James Potter and the Crimson Thread Page 8

  As he made his way back upstairs to the common room for the evening, he wondered how many of the school’s secrets he already knew about. In truth, he expected quite a lot of them. He knew about the underground passage between the statue of Lokimagus and the Quidditch shed—had learned of that one during the first night of his first year, in fact. He knew about the Chamber of Secrets, of course (although pretty much everyone knew about that by now). He knew of the Room of Requirement, and its sister space, the Room of Hidden Things. He even knew of the passage that connected the Whomping Willow to the old Shrieking Shack outside of Hogsmeade. And yet perhaps—hopefully—there would still be a surprise or two on Filch’s surely grudging tour.

  Perhaps there would be something that not even his dad knew about. The thought made James smile a little mischievously.

  James’ dad, of course, had never had the seventh-year experience, instead spending his final school year camping, refugee-style, on the run from Voldemort and his Death Eaters, and battling them by turns. He had received his diploma, of course, granted by Headmaster McGonagall the following year, in lieu of actual classwork “for actions illustrating an effective grasp of all magical principles and practices in the honourable defence of life and civilization against terrible powers.” As a result, however, unlike all of James’ other years of schooling, his father had been unable to provide a primer on what to expect during his seventh year.

  Secretly, James was rather content with that. He had long since shrugged off the shroud of living under his father’s legendary shadow.

  But still, not having any such shadow to live under for his seventh year was remarkably freeing.

  That evening, he could barely concentrate on his History of Magic book, musing instead on the upcoming meeting, watching the clock on the mantel as its minute hand crawled infuriatingly slowly around the dial. Gradually, the common room crowd thinned as, one by one, the younger students went to up to their dormitories.

  At a quarter ‘til ten, James met Graham’s eye across the room.

  The other boy nodded curtly. Simultaneously, they stood and angled as nonchalantly as they could toward the portrait hole. James scanned the room, making sure no one noticed their departure. Rose was nowhere in sight, fortunately. He was certain that she would have observed the departure of the seventh-years and known something was up, possibly even following them at a distance.

  Once through the portrait hole, neither James nor Graham spoke as they trotted lightly through the darkened halls and stairways, making their way to the entrance hall. Ahead and around them, they caught glimpses of other seventh-years flitting in the shadows, passing at intersections, all wending their way variously to the appointment.

  Deirdre caught up with Graham and James at the bottom of the main staircase, where the rest of the seventh-years gathered beneath the night-dark chandelier.

  “Excited, are we?” Deirdre asked, apparently trying to conceal her own enthusiasm.

  James nodded and shrugged. “Could be fun. That is, if there are any real secrets we haven’t already discovered.”

  “Even so,” Graham said darkly, “It’s an evening with Filch. I still haven’t gotten over the way he was in our fourth year, back when Grudje was Headmaster.”

  James nodded, remembering it well. “You think he’ll ever retire?

  Like Flitwick and McGonagall?”

  An unexpected female voice answered softly, coming up from behind, “Filch will never retire. It would mean spending the rest of his natural life in his own stinky company.”

  James glanced back and his cheeks suddenly heated at the sight of Millie Vandergriff, accompanied by Julian Jackson and a Hufflepuff boy, Patrick McCoy. As they congregated, Millie smiled openly at James in the dimness.

  Graham nodded at Millie’s comment. “Yeah, Filch will die here and his body will probably just keep limping around the halls out of pure habit, muttering threats and pointing out gum stains on the floors.”

  “How do we know that hasn’t already happened?” Deirdre asked, arching an eyebrow. “I don’t think anyone would be able to tell the difference.”

  As if on cue, the echo of Filch’s cane announced the caretaker’s arrival. He ambled crookedly across the entry floor, seeming to avoid the pools of light cast by the wall sconces, until his stern, stubbly features loomed before the gathering, eyeing each face with obvious disapproval.

