Shivering as he climbed a metal ladder onto the concrete pier, Zane said, “Your optimism is an inspiration to us all, Hagrid.”
Heddlebun stole from shadow to shadow, her huge eyes bulging as she took in the unfamiliar sights. Rusted barges lined the pier, locked into the ice and loaded with gloom. Snow skirled and wafted all around, clouding the air and forming ghostly haloes around the security lights that lined the pier, erected on leaning wooden poles. Hagrid paused just outside the range of the nearest lamp and raised his right arm. In his hand he held aloft what appeared to be a cigarette lighter. He clicked the button on its barrel and the security light winked out.
In a low voice, James asked, “Where’d you get a Deluminator?”
Rose answered smugly, “I liberated it from dad’s dresser over the holidays. That’s how a Gremlin does things. Feel free to take notes.”
Hagrid used the Deluminator to snuff the remaining lights along the pier one by one as the troupe made their way along. They climbed ramps of iron stairs to higher levels, and then followed a length of broken pavement toward a line of enormous bay doors. Every door was closed and locked with a rusted chain and padlock, except for the door at the very end, which was wrenched up and badly dented, its chain dangling and swinging in the low, whistling wind.
“That’s the one, then,” Hagrid nodded, clumping closer to the looming warehouse. Keeping his voice low, he added, “Stay close now.
And keep quiet.”
Hugging himself and huddling next to Hagrid, Zane asked, “How do we know they’re in there?”
As if in answer, a huge, grating noise shook the warehouse. The metal doors rattled on their tracks and a few remaining windows tinkled, shattering in their frames. A burst of yellow light briefly illuminated the darkness inside, dissipating into orange flickers.
“Either that’s them,” James gulped, “Or the boundaries of the magical world are way worse off than we thought.”
Hagrid crept into the shadow of the open bay door. Inside, just visible in the gloom, was a cavernous space surrounded by banks of high windows. A lacework of struts and girders crowded the upper reaches.
From these hung complicated machinery that James assumed had, at one time, operated cranes for moving cargo.
Hagrid’s voice was an echoing rasp in the darkness as he called, “Grawpie?”
Another grating grunt filled the space, and James smelled the familiar chemical reek of Dragon breath. A burst of yellow flame illuminated the pocked concrete floor, piles of old shipping crates, the carcass of a lorry propped on blocks, and three dark bulks hiding behind it.
“Grawpie!” Hagrid cried, relieved, and hurried toward the lorry, the others following close behind. “Prechka! And sweet Norberta! You made it!”
James’ feet gritted on the broken concrete floor as he hurried to stay close to Hagrid, but he faltered as the giants stepped out from behind the lorry. He’d forgotten what it was like to be in close company with such gigantic people. Grawp’s head peered over the lorry’s cab, his hair as thick and matted as a thicket of briars, his Quaffle-sized eyes glimmering reflections of the high windows. Prechka, however, dwarfed even him. Looming amidst the girders high overhead, her head looked impossibly small on the mountainous bulk of her shoulders. When her feet came down on the concrete floor, it cracked and buckled. The rafters shook, sifting thick dust down onto the smaller people below.
Grawp spoke with slow emphasis, in what he clearly thought was a careful hush. “Brother Hagrid. Grawp and Prechka hide, but Norberta loud. Norberta smell other dragon in Sea of Light.”
“There, there,” Hagrid reached and patted his half-brother on the elbow. “Yeh done well, Grawpie. Both o’ yeh. We’ll take Norberta from ‘ere. Heddlebun?”
But Heddlebun, James noticed, was already about her work.
The tiny elf had ducked under the derelict lorry and was now whispering to Norberta, who lowered her huge serpentine neck to listen. The dragon’s breath, which had been short and chuffing with anxiety only moments before, now came in slower, longer gusts, with less reek of brimstone. James couldn’t make out Heddlebun’s words. He couldn’t even tell if she was speaking a language he understood. But Norberta comprehended well enough, and that was all that mattered. A coil of tension unwound from James’ shoulders, and only in its absence did he realize just how worried he had been about the prospect of leading Norberta back to the ship.
The ground shook as Prechka lowered to one knee behind the lorry. Impatiently, she pushed it like a toy, making room for her bulk.
