Unable to muster the energy even to peel off his damp clothes, James lowered himself to his bed fully dressed, collapsed upon it, and lay there staring up toward the nearby window. The snow had stopped and the moon was up, glaring back with its own glowing eye, illuminating the window’s frosted edges like neon.
James’ every thought was consumed with the grave consequences of what they had inadvertently caused that night. The journey home had been difficult and arduous, with hours spent on the broken ice of the Thames shoring up the Gertrude enough to brave the attempt, all while Zane cast visum-ineptio charms over the ship to make it look like a mere tugboat to anyone who might come to investigate the fracas nearby.
But now that it was over, the return trip ceased to matter completely.
They had set a dragon loose in Muggle London.
The very thought seemed preposterous. Laughable, even. And yet he could all too easily recall the crash of colliding cars and the screams of witnesses as Norberta clawed to the top of Tower Bridge, coiling atop its famed silhouette like a living gargoyle.
Hundreds of people had to have seen it, despite the hour. And even now, the fully-grown Norwegian Ridgeback was surely rampaging through the city, doing untold damage and spreading a wake of Muggle terror in every direction.
Zane had been right. As they’d departed the hobbled Gertrude upon finally returning to the Moonpool, he had pulled James, Rose, and Ralph aside and gravely said, “This is worse than the Night of the Unveiling. You know that, right?”
Hagrid had been utterly silent throughout the return journey, even as they all bid their solemn goodnights. He was in a sort of shock, James knew, caught between worrying about his poor, lost dragon, the knowledge that he had caused possibly the greatest breach of the Vow of Secrecy in a thousand years, and the reality that, by the following morning, he may well be carted off to Azkaban to await trial for crimes too numerous to easily count.
And yet James simply couldn’t comprehend the terrible scope of it all. Whenever he tried to imagine what was to come, or what he should do about it, his mind fetched up once again on that harrowing image of the dragon atop Tower Bridge, her tail whipping her flanks, her wings spread for balance, roaring a stream of liquid fire into the clouds.
He fell asleep without realizing it and woke up mere minutes later, or so it felt. The daylight outside the window betrayed the truth, however. It was the middle of Saturday afternoon.
James groaned and rolled over, clutching a hand over his eyes.
“Late night, sleepyhead?” A voice greeted him cheerfully. It was Graham. “You’ll be in no shape for Quidditch tomorrow if you keep that up. As your team captain, I feel it’s my duty to say I’m disappointed in you.”
James groaned again, unable to formulate any meaningful response. As he swung his feet to the floor, realizing that he was fully clothed in grimy jeans, sweatshirt, and clammy socks, the memory of the previous night fell back onto him like a millstone.
“Oh, bloody hell,” he muttered urgently to himself. “Graham, have you seen a newspaper today?”
Graham had not. “Why? Did you have another interview with Rita Skeeter?”
Breathlessly, James leapt out of bed, not even thinking to change out of his grimy day-old clothes, and ran down the spiral stairs.
No one in the common room had seen that morning’s Daily Prophet either. James pushed through the portrait hole and ran toward the staircase, his feet clad only in socks, now loose and flopping damply from his toes.
He passed Peeves in the hall, and the poltergeist hurried to follow, sensing potential trouble and eager to exploit it however he could.
“Get away!” James called back over his shoulder, panting. “This is none of your business!”
“Things that aren’t my business are the best things of all!” the fat little figure trilled, bouncing happily from the walls.
Rose was just coming out of the Great Hall as James blundered to the bottom of the stairs with Peeves tittering close behind.
“Have you seen it? What’s the news?” James gasped, but Rose hurried to him, already shushing him with a finger to her lips.
“Ooo!” Peeves squeaked with high anticipation. “This is going to be good! I can just smell the beautiful stink of conspiracy about you both!”
“Away with you, Peeves!” Rose hissed, snapping her glare onto the poltergeist. “This doesn’t concern you!”
“All the better!” Peeves squealed, turning loops in the air.
“Trouble, trouble for Peeves to double!”
Rose narrowed her eyes. When she spoke again, it was in a musing, sing-song voice. “Did you hear what they’re making for dessert tonight, James?”
