James Potter and the Crimson Thread

by G. Norman Lippert

  “What if Grawp and Prechka can’t control Norberta while they’re waiting for us in the wharf?” he fretted, speaking quietly and rapidly as they walked. “What if we get there and Norberta’s already escaped into London?”

  “Then I guess it won’t be our problem, will it?” James muttered with a shrug. “We come home and read about it in tomorrow’s Daily Prophet.”

  Ralph shook his head, clearly dissatisfied with James’ answer.

  “What if we get Norberta onto the ship and are spotted by, I don’t know, a police boat or something? Spotlights everywhere, and shouting bullhorns, and people with badges yelling ‘halt!’”

  “Maybe we let Norberta take a swipe at them,” James suggested, aiming for Zane Walker style glibness. “If she gulps down one or two of them, the rest are bound to get the message and let us be.”

  Ralph glared aside at him, obviously ill-amused. James wished Rose was along to rationalize away all of Ralph’s concerns, but she was busy with her own classes until dinnertime.

  Fortunately, Alchemy and Divination occupied the rest of the afternoon, then, after a hurried dinner, Ralph announced his plan to return to the Slytherin dungeons for the evening, citing homework.

  James had a feeling that homework was the least of Ralph’s concerns, it being Friday night, but was happy enough for a reprieve from the big boy’s constant litany of frets about the upcoming mission.

  Leaving him at the bannister, James whispered, “We meet just outside your common room at midnight, right? Hagrid will come unlock the moonpool beneath the lake.”

  “Don’t remind me,” Ralph groused, tossing up his hands and barely resisting the urge to clamp them over his ears. “Like, seriously, don’t remind me! I want to forget about this whole bleedin’ plan.”

  “No backing out now, Ralph,” James prodded, leaning close to his friend. “Nobody knows when we’ll need you and that unbeatable wand of yours.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Ralph rolled his eyes, reluctantly mollified. Then he added, “It sure didn’t help me against Odin-Vann the other day.”

  James glanced at the boy where he stood on the first step down.

  “I was going to ask you about that. You were like a force of nature.

  What got into you?”

  “Are you serious?” Ralph looked up, meeting James’ eyes with a piercing glare. “You saw the way he was dueling. Where’d that come from all of a sudden? That isn’t natural, and you know it. Something’s up with him, and his wand, and… and… everything about him. I checked up on him, you know.”

  James had been about to comment on Odin-Vann’s mysterious new dueling ability when Ralph’s last statement caught him off guard.

  “You—you did what?”

  “I checked up on him.” Ralph repeated firmly. “Something we all should have done before traipsing off to the World Between the Worlds on his orders. I sent a note to Ted Lupin over in Hogsmeade.”

  James blinked at Ralph, realizing that his instinct, if not his suspicion, was dead-on. Odin-Vann had indeed gone to school with Ted at one point, along with a few others they could have spoken to, such as Damien Damascus, Sabrina Hildegard, and the rest of the Gremlins. He felt foolish for not thinking of the idea himself, but then shook his head, as if clearing it.

  “Petra trusts Odin-Vann, and I trust her,” he said. “But you haven’t liked him since you first clapped eyes on him, have you? So, what did Ted say?”

  “Not much good,” Ralph said, and then sighed and glanced away. “Not much bad, either. Apparently Odin-Vann kept to himself most of the time. A real bookish type. Quiet, shy, the kind of bloke that hardly gets noticed by anyone other than the sort of bullies who sniff out people like that. He got pushed around a bit, according to Ted. He was never good with a wand, so much so that people teased him, telling him he was three-fifths squib, saying he could do better just to poke people with his wand for all the good it did him in a duel.”

  James nodded reluctantly. “That sure hasn’t changed much, has it? He can barely get off a tickling jinx if the pressure’s on. And there’s no pressure like being bullied all the time in school.”

  “I don’t know if he was bullied all the time,” Ralph hedged, “but apparently he felt like he was. That’s partly why Petra made friends with him. Ted says that Odin-Vann and Petra were close from the moment they met, but he never thought anything of it. It was never a romantic thing. She was just a kid then. For her own part, she just seemed to feel sorry for Odin-Vann, especially when the older years gave him grief.