The lorry rocked as it slid on its blocks, scraping and crunching along the concrete floor. Zane had to leap backward as it reared precipitously near him.
“Prechka afraid,” the giantess said, and the low throb of her voice caused more windows to rattle and shatter around the dark warehouse. She put out her hand and Hagrid reached up to take it. His fist was just big enough to grip the end of her grubby index finger, and yet he held it as if she was a child, and then kissed the back of one huge knuckle.
“Yeh can follow the same path back home that you took here, can’t yeh?” Hagrid asked, looking up at her shadowy bulk.
James knew that giants had a special sense that allowed them to retrace their steps perfectly. And yet Prechka looked troubled.
Carefully, Grawp said, “We come back to old cave home now.
We live by brother Hagrid at Hogwarts.”
James glanced back at Hagrid in time to see the colour fade from his cheeks.
“Now we talked about this, Grawpie. Yeh can’t come t’
Hogwarts. It’s not allowed, remember? Why, they’ve made me send away even my last few Skrewts. What would headmaster Merlin say if he learnt yeh two was back livin’ in the Forbidden Forest?”
“Grawp and Prechka be quiet,” Prechka said, raising her index finger to her lips in a gesture of solemn secrecy. The timbre of her voice could be felt through the soles of James’ shoes. “Headmaster never know.”
Hagrid was shaking his head sadly. “I’d love nothin’ more, loves. But we just can’t do it. Yeh have t’ go back to the mountains.
Yer tribe needs yeh. And yeh need them. It’ll be all right. Maybe, when all o’ this Vow of Secrecy bizness is cleared up, why I can make arrangements for yeh to comes an’ visit then. How would that be, eh?”
He gave the giants an attempt at a grin.
Grawp and Prechka looked at each other and seemed to commune for a long moment with their eyes. Finally, Grawp looked down again and said, “OK, brother Hagrid.”
Hagrid sniffed, and nodded, and collected himself. “That’s good, then.” Perking up a little, he said, “So, yeh both remember how to summon the hidin’ charm I sent yeh, right? Do yeh still ‘ave it with yeh?”
Grawp reached up and rummaged in the thick burlap of his collar, retrieving something hung about his neck on a hank of rope.
James was surprised to see that it was an old automobile tyre, threaded right through the centre like a ring. “We hide when hear people,”
Grawp said. “Like this.” He squeezed the tyre between his thumb and forefinger and muttered, “Obscuro.”
Nothing happened. Both giants remained exactly where they were. And yet, somehow, James’ eye refused to see them. Where Grawp hunkered, James instead seemed to sense a huge grey trash bin half-buried in plastic bags of rubbish. Where Prechka knelt, he perceived a rusting water tower on thick iron supports.
“That’s a camouflage talisman!” Zane exclaimed. “Maybe the best I’ve ever seen!”
“Hagrid,” Rose said, clearly impressed. “Did you do that?”
“Now don’t go acting all surprised, yeh lot,” Hagrid answered, stifling a smile of sad pride. “Jus’ cause I teach Care o’ Magical Creatures doesn’t mean I fergot how to use a wand. It’s just a little somethin’ I whipped up fer their journey here and back. Couldn’t expect ‘em to travel without any kind o’ magical help, could I?” He glanced tentatively at Rose and added, “Do ye
h really think it’s a good one?”
“It’s excellent, Hagrid,” she nodded, still squinting at the disguised giants, trying to see them.
“Whoa!” Ralph said, backing away. “I think they’re moving, but I can’t really tell!”
James glanced up and was alarmed to see what appeared to be the trash bin tilting up onto its end as its rubbish bags rolled and clustered all around it, forming and reforming into new piles. The water tower leaned on its iron supports, which creaked and moaned with the sound of wrenching metal.
“Give ‘er another squeeze, Grawpie,” Hagrid called up, cupping his hands to his mouth. “I could only pump so much magic into that tyre. Save it for when yeh need it, why don’t yeh?”
A moment later, the disguises blinked away and James could once again recognize the monstrous shapes standing in the dusty gloom.
Hagrid nodded in relief.
