Ralph began to sway on his feet. “I thingk I’b a hemophebian!” he yelled. That had been Zane’s idea.
“You’re not a hemophiliac,” Jackson growled. “Now for the last time, hold still!”
James flicked his wand, trying to move the real case around the fake one. It was imperative that he move it into the corner and hide it under the Invisibility Cloak Zane was still levitating. The real case was stuck, however, wedged under a corner of the desk. James concentrated mightily. The briefcase levitated under the desk, pushing the corner of the desk up with it. James grimaced, lowering his wand, and both the case and the desk clunked to the floor. Nobody seemed to notice. Zane was looking at James, wild-eyed. James made a grimace of helplessness. Desperately, Zane made to lower the Invisibility Cloak onto the real case where it was, wedged under the desk. Somehow, however, the cloak had also become snagged, caught on a coat-hook next to the chalkboard. Nothing was going as planned. If anyone turned around now, there would be no hope of covering their tracks. James couldn’t resist glancing around. Ralph’s nose was still pattering blood. Jackson was half squatted in front of him, one hand on Ralph’s arm, trying to pull Ralph’s finger away from his nose, the other holding the hickory wand at the ready. The entire class was watching in various shades of amusement and revulsion.
“Drat it, boy, you’re making a mess. Move your finger, I tell you,” Jackson exclaimed.
James tried to free the real briefcase by working it back and forth with his wand. He was sweating and his wand hand was slick. The case finally came free just as James heard Jackson say “Artemisae.”
“Oh!” Ralph said, rather unnecessarily loudly. “There, yes, that’s much better.”
“It’d have been better a minute ago if you’d have listened to me,” Jackson said crossly, poking his wand back into his sleeve. The scene was over. Zane gave a final yank on his wand. The Invisibility Cloak popped loose from the coat-hook and dropped to the floor in a heap, which promptly vanished. James had no time to hide the briefcase. He sensed the class turning back toward the front of the room.
“Please go and wash yourself, young man,” Jackson was saying, his voice becoming louder as he dismissed Ralph and turned toward the front of the room. “You’re an awful sight. People will think you’ve been mauled by a quintaped.” Under his breath, he added, “Nosebleed Nougat…”
Desperately, James stashed his wand back up his sleeve. Zane, in an act of pure split-second inspiration, shot his legs forward from underneath the desk. He grasped the real briefcase between his ankles, then yanked it back beneath his own desk. James heard the scuffling as Zane tried to stuff the case beneath his chair using only his feet. Jackson stopped next to Zane and the room became very quiet.
James tried not to look up. He had the strongest sensation that the professor was looking down at him. Finally, helplessly, he raised his eyes. Jackson was indeed looking down the length of his nose, his gaze moving thoughtfully between Zane and James. James’ stomach plummeted. Finally, after what felt like an eternity, Jackson continued to the front of the room.
“Honestly,” he said to the class in general, “the lengths some of you will go to skip a class. It astounds someone even as cynical as myself. At any rate, where were we, then? Ah yes…”
The class wore on. James refused to meet Jackson’s eyes. His only hope was to get out of the classroom as quickly as possible. There was no way to collect either the real briefcase or the Invisibility Cloak while Jackson was still there. Just possibly, however, Jackson wouldn’t see his own case stuffed beneath Zane’s chair. Everything rested, of course, on the effectiveness of Zane’s Visum-ineptio charm. James looked down at the false briefcase, sitting on the floor approximately where the real one had been. To his eye, it looked completely fake, its leather a different color and its brass plate reading ‘HIRAM & BLATTWOTT’S LEATHERS, DIAGON ALLEY, LONDON’, instead of ‘T. H. Jackson’. Jackson had obviously sensed something. But if the charm worked, there was still the slightest chance they could pull it off.