  “Just in case it wasn’t clear,” he enunciated carefully in his gravel voice. “I lead this tour as part of my duties. Not because I believe it is in any way a worthy tradition. Bear that in mind, should you ever be tempted to breath a single, solitary word of what you are about to see to any other students.” He smiled grimly, showing all of his crooked, yellow teeth. “Not that I’d mind one bit revoking your—ahem— privileges.” He glared at the group beadily, meaningfully, and then his smile clicked off like a lamp. Resentfully, he twitched his head toward a side corridor. “This way, then.”

  Without looking back, he turned and limped away, his cane clacking hollowly on the stone floor.

  As it turned out, James did, in fact, know about most of the school’s secret passages, rooms, and amenities.

  Filch began with the newest passage, a stairwell that led to a doorway halfway up the Sylvven Tower, which was (as no one dared to point out) not a place students typically went. James followed along with the rest of the troupe, noticing that Millie Vandergriff sometimes walked right next to him, brushing him with her elbow, and other times drifted to the front of the line, where she whispered and giggled with Julian and the boy, McCoy, whom James remembered from the Hufflepuff Quidditch team, where he played Beater.

  He tried to dismiss the sight of Millie and McCoy laughing quietly, their heads together, but the image stuck in his brain, somehow prickly and irritating. Perhaps the bigger boy was also a member of the Hufflepuppet Pals. James doubted it, noting the boy’s huge square hands and dull eyes. Finesse and wit were definitely not McCoy’s strong suit.

  And why, James asked himself suddenly, was he spending so much time thinking about this?

  Deliberately, he turned his attention back to Ralph, Deirdre, and Graham, who drifted along near him, following Filch’s tour with increasing tedium.

  As the trek around the castle ambled on, Filch showed them the tunnel to the Quidditch shed and several connecting passages between classrooms, a moving bookcase in the library that opened onto a hidden reading room, a pair of strangely sumptuous bath and steam rooms on the seventh floor, and finally, oddly, the laundry. There, the house elves watched the tour from a distance, their gazes wary and grim, completely unlike the expressions they wore on the rare occasion that they were seen in the castle proper.

  James was becoming tired and bored. “I wonder, could we just slip away without being seen?” he whispered aside to Ralph.

  “Fiona Fourcompass and George Muldoon did that ten minutes ago,” Ralph answered behind a raised hand. “I almost joined them then.

  But I sort of feel like I have a duty to stay.”

  “Ah,” Millie rasped, peering at Ralph around James’ shoulder.

  “That’s a Head Boy’s duty, for sure. Also, to tell the rest of us what we missed if we decide to scarper around the next corner.”

  Millie grinned aside at James and winked.

  “One final stop,” Filch said, his rough voice echoing back from the narrow dungeon walls. “And for this one, we shall need a key.”

  Without turning, the caretaker raised his left hand. James glanced up at it in the torchlight. An emerald ring glittered on Filch’s knobbly-knuckled middle finger. James recognized it.

  “Looks just like yours, Ralph,” he nudged the big boy. “Your Slytherin ring-key.”

  “Makes sense,” Trenton Bloch muttered. “We’re nearly to our common room. I’m going to dodge in and call it a night.”

  “He’s wearing it on his left hand, though,” Ralph commented.

  “You’re supposed to wear it on your right. House
rules. The door won’t unlock otherwise.”

  Ahead of them, Filch glanced back over his shoulder, pinning Ralph with one sharp eye. “That’s if you want to get into the Slytherin common room,” he said, lowering his voice to a mean growl. “Why anyone would want to get into there I couldn’t begin to guess.”

  A scattering of muted laughter emanated from the crowd as all eyes glanced around at Ralph, Trenton, and the other Slytherin seventh-years. Among them, Nolan Beetlebrick and Fiera Hutchins frowned and narrowed their eyes. Slytherins, James observed, were not typically magnanimous in the face of taunts. None, however, dared to reply to Filch’s unexpected jibe.

  “This ring-key,” the caretaker went on, turning back and approaching a broad doorway, “Takes us to a thoroughly more interesting place. Not that any of you should have need to visit it, I daresay.”

  The door to the Slytherin common room was a metal monstrosity of locks and deadbolts, dominated by an enchanted sculpture of a coiled snake, one eye glowing with a green gem, the other an empty black socket. Normally, the snake raised its head to challenge the entrant. Filch gave it no chance, however. With another glance over his shoulder, he plugged the ring-key on his left hand into the snake’s empty eye socket.