Ralph announced, “We should be off, then, right?”
“Before I freeze my tuchus off,” Zane agreed. “Not that this hasn’t been a great time. Seriously. Let’s do it again next week.”
Hagrid called to Heddlebun, “Is Norberta ready to go, then?”
Heddlebun paused and raised her head, her huge ears pricking up. “We’re ready,” she said, her voice very tiny after the boom of the giants.
Hagrid said his goodbyes and allowed the giants to leave first.
Their hulking forms blocked out the blue nightglow as they lumbered through the broken bay door. Within a minute, the sub-audible thump of their footsteps blended into the constant thrum of distant traffic.
They were gone, wending their way carefully back into the outlying villages, and the mountains beyond.
“They’ll be safe,” Hagrid whispered, staring hard at the empty bay door. “Makin’ their way back home. They’ll be just fine, won’t they?”
James realized that Hagrid was trying to convince himself as much as anyone else.
Rose put her hand on Hagrid’s shoulder where he hunkered in the dark. “Of course they will. You equipped them. And they’re smart, in their own way.”
For giants, James thought, but didn’t say. After all, Hagrid himself was half-giant, and he had conjured one of the best camouflage talismans James had ever seen.
Hagrid nodded decisively. “Right then,” he whispered, and tossed a glance back toward Heddlebun and the coiled shape of Norberta. “Let’s be away, then.”
Herding James, Rose, Ralph, and Zane ahead of him, the half-giant led Norberta out through the open bay door and down the broken asphalt of the drive. Snow filled the air in a million fluffy flecks, sketching the shape of the wind as it surrounded the warehouse, scoured the pier, and escaped over the wasteland of the frozen Thames.
James glanced back, curious, and saw Heddlebun riding atop Norberta’s head, bent low to her ear, whispering incessantly. With one hand, she patted the great dragon on the bunched muscles of her jaw.
Norberta followed Hagrid as if in a trance, her head low and sweeping over the pier, her feet lifting and falling like a cat stalking through a garden, making no noise whatsoever.
Silently, the troupe threaded past the ice-locked barges and down to the frozen surface of the Thames. The Gertrude was barely a low, sleek shape amidst a panorama of drifting grey. Beyond this, London itself was merely a dull throb and a watercolor fog of lights.
“Easy now,” Hagrid muttered nervously as Norberta settled her weight onto the frozen river. The ice groaned precipitously but held firm, at least for the moment. In a ragged line, with Ralph in the lead and Norberta following behind, the group began to trek toward the black hole in the ice where the Gertrude rocked, waiting.
Shivering but still chipper despite his hushed voice, Zane asked James, “So where’d you guys find the dragon-whisperer?”
“Heddlebun?” James shook his head. “She was a house elf in Millie Vandergriff’s house. Got sacked just this past holiday after spending her whole life there. Somehow Hagrid got hold of her when he found out she’d lost her service and knew how to keep beasts calm.
Pretty lucky, I guess.”
“She got sacked?” Zane frowned, “I thought that hardly ever happened? What for?”
James sighed. Ahead of them, the Gertrude unsheathed slowly from the fog. The folding gangplank stretched out to the ice, tilting and creaking with the movement of the ship. “She was mad and desperate about losing her work to a load of Muggle servants. She tried to sabotage them into getting sacked, but got herself caught and sacked instead. It was me that caught her, in fact. I was there for the holidays with Millie.”
Zane turned to glance at James, his brow lowering. “And you all trust her?” he asked, his voice suddenly incredulous.
James opened his mouth to reply, but a sudden commotion from behind startled both boys.
“Whoa!” Hagrid bellowed suddenly, “Norberta! WHOA!”
With a sound both low and terribly huge, the ice cracked beneath James’ feet, as if something very heavy had just pressed hard down on it. He felt the motion as the frozen expanse pitched, throwing him off balance. Zane grabbed his arm, keeping him upright, but just barely. Something buffeted overhead and the sky was momentarily blotted by a huge black silhouette. Dark wings whumped through the air, and suddenly, deafeningly, a roar broke over the ice. It was deep, long, and ululating, seeming to make the very snowflakes shiver in their course. This, James immediately knew, was no restrained bark of nervous energy. This was a full-on roar of hectic release.
