about the platform. Through the crowd of returning students, bustling porters and yelling family members, he saw Zane engulfed in the mutual hug of his pretty blonde mother and his tall, proud father. His sister was sucked into the embrace, as if against her will, happy to see her brother again but still enthralled by the crimson train. Ralph met his dad on the platform with a more restrained hug, both grinning a bit sheepishly. Ralph glanced back up at James and waved.

  “Dad says we’ll be spending the summer in London! I’ll be able to come and visit!”

  “Excellent!” James yelled back happily.

  And then, as he climbed down, James saw his own family watching for him. In the moment before they caught sight of him, James savored his own happiness. This was indeed home. He ran toward them, patting his jeans pocket to make sure the little doll Madame Delacroix had made of him was still there. It probably wouldn’t mean anything, but there was no harm in it. No harm at all.