For a moment, Millie appeared angrily confused. And then an expression of dawning realization descended over her face. Her eyes narrowed. In a low voice, she seethed, “You think I was copping off with him?!”
“Well!” James blinked, and faltered slightly. “Well, weren’t you?”
“James!” she hissed, her face going livid. “He’s almost ten years older than me! He’s a university student, studying industrial design and engineering! I’ve been begging him for months to teach me what he’s learning! We spent the night driving around looking at architecture!
Look!”
She thrust an object toward him. It was the squarish gift that Blake had just given her. James recoiled slightly, then glanced down at it, saw that it was a fat book, and read the cover: HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURAL DRAFTING & DESIGN, Volume 1.
“But,” James said, still staring at the book’s cover. “But, but…you kissed him!” He glanced up at her in time to see her eyes roll in angry impatience.
“I kissed him on the cheek! He’s like a brother to me! You really think I would… I would…” She turned her head to look down at Blake, so fast that her blonde hair flung out beneath her hat. “Do you really think I would betray you like that? With him!?”
“Hey, now,” Blake said, managing to look affronted.
James was about to respond when the unmistakable sound of an opening door interrupted him. Blake leapt out of sight behind the balustrade again as a band of light spread down the steps, brightly illuminating Millie and James.
“Well,” a voice called, and James was not at all surprised to hear a nasty smile in it. “What do we have here? Out for a romantic evening stroll, are we? Mother and Father will be just thrilled to know that you two are so… engaged.”
Millie didn’t even look toward the door. Her eyes locked onto James’ with a degree of furious pleading that took him a split-second to decipher. It wasn’t the fact that she’d snuck out for the night with Blake, a servant, that she was suddenly terrified of having discovered. It was that she’d been out with him studying Muggle architecture.
James needed barely a second to decide what he had to do.
“Yes,” he said, not breaking eye contact with Millie. “And it was all my idea.”
Millie’s eyes widened another fraction, but she managed, miraculously, not to gasp.
James finally looked up at Mathilda, not thinking, merely allowing instinct to take over. “I love this girl, you see. Millie,” he looked down at her again, at her speechless, bulging eyes. “I’m completely smitten by you. I can’t be without you. I’ve brought you out here this night, under this moon, to tell you that.”
He glanced upwards hopefully, tried to locate the moon through the lacework of trees and the pall of drifting snow. No moon was visible at all. Mathilda, fortunately, seemed oblivious of this fact.
“Really, now,” she stated flatly, cocking her head and placing one fist against her hip, causing her night robes to sway.
“But it’s too soon for you, Millie,” James went on loudly, interrupting, marveling slightly at his own inspired temerity. Fleetingly, he wondered if he was channeling Zane Walker. “I fear that you’re not ready to respond to my… er… romantic overtures. Go, Millie. Go!”
He dropped his eyes and flung the WoodSprite down the steps.
It clattered nonsensically, and James noticed, with a moment of distraction, that while Blake’s car was disillusioned to invisibility, it still puttered a dancing puff of visible smoke from its idling tailpipe. “GO!”
James cried again, raising his voice and throwing an arm over his eyes in a burst of hysterical inspiration. “Go to your sister. I will await you.
And when the time comes—indeed, if it ever comes—that you are ready to love me as I love you…”
His motivation faltered. He glanced aside with one eye toward Millie, who was staring at him with undisguised, gape-jawed amazement. He glared at her meaningfully, and then flicked his eyes toward the open doorway and the suspiciously watching Mathilda. GO, he mouthed.
Millie blinked rapidly, and then seemed to recover herself. Her experience with the Hufflepuppet Pals took over, and she replied, “Yes, I must leave you, James. It’s too soon for me. But… but…”
“But I will await your word,” James encouraged, nodding, urging her away with his eyes. “And your love! Never fear! Never doubt!”
Millie backed up the steps slowly, somewhat awkwardly, toward the waiting shape of Mathilda, who watched the scene with narrowed eyes and thin lips. When Millie reached her sister, moved into the warmth of the open door, she spun on her heel and threw her arms around the taller woman.
