“The Forbidden Forest is still forbidden,” McGonagall soldiered on, quelling the sudden hiss of whispers that had erupted around the room. “However, with the permission of the headmaster, myself, or Professor Hagrid, you may conduct your own expeditions into the Forest for any of a list of prescribed purposes, including but not limited to: the gathering of potion ingredients, observation of certain magical creatures, herbological gardening and cultivation, and limited recreational activities.
“Additionally,” the professor said, lowering her scroll. “As many of you may be aware, this castle is endowed with many secret passageways, hidden chambers, and unmarked amenities. Some of these you will surely have discovered either by illicit exploration or by word of mouth from less scrupulous former graduates. What you may have heretofore utilized secretly and in part, you are now granted full and sanctioned access to. Tomorrow evening at ten o’clock sharp, after your classmates are confined to their common rooms and dormitories, Mr.
Filch will take you on a tour of these amenities. You are neither to map these places, record any passwords, nor share in any way their locations, purposes, or benefits with any other students.”
Here she met James and Ralph’s eyes, pointedly. “Is that perfectly clear?”
James nodded, as did the rest of the gathered students. Even as he did, however, he wondered if this was a promise he could truly keep.
He imagined how Rose would respond if she knew that they had kept such tantalizing secrets from her. She would probably die of outrage.
“I certainly hope you can abide by these rules,” McGonagall said, the doubt in her voice deliberately evident. “Because your freedom to use such amenities is dependent entirely on your ability to keep them secret. Please do not test me on this.”
“Finally,” she went on, now heaving a deep sigh and removing her spectacles, allowing them to dangle on a fine chain around her neck.
“I have a pronouncement that will likely shock none of you, although as with everything else said here, I would like very much for you to keep this a secret until I make my official statement.”
She looked over the crowd of seventh-years again, this time with as close to a softened expression as ever came over the professor’s stern face. “I have served both you and this school for many more years than I ever thought possible. I have been honored to oversee not only your growth and education, but many of your parents’, and even grandparents’. But now, as mixed a blessing as it will surely be, I find that I am ready to call an end to my long tenure. This shall be my last year as a member of Hogwarts’ staff. My cottage and my gardens await, as do my pipe and what remains of my family. My one and only request of you, students…” Here she shook her head and, amazingly, the ghost of a wry smile curled her lips, “is that you make my final term as blissfully uneventful as possible.”
This was met with a ripple of laughter, but as James glanced around the room he saw many faces showing what he felt: surprise and uncomfortable dismay. Professor McGonagall was currently the oldest and most prominent member of the Hogwarts staff. It was difficult even to imagine a Hogwarts without her presiding over it. Merlin may be the current headmaster, and he may occupy that post for many decades to come, but somehow he was merely the brain of the school. Professor Minerva McGonagall was its heart and soul, despite her eternally stern and stoic demeanor.
James’ earlier melancholy momentarily blotted his world again, covering it like a storm cloud obscuring the summer sun. Not just because he couldn’t imagine Hogwarts without Professor McGonagall, but because, after his interview with Rita Skeeter and her reminder of all the ways that the magical world seemed to be disintegrating, he had a deep fear that the professor’s request for an uneventful final term was doomed even before the year had begun.
Ashley Doone raised her hand peremptorily. “What will you do, Professor?” she asked in a small voice.
McGonagall slowly shook her head, still smiling faintly. “I haven’t the slightest idea, Miss Doone,” she answered. “And that, my dear young friends… is the most marvelously freeing feeling in the world.”
Sensing an end to the gathering, the students began to stir and murmur. McGonagall raised her voice once more. “A last order of business before you go to your house tables,” she said quickly. “Most of you will likely have learned on the train who your Head Girl and Boy shall be this year…”
“I only know that it isn’t me,” James muttered, smiling aside at Ralph. “And hooray for that, despite what my Mum may have wanted.”