  They hung out in the library together mostly, since he could usually be found there surrounded by piles of books, almost like he was hiding behind them.”

  “Doesn’t sound like much of a thing,” James said with a shrug.

  “That could have been you if Zane and I hadn’t met you that first day on the train and drug you kicking and screaming out of your shell.”

  “He’s smart, though,” Ralph added, his face firm. “That’s what Ted remembers most. Scary smart when it came to potions and charms, any kind of magic he could do by himself, with no pressure. Ted says that Odin-Vann used to hang out in Flitwick’s classroom for hours some nights, just writing out charms and spells, studying them, trying to modify them to make them more powerful or invent new ways of casting them. Flitwick himself apparently said Odin-Vann was his sharpest student ever, but Ted thinks even he was a little wigged out by the kid.

  He was too quiet and withdrawn to be that hyper-smart. Like, he’d be president of Igor house if he was an American, always secretly dreaming up crazy plans for how to take over the world.”

  “Can’t hate a bloke for being smart,” James observed, “So what’s your problem with him?”

  Ralph shook his head, eyes narrowed. “Well, for one thing, he sure isn’t bad with a wand anymore. What happened to him all of a sudden?”

  James shrugged. The question had occurred to him as well. “I don’t know. Practice, maybe?”

  “Maybe,” Ralph conceded doubtfully. “But there’s more to it than that. I can’t put my finger on it. But I don’t trust him. More, I think he knows it. And that’s what makes me the most suspicious.”

  “Why, because he’s trying so hard to win you over?”

  Ralph glanced up at James again, surprised. “No. Because he’s not trying to at all.”

  A moment later, Ralph waved James goodbye and tromped down the stairs, clearly in a hurry. James watched him go, asking himself for the first time what Ralph might be up to at such an hour. It certainly wasn’t homework. Was it something related to his suspicions about Professor Odin-Vann? More, was Ralph right to be suspicious?

  James shook his head, dismissing the question. It was only Ralph. He probably just had boring, tedious Head Boy responsibilities to attend to.

  Without another thought, James turned and ran up the ascending staircase, jumping the trick step and taking the rest two and a time.

  “This would be loads easier if we had the invisibility cloak,” Rose whispered as they skulked through the corridor at midnight, skirting the torches and ducking behind statues.

  “I know,” James said tersely. “You can stop mentioning it.”

  “I’m only saying,” Rose went on blithely, peering around the flank of a stone centaur, “A true gremlin would have found a way to nick the invisibility cloak without his father knowing, just for situations like this.”

  “No other gremlin’s dad is head of the Department of Aurors,”

  James grumbled. “Why are we stopping? The Slytherin common room door is just around the bend.”

  “Shh!” Rose hissed, flapping a warning hand toward James, still peering around the statue.

  James held his breath and listened. A distant noise grew gradually louder: a sort of lilting rasp, a gravelly voice humming a very old tune that James knew from his grandmother Weasley’s wireless programs, only this version sounded like it was being played on a broken kazoo in a hornet’s nest.

  Glanci
ng back, Rose mouthed, “Filch!” She lunged back into the shadows, elbowing James aside.

  “Ow!” James gasped. “Get off my foot!”

  “Hush!” Rose breathed urgently, elbowing him in the ribs.

  Footsteps accompanied the humming song now, shuffling closer, rounding the bend ahead. Amazingly, Filch seemed to have chosen the dungeon corridors to prowl tonight, and was headed right toward them.

  Then, worst of all, he began to sing.

  “Oh, I’ve got a girl, a beeyotiful girl, the sweetest girl ever could be,” he wheezed under his breath, singing in a near monotone. “And for that sweet girl, with raven-dark curls, I’ll buy her a diamond and tea…”

  The old caretaker’s voice came from just past the statue now.

  His shadow lengthened along the stone floor, swaying, accompanied by the scratch-shuffle of his boots. Another shadow trotted alongside, and James’ blood went cold. It was the ancient Kneazle cat, Mrs. Norris, sniffing the floor, her claws ticking and clicking lightly as she approached.

  Filch’s foot came into sight just beyond the statue’s stone plinth and Mrs. Norris stole ahead of it. She turned immediately, swinging the lamp of her green-gold gaze directly onto James and Rose where they hid. She opened her mouth to hiss at them.