“Oh, Mattie,” she cried, her voice muffled against her sister’s thin breast.
Mathilda looked down at Millie in surprise, her eyes still narrowed, her brows high on her forehead. Then, tentatively, she put her arms around her. It was an awkward gesture, like a stork attempting a card trick, but apparently genuine enough. She patted Millie’s shoulder and the back of her head, and then raised her gaze to James, her lips pursed.
“You Potters,” she said with a curt shake of her head. “Much too brash for polite society. It seems that you’ve bruised poor Millicent’s sensitivities. I do hope you’ve learned an important lesson.”
James still couldn’t tell if the older woman was being quite serious or if she was, perhaps, goading him. He didn’t really care. He simply nodded in dejection and dropped his eyes, hoping that Mathilda wouldn’t hear the gentle putter of the idling car, or notice its phantom exhaust, or wonder, for that matter, why James had been holding one of the servants’ castoff, antique brooms.
A moment later, thankfully, the women’s footsteps retreated back inside the house and the door swung slowly closed, cutting off the band of golden light from inside.
Without raising his head, James flicked his eyes up in time to see the door snick shut. He listened for the bolt to shunt into place. When it didn’t, he assumed that he was still allowed inside, nominally.
“Now that,” Blake sighed calmly, emerging from his hiding place, “is what I call a royal cock-up.”
“Shut up,” James muttered blandly. He retreated partway down the steps, retrieved the old broom from the shadows, brushed off the snow, and climbed dejectedly back up toward the front door.
Blake spoke again, this time in a voice both taut and smug, freezing James in his tracks. “I would have won her anyway, you know.
Even if you hadn’t proved yourself to be a jealous, clumsy little berk.
Just so you know. I didn’t need your help.” He was smiling as he spoke.
James didn’t look back at the older man, but his mind whirled, clouded with impotent rage, choked with jealousy. He could think of nothing to say. No comeback came to mind, no retort or pithy, withering insult. He considered using his wand to curse the arrogant Muggle git, or, failing that, to hurl himself down the steps and knock the bastard down. But even this impulse was overcome by numbing weariness and cold.
Instead, he simply pocketed his wand and said the only thing that came to mind.
“Good luck driving home in your invisible car.”
And he opened the mansion’s door, felt the push of warm air against his cheeks, stepped inside, and shot the bolt behind him.
Through the window beside the door, he briefly saw Blake at the bottom of the steps, the grin gone from his face, groping blindly, clumsily for his precious car.
The women had already gone upstairs to their bedrooms. James was quite glad.
The train ride back to Hogsmeade was awkward. James found that he missed seeing his family over the break, and took some minor, jealous solace in Albus’ and Rose’s retelling of the holiday back home and at the Burrow. He avoided Millie, who rode in a different compartment some way up the train, but knew that he had to talk to her eventually. They had hardly spoken since leaving Blackbrier Quoit in the back of the family’s limousine, and when they did it was for mere practical necessity.
They both seemed to know that it was over between them. All that remained was the actual breaking up, which James sensed (with no small foreboding) was his responsibility. He didn’t want to do it. He wished it could merely be over without any of the messy, awkward, official stuff. But she seemed to be in prim waiting mode, knowing it was coming, expecting it, even reveling in a sort of perverse anticipation.
Rose had no patience for James’ predicament. “You’re just a typical boy. All eager as beavers when it comes to the snogging, but thick as paving stones when it comes to talking about feelings like actual human beings. Next thing, you’ll be blaming her just for having feelings, like it’s some sort of female curse or something, while you act all high and mighty about being an emotionally constipated, coddled, stuck up little mummy’s boy!”
“Things not going so well between you and Scorpius again, eh?”
James nodded wisely.
“Shut up.”
“I thought you two were back together again after he bought you that necklace for Christmas?”