  The various bolts, locks, and clasps of the door clacked loudly open and the door eased loose on its heavy hinges. Filch paused, still glaring back over his shoulder at the gathering of older students, almost as if he might change his mind about this last secret and send them all back to their dormitories.

  Instead, with a reluctant grimace, he heaved the door open and stepped through.

  A push of cold, strangely misty wind rushed out around Filch’s shoulders, flapping James’ collar and lifting Millie’s blonde hair.

  “That’s never been there before,” Ralph commented, following the group as it pressed through the open door.

  Ahead of James, Trenton Bloch suddenly stumbled, raising his head as he moved through the opening. He blinked rapidly, turning on the spot. When he spoke, his voice was a hushed tremolo.

  “That’s never been there before, either!”

  Impatiently, James shouldered around Trenton, and then drifted to a stunned stop himself, his eyes widening as he took in the suddenly massive space before him.

  Amazingly, inexplicably, the Slytherin common room was gone.

  In its place was a vast cavern with wet stone walls and a rough-hewn floor, terraced into broad descending steps. At the bottom of the steps, acres of black water spread away in the shape of a small subterranean lake, heaving with waves. Along the distant walls, nearly hidden in the darkness, broad archways led to what appeared to be canals or underground rivers. Huge torches hung in sconces between the arches, reflecting their flickering light on the waves.

  The troupe of seventh years drifted down the broad steps in awe, trying to peer in every direction at once. Water lapped and splashed.

  The torches crackled.

  A ship bobbed and creaked on the waves some distance away, moored to a stone bollard with a length of rope. The ship was old, but low and sleek, equipped with three tall masts and studded along its side with portholes and cannon ports.

  “That’s a blockade runner,” McCoy announced with a low whistle. “A smuggler’s ship! What’s it doing here?”

  “Forget the ship, ” Fiera Hutchins said, adjusting her glasses as she looked around. “Where is here?”

  “Look!” Graham called suddenly, his voice waking echoes all around the cavernous space. He stabbed a hand upwards, pointing toward the dark ceiling.

  James looked, and swayed under a thrill of alarm and wonder.

  The ceiling wasn’t stone. It was water. Waves rolled and clapped together overhead, forming an inverted mirror of the enormous pool below, glinting blackly in the lofty heights.

  “We’re beneath the lake!” Deirdre suddenly proclaimed. “Aren’t we?”

  Filch’s voice rang from some distance away, where he stood on the lowest terrace overlooking the waves. “The Black Lake is technically not a lake,” he announced, and James thought that the old caretaker, for the first time, seemed to be enjoying himself. “It’s an inversion of the underground harbor below. From here, vessels can travel to virtually any waterway in the world. So long as its occupants aren’t prone to a wee bit of claustrophobia and don’t mind getting a tetch wet.”

  “Hold on,” Millie said, standing next to James again. “Are you saying that when the Durmstrangs arrived in their ship, back in the days of the Triwizard Tournament…?”

  Graham continued, realization dawning on him. “They didn’t just magically appear, bobbing up from the lake like it was some kind of portal?”

  “Ach,” Filch said, an edge of impatience coming back into his voice. “There’s plenty o’ magic involved. More than you lot could get your wee heads around. But the lake above is no portal. It’s just the passage into the network of rivers below. From here, a ship can get anywhere, if they’re willing to brave the endless tunnels and underground oceans between here and there.”

  “So whose boat is that, then?” Trenton asked, pointing at the blockade runner that bobbed secretively in the distance.

  Filch opened his mouth to answer but another voice drowned him out, calling suddenly from the darkness.

  “And that’s th’ end o’ th’ tour, I wager,” the voice said, unnecessarily loudly. James recognized it even before the huge man appeared from the shadows, hands raised in a warding-off gesture. “Mr.

  Filch is a busy, busy man. Make sure that you thank ‘im gen’rously on the way out. Good to see yeh all. Yer dormit’ries await.”