Peeves halted in mid-air, his face suddenly suspicious.
“Sleeping Toad Tarts,” Rose whispered tantalizingly.
“Mmmm… miniature enchanted sugar toads twitching in Turkish Delight gelatin drops. Very tricky to prepare. Requires complete silence in the kitchen, lest the trays of sugar toads be woken before they’re properly embedded in the gelatin. Can you just imagine? Hundreds of candy toads leaping pell-mell about the kitchen with all the elves scrambling to catch them?”
James glanced up at Peeves and was surprised to see the poltergeist wringing his hands frantically, his piggish face screwed up with strain, like Ralph trying not to belch in class after chugging a licorice soda.
“It would be simply disastrous,” Rose went on, speaking in an awed voice, “if anyone, say, invaded the kitchen and started banging pots and pans while singing the Hogwarts Salute at the top of their lungs. It’s a good thing I don’t know anyone who likes to do such things.”
“MmmmMMH!” Peeves groaned shrilly, nearly popping with torment. He hovered a moment longer, his eyes going cross-eyed and his cheeks bulging with concentration, and then let out a bawl of helpless glee and swooped away, careening in the unmistakable direction of the kitchens, already breaking into the first verse of the Hogwarts Tribute.
“Come with me,” Rose said, grabbing James by the elbow and steering him away toward a side corridor. “The library. And not a word before we get there.”
James allowed Rose to drag him onward, once again marveling at her ability to manipulate lesser minds by giving them exactly what they most want.
Five minutes later, at a table in the farthest back corner of the library, with their backs to the wall and no one else in sight, James bent over Rose’s edition of that morning’s Daily Prophet.
The news story was surprisingly small, halfway down the second page. Not buried, exactly, but clearly not the screaming headline that they had expected.
MUGGLE DRAGON SIGHTINGS IN CENTRAL
LONDON CAUSE FOR INVESTIGATION
Ministry of Magic officials responded early this morning to persistent reports that a dragon had been sighted atop London’s Tower Bridge and in nearby environs. Initially dismissed as mass hysteria induced by the numerous unrelated breaches of magical unplottability in Muggle spaces, eyewitness testimonies led Ministry investigators to believe that some incursion of a magical beast may indeed have occurred.
“A dragon is exceedingly unlikely,” explains Harry Potter, head Auror and lead responder to the scene. “But Muggle witnesses indicate that some fantastical beast or magical entity may well have temporarily escaped secure wizarding boundaries. Most likely the creature is simply a rogue boggart unwittingly set loose in the Muggle streets. We shall catch up to it forthwith, I am certain.”
According to official reports, the appearance of the creature occurred between 1:25 and 1:40 in the morning, where the beast was first observed over Tower Bridge, then soaring over Potters Field Park and vanishing into nearby Shard rail-yard. Ministry oblivators, now working round the clock, were dispatched to the district to alter the memories of nearly three hundred Muggle witnesses. Damage from multiple vehicle accidents was also magically repaired. Ministry officials caution, however, that with sightings of this magnitude, some residual memory and physical
evidence is bound to remain.
Wolfram Tryce, Lead Obliviator, warns, “We are reduced to short-term memory extraction rather than full experiential replacement. All it will take is for two or three of the witnesses to encounter each other in their daily lives for their shared memories to resurface.”
As Daily Prophet readers are bound to know, the popular Hokus Brothers Circus, currently performing in wizarding London’s Diagon Alley, feature a Hebridean Black dragon that performs under the stage name of Montague Python. Circus owner and ringmaster Archibald Hokus assured this reporter personally that their dragon was present and accounted for throughout the entire night.
“Montague’s a registered beast, never out of our sight, and tame as a lamb, despite his fearsome size and reputation,” Hokus explained via floo early this morning.
“And for good reason! Trained dragons are right dear, in every sense of the word. I don’t expect there’s another like him in the entire world, much as we might wish there was. And Monty’s been with us for so long now that he’s like a member of my own family.”
