Every eye in the room stared back in complete, astonished silence. Merlin himself seemed, perhaps for the first time since James had ever met him, utterly at a loss for words.
The spectacled man drew a breath and looked around, clearly trying to make sense of the scene before him, and failing miserably.
“Can any of you,” he asked querulously, clearing his throat against the echo of his own words, “point us properly in the direction of the Lakes of Killarney? Only, we have reservations for seven o’clock, see, and…” His voice finally trailed away as the strangeness of the sight finally overwhelmed him.
Hovering near the end of the Hufflepuff table, Cedric Diggory’s ghost noticed the man’s wife staring at him, her eyes so wide that the whites were visible all the way around. Her fingers trembled at the base of her throat. Her lips quivered in a tiny frown of speechless shock.
“Boo?” Cedric said, raising a hand and waggling his fingers at her.
Ponderously, the woman keeled over backwards in a dead, heavy faint.
“It appears, Mr. Caretaker,” Merlin finally said in a wholly different voice than before, eyeing Mr. Filch where he still stood next to the rear doors. “That we have rather unexpected Muggle guests. Please, let us make sure that they feel perfectly… at home.”
3. – The Midnight Summit
There was no official obliviator on staff at Hogwarts, but Merlin was more than equipped for the task, with his otherworldly powers and his weirdly hypnotic staff, its carven runes glowing with faint blue light.
Students were hastily dismissed and instructed to proceed directly to their common rooms while the headmaster, with the assistance of Professors McGonagall and, curiously, Trelawney, revived the fainted woman and placed the four confused Muggles into a sort of walking trance. They were still alert enough to look vaguely around at the students and living paintings and moving stairways, but when they spoke, it was in dull, dreamy voices. James, along with a knot of wide-eyed students, watched from the landing beneath the Heracles window as Merlin and the professors led the family back to the open main doors.
Beyond them, a small brown car was parked in the darkness of the courtyard, its headlamps still on and its engine puttering dutifully.
“A school, you say,” the Muggle woman said, blinking vapidly up at Merlin.
“Oh yes,” he replied with a comforting smile. “But don’t you concern yourself with that, my dear lady. Soon you and your delightful family will be en route to your destination. We can show you the way.
Quite simple, really. You shall have a wonderful holiday, and you’ll forget you were ever here or met any of us.”
“Who did we meet?” the man asked a little blearily, looking aside at his wife with furrowed brow.
“Oh, that nice older fellow at the petrol station,” she said, with just a hint of uncertainty in her voice. “When we stopped for directions.
He was so helpful, wasn’t he?”
The man nodded as he stepped out into the dark courtyard, accompanied by Professor Trelawney on one side, Professor McGonagall on the other.
The two children, each no older than ten, followed along, eyes wide, absorbing everything in sight. James knew how Merlin’s forgetting spells worked. By the time the family got back onto the main highway, their memories of Hogwarts would have faded to a breath of a dream, completely ephemeral, unrooted from reality. The children would remember it slightly better, since young memories, James knew, are both more firmly rooted and far more detailed. But no one believed kids when they talked of moving staircases, floating candles, or mysterious castle-schools looming out of the untracked Scottish countryside. For once, James was glad of that otherwise unfortunate truth.
“Go on with you, now,” Filch called up the stairs in a hushed growl. “This don’t concern none of you lot. Do as the headmaster said, and be quick about it.” With that, the caretaker hurried on toward the open doors, a paper map folded under one arm and, strangely, a red plastic travel mug clutched in his right hand. The mug steamed faintly and left the aroma of coffee in the cool air of the entrance hall. Props, James knew, conjured to both help the Muggle family find their way to their destination and confirm the planted memory of a helpful petrol station visit.
“What if more Muggles wander up to the castle?” Cameron Creevey asked breathlessly, still watching from the landing alongside James, Rose, and Scorpius. The boy sounded as excited about the prospect as he did worried.