  “Hagrid!” Ralph said with a puzzled smile. “But who’s that with him?”

  James peered into the dimness, past the disgruntled form of Filch as he began to ascend the steps again, irritably herding the students ahead of him. Alongside Hagrid, another much smaller figure moved slowly toward the light.

  Filch gestured toward the open door at the back of the cavern.

  “The professor’s right. Back to your dormitories, and be quick about it.

  No lollygagging. And bear in mind what I said at the start of the tour!

  Not a word to anyone!”

  James walked backwards, stumbling up the rough terraces alongside Ralph, trying to hang back long enough to greet Hagrid and his mysterious friend. Filch was insistent, however, driving the group toward the door, brooking no hesitation.

  As James pressed back through the doorway and into the waiting warmth of the dungeon corridor, he glanced back once more. Hagrid was standing on one of the lower terraces now, between the door and the dark ship in the distance, the look on his face both fretful and relieved.

  The person standing with him was finally, plainly visible. She had a small smile on her face as she met James’ eyes and shrugged.

  I told you I probably already knew all about it, the shrug seemed to say.

  As Filch pulled the door closed behind them, clanking the locks and bolts back into place, Ralph stopped in the hall and frowned, glancing back over his shoulder.

  “What in the wide world is Rose doing in there with Hagrid?” he asked.

  James heaved a sigh and shook his head wryly. “Come on, Ralph,” he said. “You’re not really all that surprised, are you?”

  4. – Secret of the Dagger

  “To be fair,” Rose said as she, James, and Ralph navigated the crowded corridor late the following morning, “I only found out about the harbor beneath the lake last year. Hagrid needed help with something, so he let me in on the secret.”

  James was skeptical, but pitched his voice low so not to be overheard by the between-class throng. “Hagrid needed help with something in some secret lake beneath the lake, so he comes to a fifth-year student instead of another professor?”

  “Excuse me,” Rose said, stopping in the hall and extending her free hand toward James, “I’m Rose Weasley. I’m sort of pretty amazing at lots of unusual and difficult spells, even better than
some professors I could mention. Have we met?”

  “Ah,” Ralph said with a nod. “It’s a secret, whatever it is, but Hagrid needed some help with some difficult wand-work.”

  “I bet it has to do with that boat,” James agreed, then glanced back at Rose. “Does it?”

  Rose continued walking, lowering her own voice to a hush. “He won it off some wizard in the Hog’s Head. I warned him, nothing good has ever come from such things in the past, mysterious strangers betting dragon’s eggs and entire boats over card games in dodgy pubs. And what does he say?” Here, she stood as tall as she could and adopted a rather dopey frown, clearly doing her best impression of the half-giant: “But th’ summer’s are long, Rosie! One can only weed a garden so many times afore it starts getting’ to ‘im! I gets lonely and bored and in need o’ comp’ny!”

  James couldn’t help smiling at Rose’s impression. “So his new boat may not be exactly legal, then. What’s he need your help with?”

  Rose turned a corner, propelled by the noisy crowd approaching the Defence Against the Dark Arts classroom. “Well, it’s not a wizarding boat, strictly speaking. A lot of unusual modifications need to be made to make it sea-worthy in wizarding waters. And it’s not the sort of magic that one does on a day-to-day basis.”

  She unslung her knapsack outside the DADA classroom and rummaged in it briefly, producing a small but very thick book. The title, embossed in faded silver on green cloth, read: The Essential Seafarer’s Compendium of Nautical Enchantment, Boating Bewitchment, and Ship-shape Spellwork.

  “Looks…” James bobbed his head at the book. “Well. Looks like something you’d fall right into.”

  Ralph cocked his head. “So what makes a ship a magical ship, exactly?”

  “Oh, you’d be amazed,” Rose enthused, warming to the subject and flipping through the book. “Charmed hydrophobic varnish is what we’ve been spending most of our time on, so the ship repels water when it travels up through the lake to burst onto the surface. And then there’re anti-Grindylow hexes, siren-repellents, navigational mastheads, not to mention the purely mechanical and clockwork apparatuses, like folding masts, deck domes, sea-monster harnesses—”