Norberta couldn’t properly fly, James remembered, only glide short distances due to an old wing injury. She swooped over him and closed on Ralph, her shadow covering him as she lowered, scrabbling at the air, her claws swinging down toward the cracked ice.
“Ralph!” Zane cried, but the boy had already turned around.
His eyes bulged in terror as the great beast bore down on him.
Instinctively, he threw himself flat just as the dragon crunched down, rebounding from the ice with all four powerful legs, and lunging back into the air again even as the frozen river shattered beneath her weight.
Ralph scrambled to hold on, now captive on a heaving chunk of loose ice.
Hagrid ran past on James’ right, still bellowing, leaping clumsily over widening cracks. Rose was close behind, running more nimbly, even as her boots slipped and scraped.
Norberta pumped her wings, lofted through the air, and kicked off again, this time from the deck of the Gertude, tearing up planks and rigging with her claws. One wing walloped the air, the other, slightly out of synch, limped faintly, tugging her off course. Her swooping form was wreathed in swirls of snow, and James could just make out the shape of Heddlebun as she leapt from the dragon’s head, grabbed onto the rear mast of the Getrude, and swung up to perch on the furled sail.
“Elf work is for elves!” she called, her voice suddenly firm, as high and ringing as a trumpet. “Spread the word! This is just the beginning! Elf work is for elves, or the Muggle world will pay!”
James slid and stumbled to a halt as the shattered ice broke up before him. Norberta roared again, and the echo of it pealed over the Thames like thunder. With a wrench and screech of metal, she landed on the unmistakable shape of a Tower Bridge, clawed up to the top of its south stone tower, and coiled there, her tail whipping about her flanks, her wings raised and flexing for balance. She raised her neck, hinged open her jaw, and sent a gout of flame high into the snowy clouds.
Yellow light filled the world like a beacon, illuminating every falling snowflake, glinting from bridge’s suspended walkways. On the roadway below, cars squealed and tyres screeched. The noise of crashing metal and terrified screams was unmistakable even through the dark distance.
Then, with a sinewy lunge, Norberta launched again. Her wings caught the air, whumped down, and she swooped into a long, low arc, descending into the foggy glow of the city, where she was met with distant blares of horns and crumps of colliding metal.
James could barely believe w
hat he was seeing. Zane scraped to a halt next to him, weighing down the giant chunk of ice they floated on and grabbing James’ shoulder for support.
“NORBERTA!!” Hagrid bellowed, standing in silhouette on a heaving floe ahead, his legs splayed. Next to him, Rose clutched onto his coat for dear life. “NORBERTA! COME BACK!”
James turned, realizing that the force of the river had already carried them some distance away from the Gertrude. Frantically, he scanned the rigging and masts, looking, but there was no longer anything to see.
“She’s escaped,” Zane gasped hopelessly, still clinging to James for support. “We’ll never see that little traitor again.”
A heavy shape slid up against James’ legs as the ice bobbed, allowing black water to bubble up over its edge. He buckled and fell backwards onto the object, which let out a hoarse “Oof!”
It was Ralph.
“I really do get tired,” he wheezed, rolling onto his back on the ice and throwing James off of him, “of being right… about these things.”
18. – A brief reprieve
It was almost dawn by the time James and Rose made their way back to the portrait hole, feeling as if they’d been away for weeks rather than hours.
“My, just look at the two of you,” the Fat Lady said disapprovingly, raising the topmost of her many chins. “You both look a fright. And what brings you back at such an ungodly hour?”
“Venomous Tentacula,” Rose growled the password as if it was a curse.
“Well!” the Fat Lady huffed, gathering her stole tighter about her shoulders indignantly. With a creak, her frame swung open, revealing the deep shadows and cold hearth of the common room.
Without a word, the two separated and climbed their respective dormitory stairs.
James didn’t know about Rose, but despite the numbing exhaustion of his body, he felt as wide awake as he’d ever been in his entire life. Creeping up the winding stairs to the somnolent dimness of the dormitory, he was relieved to see even Scorpius asleep in his stolen place among the seventh years.
James Potter and the Crimson Thread Page 40