“Erm,” Ralph said, looking suddenly uncomfortable.
“This year’s Head Girl,” McGonagall called as the students stood and drifted restlessly toward the door. “Is Miss Fiona Fourcompass of Ravenclaw House. And Head Boy shall be Mr. Ralph Deedle, of Slytherin. I trust that you both have already spoken to this year’s new prefects on the train, explaining their duties and the parts you shall play in them.”
Ralph nodded solemnly at the professor as James boggled at him, dumbfounded. “Did it first thing, Ma’am,” he reported. “Just like the letter said.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” James rasped as the gathering finally broke up and bottlenecked at the door. “It was one thing for you to get prefect back in our fifth year— I swear it’s taken me this long just to get used to that! But Head Boy!?”
“That’s why I didn’t tell you,” Ralph rolled his eyes. “I knew you’d make a big hairy thing out of it.”
“It is a big hairy thing!” James spluttered. “Since when are you even angling for that kind of responsibility?”
“What do you mean?” Ralph looked slightly wounded. “I’ve always been the responsible one. All those times you and Zane and Rose were heading off on half-witted adventures, who was the one hanging back and being all careful?”
“You weren’t being ‘careful’,” James rolled his eyes. “You were being scared out of your wits. Not the same thing.”
“Look,” Ralph said, stopping next to the door and turning to look at James. “You were all worried that when I got prefect all of a sudden I’d be throwing a damper on your fun. Did that happen?”
“It totally did!” James whispered harshly. “You made us get back on time every Hogsmeade weekend. You made sure we couldn’t nip off with the rest of the Gremlins when they had their secret caravan holiday.
You reported to my mum that I’d broken my glasses and nagged me ever since to wear them in class, just because she asked you to! You even told Zane to stop popping up at all hours whenever he and the experimental magical communications crew have a new technique to test out!”
“He woke me up at two in the morning floating over my bed,”
Ralph bristled. “I mean, fun’s fun, but he nearly made me wet myself, I swear.”
“Promise me this won’t all go to your head, Ralph,” James insisted, glaring up at the bigger boy.
“It won’t and it hasn’t,” Ralph proclaimed, firming his jaw and pushing up to his full, prodigious height. A moment later, he slumped back to his normal posture. “Besides, at least I kept us out of any death-defying predicaments and earth-shattering plots for two whole years.
And you haven’t even thanked me for that.”
James blew out a breath and relaxed. “I’m not sure how much credit you can take for that, exactly,” he shook his head.
As they finally pushed their way back into the noise of the Great Hall and found their seats, James was interested to see the ghost of Cedric Diggory floating near the head of the Hufflepuff table, regaling the younger students with some apparently enthralling story. Probably he was entertaining them with tales of his experiences during the legendary Triwizard Tournament, which was a favorite topic ever since he had become the official Hufflepuff House Ghost.
“Sometimes I miss the Fat Friar,” Graham commented, grabbing a handful of rolls from a nearby platter. “Ever since he retired, The Hufflepuffs have been lording it over us with their dashing new ghost.”
&n
bsp; Scorpius shook his head in Cedric’s direction and sneered. “He certainly is rather windy for a ‘Spectre of Silence’.”
Rose clucked her tongue primly. “Jealousy is such an ugly emotion. I think it’s wonderful that Cedric has finally found some new friends and a purpose.” She glanced back at him over her shoulder, and then deflated slightly as she turned back. “Even if it does only remind us that Gryffindor doesn’t currently have any house ghost at all.”
“How’s that work, anyway,” Cameron Creevey asked from further down the table. “I mean, it’s tradition for every house to have one, right? Slytherin has the Bloody Baron. Ravenclaw has the Grey Lady—”
“It isn’t like we can just order a new ghost from a mail order catalog,” Graham complained. “But still. It’s a real disappointment, coming into our last year with no Gryffindor Ghost, even if old Nearly Headless Nick was a bit of a nutter sometimes.”