  And then, another voice joined in with Filch’s song, this one rough and booming, echoing from behind him.

  “An’ we’ll dance, we two, in a big curlicue, by th’ light o’ th’ strawb’ry moon…”

  Filch’s boot stuttered in surprise, and then scraped the floor as it withdrew, pivoting back around. Mrs. Norris, however, didn’t blink or turn toward the newcomer. She closed her mouth and a high, feline growl coiled in her throat.

  “Rubeus!” Filch called gruffly, covering his surprise with anger.

  “Gods, don’t torture me with your singin’. What are you doing about at this hour?”

  James heard Hagrid’s clumping footsteps and dared to relax ever so slightly. Next to him, Rose shooed silently at Mrs. Norris with her hands. The cat opened her pink mouth in a low yowl, showing all of her extremely pointy yellow teeth.

  “Can’t sleep a wink,” Hagrid answered mournfully. “It’s th’ full moon an’ the snowstorm. Too much white outside. Chases th’ sleep clean away. Thought I’d come down to th’ pool an’ work on Gertrude.”

  “Ye gods,” Filch moaned again in disgust. “How many times ‘ave I told you, you can’t name a ship ‘Gertrude’. It’s an embarrassment, it is.”

  Hagrid seemed unperturbed. “Tell you what, Argus, I’ll consult you afore namin’ the next one.”

  “We’ll both be dead an’ buried before you can afford another boat. O’ that I’m certain,” Filch wheezed. “Go on with you, then. I’ve got rounds to do.”

  With Filch’s back turned, Rose dared to aim a kick at Mrs.

  Norris. The cat flattened her ears to her skull and swiped at Rose’s trainer, drawing a ragged slash with her claws.

  “S’fortunate I came across yeh, actually, Argus,” Hagrid said suddenly, still unseen around the centaur statue. “Er, it seems I’ve come down to th’ dungeons without my ring-key to the Moonpool, fool that I am. Would yeh mind?”

  Filch hemmed and hawed, grumbled and scratched at the rough flannel of his trousers. Then, James heard the sound of footsteps shuffling back down the corridor. “You’ll forget your own head one o’ these days, I wager,” Filch muttered.

  “Prob’ly right,” Hagrid agreed cheerily. “I suppose I left the ring with my keys in the greenhouse after class.”

  “Aye,” Filch muttered, taking the hint. “Professor Hagrid.”

  There was a faint jangle, then the clink and scritch of the ring-key slotting into place. A clack of sliding bolts echoed down the corridor.

  Rose kicked at Mrs. Norris again, this time connecting with the old kneazle’s hindquarters. She spun, hissed, and battened onto the cuff of Rose’s jeans with her fore-claws. Rose throttled her ankle desperately, trying to shake the cat off, but to no avail.

  For lack of a better idea, James drew his wand from his pocket and aimed it at the hissing animal. “Acervespa!” he whispered.

  The white lance of the stinging hex struck Mrs. Norris between her bulging eyes and she somersaulted backwards, paws and tail flailing.

  She writhed in mid-air and struck the floor facing backwards, her legs splayed, the fur on her back raised into bristling hackles.

  “Mrs. Norris!” Filch barked, raising his voice impatiently.

  “Come along now. We’re not huntin’ mice this night.”

  “True enough, Mrs. Norris,” Hagrid chuckled. “S’matter o’ fact, I’m fairly certain I saw some students making their way t’ the Astronomy tower with mischief in mind. I called after ‘em, but they don’t fear me like they do the two of yeh.”

  “That’s because yer a great ol’ softie, Professor,” Filch growled.

  “Come along, Missus. We’ve got bigger fish t’ fry this night.”

  Mrs. Norris shook herself, snapped her pink jaw at the air as if a cloud of gnats was circling her head, and then darted in a frantic circle, hissing at her own tail. The stinging hex had apparently scrambled the old cat’s brain, at least for the moment. James couldn’t quite bring himself to feel sorry for it. Finally, a little drunkenly, she trotted away, bumping the centaur plinth as she went.