“Merlin will cast a new unplottability charm over the grounds,”
Rose said impatiently, turning to tramp up the stairs. The rest followed her, sensing that the show, as it were, was mostly over. “The only reason those people got through is that no one knew how weak the old boundary had finally gotten. There’s no way to test these things, really.”
“Makes me wonder, though,” Cameron said, taking the steps two at a time to catch up to Rose and James. “That Muggle reporter you told me about from your first year, James? Martin Prescott? Maybe that’s partly how he was able to get through to the school. He followed the signal from Deedle’s gaming device, but maybe the unplottability spell was weak even then, letting him through?”
James didn’t want to think about that particular adventure.
Martin J. Prescott was still presenting news stories on Muggle television, still working for a program called Inside View which seemed to specialize in celebrity gossip and dubious tales of two-headed bat babies or faces of saints being miraculously burnt onto toast. James didn’t want to admit it, but he was quite certain that Prescott had gotten through the school’s unplottability by a technological loophole and sheer bloody-mindedness, not any weakening of the school’s ancient secrecy spells. No, the weakening was part of the chain-reaction caused when Petra Morganstern, with the help of her sister Izzy, had broken the veil of secrecy in Muggle New York almost three years earlier.
He glanced aside at Rose and saw the same thought on her face.
She understood the magic of it all even better than him. The baseline power of all secrecy spells was the fact that Muggles didn’t want to believe in magic, not deep down. It was too shocking and weird. It upset the comfortable house of cards that their perception of the world was built on. And that, unfortunately, was what Petra had changed.
She had thrust a new reality on them, if briefly and in part. And now, bit by bit, the Muggle world was waking up to a new reality. The spells of secrecy were weakening because, for the first time in a thousand years, and perhaps not even by choice, the Muggles were willing to believe.
Allowing Cameron’s conjecture to hang unanswered in the air, James followed Scorpius and Rose through the portrait hole and into the waiting common room, which, despite the strange events of the evening, was as boisterous and cheerful as any other First Night. Unsurprisingly, the bust of Godric Gryffindor bobbed and swooped through the upper recesses of the room like a drunken bumblebee, propelled by the wands of several competing students in a game of Winkles and Augers. Cheers and jeers rang out jovially. Illicit bottles of butter beer and platters of Honeydukes’ sweets (compliments of George Weasley, as per recent tradition) decorated every table. The crackle and glow of the fireplace warmed the crowded room as James threaded his way in, breathing a deep sigh of relief. In a constantly changing world, he thought, the Gryffindor common room, at the very least, was always the same.
“See you in an hour?” Rose said quietly, sidling close to James and Scorpius. “Same place as usual?”
James nodded.
Scorpius shrugged noncommittally, reaching for a bottle of butter beer on a tray and drifting toward the gathering of Winkles and Augers players.
It had become rather a ritual on First Night for the past few years, the secret little midnight summit wherein James and a few trusted friends reported and discussed any important clandestine happenings over the summer. None of them referred to it as such, but James had begun to think of it as a pale, yet somehow significant, shadow of the old Order of the Ph
oenix. He didn’t know if he looked forward to the annual meetings, exactly, but this year, unlike the last two, he thought he might finally have something interesting to report.
That would come later, however. For the moment, he threw himself into the happy noise and welcoming familiarity of one of his favorite places.
Next to the fire he spotted his sister Lily with her constant cadre of friends, Chance Jackson, Marcus Cobb, and Shivani Yadev. Shivani’s brother Sanjay, who had just been sorted into Gryffindor house thirty minutes before, hovered nearby, glancing around with nervous happiness. Beneath one of the night-dark windows, 6th and 5th years Walter Stebbins and Xenia Prince, who had begun dating late last term, sat nearly nose to nose on the sofa, smiling and batting eyes at each other in low conversation, barely noticing the Winkles and Augers match waging furiously over their heads. And seated on either side of one of the study tables near the girls’ dormitory stairs, Graham Warton and Deirdre Finnegan were heatedly debating a list of names on a parchment between them.