When pressed for whether the Ministry of Magic has been in contact with Hokus Brothers Circus to confirm the whereabouts of their dragon during last night’s sightings, Mr. Hokus assured that he is “cooperating in every possible way with the authorities.”
Curtailing suspicions in the non-magical community, the official explanation planted in Muggle news outlets for the sightings involves a runaway weather balloon and swamp gas build-up under the ice of the frozen Thames.
“Oldies are still goodies,” Mr. Tryce explained— somewhat wearily, in this reporter’s tenured estimation.
“Well,” James sighed, overcome with tentative relief, “that’s a stroke of luck, isn’t it?” He pushed the newspaper back toward Rose, who collected and folded it again, looking nowhere near as relieved as James himself.
“Something’s fishy about the whole story,” she said in a harsh whisper, “Norberta is still loose in London, but nobody else has seen her since the middle of last night. How likely is that?”
“Maybe she got scared and found a hiding place,” James shrugged uncertainly.
“That’s possible, actually,” Rose admitted, “Norwegian Ridgebacks, when confronted with the unknown, will usually find a familiar-looking hovel to retreat to, waiting out danger or confusion.
The poor thing’s probably terrified.”
“Now you’re sounding like Hagrid,” James observed, surprised.
“Just because she may still get us all in the worst trouble of our lives,” Rose sniffed, sagging low in her chair, “doesn’t mean I’m heartless. Norberta didn’t ask for any of this. She’s just responding to instinct.”
“It’s Heddlebun who’s to blame,” another voice said, strained to a dense whisper. It was Ralph, sliding into a chair across the table, his eyes wide and serious. “I told you this whole affair was a disaster just waiting to happen!”
“I think it was me what told you all that Heddlebun couldn’t be trusted,” James said, shaking his head. “For whatever good that did.”
Rose adopted her most beatific expression and said, “It’s no use laying blame now. What’s done is done. Now we have to figure out what to do about it.”
“Easy for you to say,” Ralph said, his voice still strained with anxiety. “You’re the one that said nothing would go wrong if we got involved.”
“I never said nothing would go wrong,” Rose commented primly. “I said we wouldn’t get caught.”
“S’not how I remember it,” Ralph groused, folding his arms.
“So,” James said, trying to bring the topic back on point. “If Norberta’s hiding away someplace, like Rose says, what exactly is the problem?” Unwilling to abandon his newfound relief, he tapped the newspaper and added, “Out of sight, out of mind, right?”
Rose turned her impatient glare back on him and rasped, “That was your dad they quoted in the article, if you hadn’t noticed. He’s no Ministry pencil pusher. That would be my dad,” she admitted with another weak slump in her chair, before rallying slightly, “but even he wouldn’t buy this line of tripe about a ‘rogue Boggart’. That’s pure rubbish meant to console stupid people. Nothing more.”
James rolled his eyes in exasperation. “We get a huge break on what could be the worst news in centuries, and you’re complaining about it! We’re off the hook, don’t you see? What’s the problem, Rose?”
“The problem is this isn’t over,” Rose insisted in a firm whisper.
“It can’t be! Norberta is still out there. And no matter what your dad says to the ‘tenured reporter’ at the Daily Prophet, he knows something’s up.”
“I’m with Rose,” Ralph nodded. “Only, not. Because I happen to think the best thing for us to do right now is go to Merlin and tell him the whole bleedin’ thing.”
“It’s fine,” James soothed, glancing back and forth between Ralph and Rose. He gestured at the newspaper again and asked, “Did either of you show Hagrid?”
Rose shook her head and blew out a sigh. “I expect he knows about it already. The poor old bloke was worried sick last night. He would have gotten a newspaper first thing, just to know the extent of the damage. But mark my words. This isn’t over. We set a dragon loose in London! It may be all clear for the moment, what with the Obliviators done with their work and the wrecks all mended. But Norberta’s still out there. We’re going to have to do something about that!”
“And I’m telling you, Rose,” James said, leaning forward and stabbing a finger down onto the folded newspaper. “It’s not our problem anymore! Norberta’s in hiding, and the Ministry is explaining it away with Boggarts and weather balloons and swamp gas. We should be counting our lucky stars for the breaks we got here, not looking for more dark omens to fret about!” he flopped back in his chair again and crossed his arms over his chest before commenting in a different voice, “Zane sure was a dab hand at those visum-ineptio charms though last night, wasn’t he?”