  As James listened, still cramped into the statue’s shadow with Rose, he heard Filch’s shuffling departure as the old caretaker hurried back to the stairs, Mrs. Norris clicking along behind. Hagrid resumed his song, singing in a gruff baritone, “An’ happy we’ll be, my Princess an’ me, like the dish what run off with the spoon…”

  James and Rose emerged from behind the statue and ran lightly to meet Hagrid, who looked back at them with no surprise, still singing the old song. When they joined him, he bowed his head and muttered, “Saw yer foot kickin’ at ol’ Mrs. Norris, Rosie.” There was a chastising note in his voice.

  “She was about to get us caught,” Rose whispered defensively.

  “All I did was try to shoo her away. James shot her with a stinging hex!”

  She turned and raised her eyebrows at him. He glared back at her reproachfully.

  To change the subject, he asked Hagrid, “Did you really forget your ring-key?”

  Hagrid chuckled drily and brandished the emerald ring on his left hand. “’Course not. But I had to get Argus away from yeh somehow, din’t I?”

  He reached for the partially open door to the subterranean pool, but it suddenly clunked shut of its own accord. A second later, the latch rattled and the door pushed open again, this time revealing the golden firelight of the Slytherin common room. Ralph bustled out, bumped hard into Hagrid, and nearly rebounded back inside again, dropping something as he did. It was a rubber duck, once bright yellow, now faded and dulled with fingerprints. He recovered, grabbed at it, and blinked guiltily up at the half-giant.

  “Sorry I’m late,” he whispered, trying vainly to act nonchalant.

  “Mind if I bring along a… erm, little friend?”

  “What do you mean, ‘a little friend’?” James asked as the quartet hurried down the rough terraces of the subterranean lake. “That’s your Protean duck. Who do you need to send a message to?”

  Unlike the last time they were there, the air over the waves was icy cold, misted with snow crystals. The cavern waterway was fringed with a brittle crust of ice, but the inverted lake above was frozen completely solid, forming a bulging black depth, dense and inky as onyx.

  Hagrid’s blockade runner, Gertrude, rocked low in the darkness, moored to a stone jetty. Waves slapped restlessly at its long hull.

  “Well, like you and Rose said,” Ralph huffed, his breath forming gray clouds, “we can’t afford to get caught, no matter what. So I sorta thought there’d be safety in numbers. And… well, I made arrangements.”

  “Hold on,” Rose said, turning around in front of Ralph and stopping him, barely, with a hand on his chest
. “You made ‘arrangements’?”

  “What’s all this?” Hagrid called, distracted, as he uncoiled the ship’s rope from an iron bollard. “Yeh lot comin’ or what?”

  Ralph shifted nervously from foot to foot. “I just felt more comfortable with the idea of having a little back-up is all…”

  James narrowed his eyes. “Your Protean duck?”

  Ralph tried to conceal the yellow rubber duck in his big hands.

  “No, not the… look, it’s nothing. Can we just get on with it?”

  “Let’s take a look, Ralph,” James said, reaching for the duck.

  Ralph pivoted and pulled the duck away, inadvertently placing it within easy grasping distance of Rose, who plucked it from his fist.

  “Don’t squeeze it!” Ralph warned, turning in alarm and raising both hands, but he was too late.

  “Grotty blighter!” the duck’s squeaky voice declared.

  Instantly, a burst of pale blue smoke exploded between Rose and Ralph. Out of it, a voice seemed to resolve out of immense distance, forming a single word: “GeronimooOOO!”

  And a figure burst from the blue smoke as if in full sprint, plowing into James and knocking him clean off his feet. He landed on the cold stone floor with the figure atop him, knocking the breath from his lungs in a whoosh.

  “Ooff!” the newcomer exclaimed in James’ ear. “Who’d I land on? No way the Ralphinator would go down that easy. Are you a bad guy? I was told there might be bad guys.”

  “Zane Walker?!” Rose cried, her voice so high that it was barely audible. “How…! What…!?”

  Ralph rolled his eyes and snatched the duck back out of Rose’s hand. “I asked him by floo to be ready if we needed any help,” he declared impatiently. “He was just supposed to be on standby in case we ran into trouble.”

  “Brrr!” Zane shivered, clambering off James and dragging him back to his feet. “Cold here! Where are we? Antarctica?” He was dressed in his Zombie house uniform, but with the tie loosened and the sleeves of his shirt unbuttoned and flapping. “Good thing I wasn’t having a swim in the gymnasium, eh?”