James knew without asking that the list was a potential lineup for this year’s Quidditch team. He drew a deep breath, grabbed a butter beer of his own from a nearby table, and decided to join them, knowing what was to come.
“And there he is,” Deirdre glanced up pointedly. “First, we’ve got Muggles in the Great Hall. And now, James Potter’s name on a Quidditch roster. Could things get any stranger?”
“What will it be this year?” Graham cocked his head as James plopped onto a chair. “Are you expecting to get inducted into the Harriers the night before tryouts? Or do you have a conflicting follow-up interview with Rita Skeeter and maybe the Minister of Magic?”
James rolled his eyes, knowing he had no choice but to endure Deirdre’s and Graham’s derisive ribbing. “None of that will happen this year. I promise.”
“You promised the same thing at this very table last year,”
Deirdre said, drooping on her chair. “What was it then? Dragon pox?”
“Scrofungulus, if you must know,” James sighed. “Caught it on Hagrid’s field trip to see the swamp mokes. Couldn’t move my neck or swallow anything larger than an Every-Flavour Bean for a week. It was miserable, thank you very much.”
“And the year before that?” Graham said, frowning and rubbing his chin in mock consternation. “You actually made it to the tryouts, if I recall, but you…?”
“Crashed your broom into one of the goal rings,” Deirdre nodded.
“I’d broken my glasses,” James interjected defensively. “I did my best anyway! It’s not my fault I can’t see for distance without them.”
Graham sighed and raised his chin to peer across the room. “It’s a good thing that we’ve got that sister of yours as Keeper. It would be terrible bad luck not to have a Potter on the Gryffindor team. Do you suppose she’ll make tryouts this year, Deirdre?”
“She’s never missed one so far,” Deirdre answered. “Not that there’s any question she’ll be on the team again, same as the last few years. She’s a natural.”
James waited a beat and then raised his eyebrows patiently. “Are you done giving me a hard time? Because I’m not going to miss tryouts this year. It’s my last chance to make the team and I won’t miss it for anything.”
Deirdre nodded and returned her attention to the handwritten roster. “That’s good, because see this empty spot right here?” She tapped the bottom of the parchment. “That’s where Geoffrey Rook should be, only he graduated last year, and he was the best seeker in a decade. You up for filling his giant shoes?”
James nodded and firmed his chin. “I am. I’ve been practicing all summer. And I’ve spent the last two years keeping at the top of my game on the Night Quidditch League.”
“Oh, don’t remind me!” Graham exclaimed, drawing a hand over his face in annoyance. “You and that gang of midnight hooligans are a total embarrassment to the sport. I hear they let you ride one of those idiotic American scriff things when you play!”
James had forgotten how much Graham hated the marginally secret nighttime Quidditch matches. “It’s called a skrim, actually—”
“Not another word!” Graham’s eyes blazed. “I swear, I’d report the lot of you if I didn’t think most of the teachers already know about it and just pretend not to.”
“Longbottom’s gone to a few of the matches,” Deirdre commented with a shake of her head. “He’s the one what grows the herb they all take so as to skip a night’s sleep. Somnambulis, it’s called.”
“Discipline,” Graham declared, perking up in his seat and meeting Deirdre’s eyes fiercely. “That’s what’s missing from this school these days! Some good old-fashioned discipline! Squash all this Night Quidditch nonsense. Distracts everybody from the real thing, it does.”
James shrugged and bobbed his head, knowing it was best just to keep quiet.
Thankfully, at that moment Walter Stebbins and Xenia Prince chose to interrupt the discussion, slipping into two chairs side by side.
“What do you all think of the new Charms teacher?” Xenia asked in a hushed voice, leaning over the table and brushing her short dark hair out of her face.
“Looks like he’s barely older than I am,” Graham said, still bristling. “If he’s old enough to buy a Firewhiskey at the Triple Sticks I’ll eat a bludger.”