Rose’s lips tightened and her eyes narrowed. “His mum bought it and gave it to him to give to me. She even wrapped it and signed his name to the card. He says Christmas gifts are ‘the woman’s responsibility’.” She glared aside at James accusingly, her eyes nearly sparking.
“Don’t look at me,” James said, raising both hands. “I didn’t even buy Millie any Christmas gift.” He realized, a moment too late, that this didn’t really make his case.
Rose crossed her arms like a shield and nodded once, firmly.
“No wonder Millie’s had it with you. You go find her right now and set her free of you. There are probably dozens of better boyfriends on the train right this very moment. Hundreds!”
James stood up and backed away, afraid to say another word.
He found Ralph in the corridor before he found Millie’s compartment.
“What are you up and about for?” the bigger boy asked, clearly disgruntled.
James didn’t have it in him to be annoyed at Ralph’s tone. He slumped and leaned against a window. “Looking for Millie. It’s over between us. I just need to pound the final nail in the coffin.”
“Oh,” Ralph said, taken aback. “Well. Sorry, then. What happened? Holiday a disaster?”
James shrugged. “I bodged it all up. It’s me, not her.”
“People always say that,” Ralph frowned. “But in your case, I think you may be right.”
“Thanks, Ralph.”
Ralph shrugged his huge shoulders. “So, you wouldn’t mind if I asked her out, maybe?”
James glanced at Ralph in surprise. “Seriously? You’re interested?”
“I dunno,” Ralph sighed, not meeting James’ eyes. “She’s pretty enough. Rich, too, from what I hear.”
James blew out a breath, half-laughing. “Rich doesn’t begin to cover it. They’re the most confusing people I’ve ever met. They’re like the Progressive Element, but dipped in candy, and with all the nastiness sucked out.”
“What do you mean?” Ralph seemed genuinely interested.
“Well, for starters, they’re proud of being anti-purebloods. And they do all this stuff that seems all generous and forward thinking, like hiring Muggle servants instead of using house elves…”
Ralph nodded consideringly. “Your Aunt Hermione would approve.”
“I guess she would,” James admitted, frowning. “But they don’t seem to consider any of the consequences of their choices. The house elves are all desperate for their work back. They don’t feel set free, they feel abandoned and useless. And there’s something else. Millie’s family really are nice, and they take great pains, most of them, not to judge anybody, no matter who they are or what they do. But the moment their own daughter wants to study something other than how to be a rich wizarding aristocrat, they think it’s beneath her station and not good enough for her.”
Ralph looked mildly perplexed. “What sort of thing does Millie want to study?”
James shook his head tiredly. “Architecture, of all things. Like, the maths and designs of buildings and stuff. I don’t really understand it. But her parents, they call that ‘Dwarf work’.”
“Well, it is, innit?”
“That doesn’t mean witches or wizards can’t do it, though.”
Ralph sighed briskly and nodded. He reached and clapped James on the shoulder. “Well, good for you for calling an end to it when the time came.”
“I don’t want to do it,” James bristled slightly. “I’d avoid the bloody hell out of it if I could.”
“I’m sure everything will work itself out,” Ralph said, glancing about the corridor. “I better get back to work, though. Being Head Boy is harder than I ever expected. Somebody’s been setting off dungbombs but nobody will tell me who’s responsible. I’ve gone up and down the train twice now, trying to sniff them out.”
James nodded at his friend’s distracted earnestness. “Yeah, well, happy hunting, Ralphinator.”
Ralph stood and squared his shoulders importantly. “Let me know if you hear anything. Or, er, smell anything.”
With that, he stumped away, glancing into compartments as he went.
James watched him go, then, reluctantly, pushed away from the wall, resuming his halfhearted search for Millie.
He passed the Cart Lady and bought a box of Pumpkin Pasties from her, munching them as he went on. A little later, he saw his cousins Louis and Dominique, and barely avoided getting pulled into an argument between them over whose new Christmas socks were the best.