“Speaking of last years,” Rose perked up, lowering her voice conspiratorially and leaning eagerly toward James. “What about your big meeting with McGonagall? What sort of secrets did she let you in on? You can tell me!”
James shook his head firmly. “We’re all sworn to secrecy.
Seriously. I’m forbidden from telling you a thing.”
“Come on,” Rose weedled, and then narrowed her eyes slyly. “I probably already know about it all. I just want to see how much they’ve finally let you in on.”
“You’ll have to wait until your seventh year,” James replied, raising his chin in what he hoped was a superior and lofty manner.
Rose rolled her eyes and drew her breath to retort, but at that moment Professor McGonagall called attention to the annual Sorting ceremony. James turned his attention to the head table, thankful for the distraction.
Holding the Sorting hat in her hand over a single wooden stool, Professor McGonagall called the newest students one by one to the dais.
As they came, each more tentative and nervous-looking than the one before, the professor lowered the Hat onto their heads and, after either a few moments or as much as a minute, the Hat would proclaim their new house in its high, reedy voice. In turn, the houses applauded their newest members and welcomed them to their tables.
As James watched, he could scarcely believe how young the first years looked. He was on the other end of that spectrum now—to their eyes, he was surely the impossibly older and worldly-wise seventh-year.
He remembered being in their shoes, thinking how much taller and more grown-up the seventh-years looked. If only he’d known then what he knew now: that seventh-years weren’t really any more confident or aloof than first years. They’d just had several more years practice at pretending to be.
Again, James remembered Professor McGonagall’s proclamation in the antechamber. This, incredibly, was her last Sorting ceremony.
Who would take over for her next year? Merlin, perhaps? Or one of the other longer-term teachers, like Professor Flitwick or even Neville Longbottom? As hard as he tried, he simply could not imagine anyone else holding the Hat by its tip, reading off the names in that clipped, stern voice.
And then another rather dismaying thought occurred to James: the Sorting Hat had not sung a song before its duties this year.
It was tradition that the Hat would regale the waiting students with some possibly amusing, possibly profound lyric that it had concocted between its annual duties. And yet during James’ first year it had not provided its customary tune. Nor, it seemed, did it plan to this year. Of course, as James had thought once before, after so many centuries of service, one could forgive the Hat for taking the occasional year off. But it struck him as especially troubling that, for whatever reason, his first and last years would be marked with no such musical diversion.
As the Sorting finally finished and Professor McGonagall took the Hat back with her to the head table, the entire Great Hall gave a round of hearty applause, half in welcome of their new housemates, and half in celebration that the night’s official proceedings were nearly over and they could all soon go to their respective common rooms for less formal First Night merriments. The only unfinished detail was the official start-of-term announcement from Headmaster Merlin, which James knew from experience would be brief and very much to the point.
“I hear Ralph was named Head Boy,” Rose whispered in James’ ear as the applause filled the hall. “Are you jealous?”
James glanced back at his cousin, certain that she was joking.
Her raised eyebrows and knowing half-frown told him that she was not.
“Of course I’m not jealous,” James shook his head fervently.
“That’s stupid. Why would anyone want to be Head Boy?!”
“Nobody becomes Head Boy or Girl because they want to be,”
Rose whispered as the applause died down. “They do it because of the people who want it for them, and the expectations that it confirms.
People expect Ralph to have ambitions because his dad is a big deal at the Ministry these days. But so is yours, if you hadn’t noticed.”
The room fell to silence on Rose’s last words, preventing any reply from James. All of a sudden, he didn’t know what his reply would be anyway. He frowned at Rose, but she merely looked past him, turning her attention to the headmaster as he took the ornate golden podium. Somewhat disgruntled, James turned around to watch as well.