“He’s twenty-five,” Deirdre sniffed. “I asked Professor Shert.
He graduated the year before we started. That means Ted, Damien, and Sabrina all knew him. At least a little.”
“We should ask them about him next time we see them,”
Graham suggested darkly. “Maybe they’ve got some dirt on him. Can’t hurt to know a few dark secrets about any new teachers if they come in all eager to prove their mettle.”
James shrugged. “He seemed decent enough to me. I don’t get the idea that he plans to make life hard on anyone. Seemed to me like he’s still figuring out how to look like a teacher, much less be one.”
“I’ll miss old Professor Flitwick,” Xenia said with a sigh, glancing sadly down at the table. “He was my favorite.”
Next to her, Walter nodded solemnly. James tried not to roll his eyes. He had a suspicion that Walter would respond the same way if Xenia suggested there were a flock of fuchsia ducks living on the moon.
Slightly less than an hour later, James, Rose, and Scorpius met Ralph and Albus beneath a torch in one of the older sections of the castle. It had been a dour, if confusing walk through the nighttime halls. Rose and Scorpius, James now knew, were officially seeing each other again, although, as always, it was a brittle and tempestuous union.
At the moment, for reasons James couldn’t guess, they were once again not talking to each other, leaving him to walk in chilly silence between them. It was probably for the best, since they were not really supposed to be out of their dormitories this late, although curfews didn’t formally begin until the next night.
“We tried to open it,” Ralph whispered as James finally, gratefully, joined him and Albus, “But it never works for us.”
“It never works for you,” Albus corrected. “It works for me just fine, but it always opens on a room full of chamber pots.”
“Step aside,” Rose said stiffly. “Your problem is that you don’t have enough imagination.”
Ralph backed away obediently, giving Rose room to stalk purposely along the corridor before him. She turned after a few paces, retracing her steps.
“What I need,” she said with careful emphasis, “is a room to meet in secret, where nobody like Filch can get in, where no one can overhear us, including any disguised portraits, and where nothing we say can ever be repeated.”
She turned again, following her steps a second time.
“What I also need,” she added, dropping her voice to a seething stage-whisper, “is a boyfriend who doesn’t trip over himself every time Fiera Hutchins so much as glances in his direction.”
“And here we go again,” Scorpius drawled wearily. “You can giv
e it a rest any time, you know.”
Ralph looked mildly perplexed. “I don’t think that’s the sort of thing you’re going to find in the Room of Requirement.”
As Rose finished pacing, a door suddenly appeared where only blank stone wall had been a moment before. She glanced challengingly from Ralph to Scorpius, and then turned to the door, pushing it open and breezing inside.
As Scorpius entered, she glanced back with mock disappointment. “I guess Ralph is right after all,” she said archly. “The Room of Requirement can’t provide everything I need. Because here you are.”
“Honestly, Weasley,” Scorpius said, glancing languidly around the small room, and James could tell by the use of her surname that this wouldn’t end well. “I was merely being friendly to Fiera when I met her in the Great Hall. But if you’re jealous of her, you could always just ask for her help with, say, a little makeup and a new hairstyle.”
Rose’s cheeks went brick red. “A little makeup!? She wears enough for the two of us! For the whole school! But if that’s what you like… some haughty, made-up, Slytherin drama queen…!”
“I think I liked your angry silence better,” James muttered, unslinging his knapsack onto the small table in the centre of the room.
“Why’s it always either cold shoulder or heated words with you two?”
Albus plopped into the chair furthest from the door, beneath the broad silvery frame of a Foe-glass. “Reminds me of why I continue to prefer the life of a free-wheeling bachelor.”
Fuming, the set of her face indicating that she had, for the moment, righteously burned off the excess of her anger, Rose lowered herself into the chair next to Albus. “You’re a bachelor,” she offered, “because no self-respecting girl can bear that you constantly smell like toad putty and swamp boot.”