“I’d love to settle this for you,” he said soberly, backing away, “but honestly, I’m afraid I couldn’t possibly bring myself to give a toss.”
He bumped into someone in the corridor and turned, relieved for the interruption.
It was Millie.
“You could’ve had the decency to tell me yourself!” she seethed.
Her cheeks were livid pink with rage.
“What…?” James recoiled. “I don’t—”
“I had no idea what a little blab you were!” she shook her head violently, her voice climbing to a shrill hiss. “So my family is a bunch of pompous hypocrites who don’t think about the consequences of their actions, eh?”
“What…?” James spluttered. “I mean… what? Who said…?”
“I got your message from Ralph Deedle,” Millie said, dropping her voice again to a near whisper. “He told me you were ending it with me, and then he said he thought it was really cool that I wanted to study architecture. I cannot believe you told him that!” She raised her hand to poke James in the chest, and then seemed to think better of it, as if she couldn’t bring herself even to touch him. He saw, with real dismay, that she was deeply and sincerely hurt. “I trusted you, James! I’m just… I don’t even have the words…!”
James was shaking his head. “But I didn’t… I only said…” He struggled to rally his thoughts in the face of her wounded rage. “I was coming to tell you myself. I only just ran into Ralph and… and I told him…”
“You told him everything,” she said resolutely. “And sent him to be your errand boy. Well, all I can say, James, is that your message is received.”
There were tears standing in her eyes now. Tears of hurt as well as righteous anger. James was dumbfounded by them. “Millie, look. I don’t… we don’t have to end it like this. Maybe…”
“Don’t say another word, James,” Millie said, shaking her head again so that her blonde hair swung about her face. She swiped angrily at her tears and refused to look at him again. Composing herself with an effort of will, she added in an admirably even voice, “And to think, my father really liked you, too. Even Grandmother Eunace. How disappointed they’ll be.”
Leaving her words hanging unanswered in the air, she turned on her heel and stalked away, holding her head up, settling back into the practiced composure of her upbringing and heritage.
James opened his mouth to call after her, but realized he had no othe
r words to offer. It wasn’t that he had too little to say, but too much. And she no longer wanted to hear it. Helplessly, he watched her march away until she passed through the partition between carriages, slamming the sliding door as she went.
15. – The one to stand for all
It was the middle of the first day back at Hogwarts before James could confront Ralph about what he’d said to Millie. He caught up to the bigger boy in the hall between classes, amidst the clamor of voices and the frosty light of the high windows. Ralph seemed genuinely taken aback at first, and then sullenly offended.
“I thought that’s what you wanted,” he said, hoisting his knapsack and walking fast through the throng of younger years, parting them like a barge through a flock of gulls. “You said telling her was the last thing you wanted to do. Excuse me for trying to help.”
“That wasn’t helping! You told her I said her family were a bunch of hypocrites! How could you think that was helping?”
“I didn’t say anything like that. I only told her it was cool that she wanted to study architecture, and that it was a shame her family wouldn’t support her.”
“But that was a secret!” James sputtered, exasperated. “I made that pretty clear, didn’t I?”
“I don’t remember you saying it was a secret,” Ralph said, firming his jaw and refusing to make eye contact. “But even if you did, it wasn’t a secret from her, was it? And I’m not about to go blabbing to anyone else about it.”
“Wait a minute,” James said, stopping in the corridor and narrowing his eyes. “This is because you fancy her, isn’t it? You wanted to step on me so you’d look better in her eyes. Is that it? Well, it didn’t work, did it? She thinks you’re a right clod.”
Ralph stopped and half turned, glancing back over his shoulder.
“You don’t have any bloody clue what she thinks of me.” He glared at James for a moment, and then deflated slightly. “Look, I’m sorry I said anything to Millie. The point is, nobody has any clue what they think of me. Not even me, most of the time. But I’ve been giving it some thought, and it’s time I start acting on my own. Not just as the Slytherin pal of James Potter, or the half-Muggle son of a squib. Me.
James Potter and the Crimson Thread Page 33