“Greetings, students,” the big man proclaimed in his deep, rumbling voice, towering over the podium in his golden dress robes, his beard combed and gleaming with the exotic oil he wore in it for formal occasions. His heavy gaze roamed over the gathered students, marking each face. “And welcome to an all new year of lessons, camaraderie, and sport at Hogwarts school of Witchcraft and Wizardry. For new students, I am Headmaster Merlinus Ambrosius. I will save us all much time and attention by stating, as always: you may look to your older classmates to inform you of how we do things here on a day-to-day basis.
That is their duty and honor. Make use of the resources granted you, and if any should refuse you or lead you astray, you shall inform me personally so that I may show them the error of their ways. Our general rules are few but carefully enforced: the Forbidden Forest is forbidden for a reason. If you break this rule, the result will be at the very least instructive, so long as it is not deadly. Curfew is ten of the clock on school nights, eleven-thirty on weekends and holidays. Our dear caretaker Mr. Filch has been authorized to carry out whatever punishments he deems fit for those who ignore this schedule, and you should be under no illusions about the creativity he is wont to employ in carrying out his duties.”
As the headmaster spoke, he nodded toward the rear of the room, where Filch stood, as usual, near the main doors, slowly stroking the head of the ancient Kneazle cat curled in his arms. Filch offered a confirming nod that was more scowl than smile. James had learned over the past two years that, amazingly, Filch and Merlin were very nearly blood-brothers in their approach to law and order. Merlin kept the old caretaker in check mainly by giving him free rein in the small responsibilities that were granted him.
“To conclude,” the headmaster went on, lowering his chin to peer intently at the gathered throng. “You will have noticed, perhaps, a few changes in our staff during the summer. Our much respected charms teacher, Professor Filius Flitwick, has finally succumbed to the demands of his muse, choosing to spend the remainder of his years in pursuit of his art and the perfect cup of oolong tea. He shall still grace us with his presence on certain special occasions. In the meantime, however, I trust you will offer a sincere greeting to your new charms teacher, Professor Donofrio Odin-Vann, himself a graduate of these esteemed halls, and a valued new member of our teaching staff.”
Tepid, confused applause washed over the room as heads craned to find the new teacher at the staff table. James was fairly shocked to discover that the new charms teacher appeared to be the young man he had glimpsed earlier that day on the train. He stood tentatively from the end of the table, smiling thinly
and lifting one hand in an appreciative wave. He wore short-cropped dark hair and a tidy little pointed goatee that, on almost any other man, would have looked malevolently wicked.
On him, however, it looked merely forced and contrived, rather like the young professor was trying just a bit too hard to cultivate a dashing image. James liked him, despite his obvious youth and discomfort. Or perhaps even because of it.
“And with that, students,” Merlin proclaimed, raising both of his slab-like hands, “The official portion of the start of term festivities are concluded. You may feel free to finish your meals and repair to your dormitories, where I am quite sure—”
A sudden and wholly unexpected thumping sound echoed through the room, emanating from the tall wooden doors at the rear of the hall. Merlin paused, his brow lowering slightly at the interruption.
For a moment, stony silence filled the hall. And then the doors thudded again as someone seemed to knock on them from the outside, the noise amplified by the natural acoustics of the Hall. At the sound, the doors eased open, as if pushed tentatively from the outside.
Filch watched brightly, his gaze alert and careful, stepping aside as the doors began to creak open.
Revealed behind them, eyes wide and worried behind a pair of chunky black eyeglasses, was a middle-aged man dressed in a pink polo shirt and blue jeans beneath a light jacket. His right fist was raised in a knocking gesture. Next to him was a portly woman with a mass of voluminous brown hair and a purse slung protectively over one shoulder.
Two children stood behind her, a boy and a girl, one each peeking from around her prodigious hips.
“I’m sorry,” the man said, his adenoids turning the phrase into a nasally echo around the suddenly silent Hall. “The missus and I… we seem to have gotten just a wee bit lost. We saw the, um, lights of this domicile from below, and the missus, she suggested we pop up and…er… ask directions.”