“Well, it’s hard to tell, isn’t it,” Rose sighed, collecting the newspaper and pushing it back into her bag. “Those only work on people who don’t know what they’re really looking at.”
“But you were impressed,” Ralph agreed, tilting his head. “I could tell. Admit it: you’re glad he came.”
Rose’s face flushed. It was a subtle thing, but James had known his cousin since she was a baby, and recognized it. She zipped her bag and avoided looking at him. “He’s an irreverent, juvenile, reckless, manically cheerful, dodgy, American rogue.”
James nodded. “And you like him for exactly everything that he annoys you for.”
He expected her to be angry, but she simply slumped over the table, chin on her crossed arms, and stared out over the bookshelves.
“He’s no Scorpius, that’s for sure.”
“Ah,” James nodded, feeling rather bold. “Because he annoys you for everything you used to like him for.”
“Oh, I still like him. I can’t help it,” Rose shook her head on her arms, keeping her voice low. “But I hate myself for it. He keeps me in a confused tizzy most of the time. Every time I think we’re all smoothed out, he does something else infuriating. My schoolwork is suffering for it.”
Ralph glanced at her, frowning. “What are you talking about?
You get top marks in every class.”
“But I’m not enjoying it. It’s all become a… a drudgery.”
“Wow,” James gave a low whistle. “A world where schoolwork is a drudgery. That’s more than I can imagine.”
“You’re some help,” Rose muttered disconsolately. “I don’t even know why I’m saying this to you two.”
James was tempted to tell Rose that Scorpius was simply no good for her, but he knew that it would be pointless. That was something she’d have to learn on her own, when she realized for herself that the sum total of their relationship was annoyance, heartbreak, and petty squabbles.
Instead, he mused, “‘Rose Malfoy’ sound
s like a shade of sickening pink. Like that terrible stomach potion Grandma Weasley brews up whenever we get the flu.”
“Oh, thanks for that,” Rose sat up again and collected her bag.
“That clears up everything.” She made to leave, then turned back to him and Ralph. “But seriously. This Norberta business isn’t over.
We’ve made a mess, and something’s going to have to be done about it before it all comes crashing down on our heads.”
Without waiting for a response, she turned and walked away.
James watched her go, arms still crossed over his chest, and then blew out a weary sigh.
He firmly wanted to believe that Rose was over-reacting and that Norberta was no longer their problem. He was less convinced it was true, however, than that Rose still harbored a secret, hopeless torch for Zane Walker, even from inside the emotional cage of her relationship with Scorpius.
Ralph was still looking back at Rose as she turned past a bookshelf and out of sight. “I hate to say it, but she’s right about Norberta. And you’re right about her and Scorpius Malfoy. What a right wazzock he is.”
James sighed and stood up, finally deciding, reluctantly, that he should change out of last night’s grubby clothes. “This whole affair’s gone totally quantum. Way over our tiny heads. See you later, Ralph.”
As he made his way back to the Gryffindor tower, he mused that, much like Norberta loose in central London, Rose’s love life was just one more thing that he, James, couldn’t do anything about.
As the weather is wont to do during those first ambiguous days of early spring, Friday night’s snowstorm was followed by a wave of unseasonable warmth on Sunday. The balmy air chased the snow into sullen, crusted dregs in the castle’s shadows, revealing the matted yellow grass beneath and summoning cascades of pallid icicles from the eaves and turrets. The ground squelched beneath James’ trainers, soaking them through, as he made his way to the Quidditch pitch for the evening’s match against Ravenclaw.
He was eager to get back onto a broom again after the long break, and was hoping to finally prove himself worthy of his position as Seeker. Thus far in the season, Gryffindor was in third place, following Ravenclaw and Slytherin. If they could snatch victory in today’s matchup, they would climb to second with dreams of a possible tournament win. If they lost, they could most likely kiss the trophy goodbye.
James Potter and the Crimson Thread Page 41