Class finally concluded. James jumped up, herding Zane ahead of him. Zane shot him a look of pure consternation, his eyes darting toward the base of his chair, but James pushed him onward, shaking his head minutely. The class pressed toward the door, and James and Zane, having been seated in the front row, were stuck at the rear of the small throng. James was terrified to look back. Finally, the wall of shoulders and backpacks broke apart and James and Zane tumbled into the hallway.
“What’re we going to do?” Zane whispered frantically as they trotted down the corridor.
“We’ll come back later,” James said, struggling to keep his voice low and calm. “Maybe he won’t see anything. He was packing up the essays when we left. If we just hang back here around the corner, we can watch--”
“Mr. Potter?” a voice said imperiously from behind them. “Mr. Walker?”
The two boys stopped in their tracks. They turned very slowly. Professor Jackson was leaning out of the door of the Technomancy classroom. “I believe you two may have left something in my classroom. Would you care to come collect it?”
Neither answered. They walked heavily back the way they had come. Jackson disappeared into the classroom again and was waiting behind the front desk when they got there.
“Come closer, boys,” Jackson said in a breezy voice. “Just right here, in front of the desk, if you please.” Placed on the desk in front of Jackson were both the real and fake briefcases. When James and Zane got to the front of the desk, Jackson spoke again, this time in a low, cold voice.
“I don’t know who’s been telling you stories about what I keep in my attaché, but I can assure the both of you that yours is neither the first nor even the most creative attempt to find out for certain.” James raised his eyebrows in surprise and Jackson nodded at him. “Yes, I have heard the tales that some of my students have invented. Stories of horrible dormant beasts, or doomsday weapons, or keys to alternate dimensions, each more terrible and mind-boggling than the last. Let me assure you, though, my terminally curious, little friends…” Here, Jackson leaned over his desk, bringing his nose less than a foot from the two boys’ faces. He lowered his voice further and spoke very clearly, “That which I keep hidden in my attaché is far, far worse than even your fevered imaginings can contrive. This is not a joke. I am not making idle threats. If you attempt to meddle with my affairs again, you will likely not live to regret it. Am I making myself perfectly clear?”
James and Zane nodded, speechless. Jackson continued to stare at them, breathing through his nose in obvious fury. “Fifty points from Gryffindor and fifty points from Ravenclaw. I’d give you both detentions, except that that might lead to questions about this case of mine that I do not wish to answer. Therefore, let me finish by saying, my young friends, that even if you do not so much as look at my attaché ever again, I can still choose to make your lives extremely… interesting. Please do bear that in mind. Now,” he stood back, lowering his eyes, “take this pathetic little ruse and be gone.”
With palpable disgust, Jackson shoved his bag at them with the back of his hand. The fake bag remained sitting in front of him. He laced the knuckly fingers of his right hand through the ivory handles and hefted it. The brass plate that read ‘HIRAM & BLATTWOTT’S LEATHERS, DIAGON ALLEY, LONDON’ glinted dully as Jackson moved around the desk. Neither James nor Zane could quite bring themselves to touch the case in front of them.
“Well?” Jackson demanded, raising his voice. “Take that thing and be gone!”
“Y-yes, sir,” Zane stammered, grabbing the professor’s bag and pulling it off the desk. He and James turned and fled.
Three corridors later, they stopped running. They stood in the middle of an empty hall and looked at the bag Jackson had insisted they take. There was no question about it. It was the professor’s own black leather briefcase. The name plate shone clearly, ‘T. H. Jackson’. James began to grasp that somehow, amazingly, they had succeeded. They had captured t
he robe of Merlin.
“It was the Visum-ineptio charm,” Zane breathed, glancing up at James. “It had to be. Jackson knew we were up to something, but he didn’t expect that!”
James was completely bewildered. “How, though? He had both bags right in front of him!”
“Well, it’s pretty simple, really. Jackson assumed we were trying to swap the cases, but that we hadn’t gotten around to it yet. He found the case under my chair and believed it was the fake one. The Visumineptio charm on the fake briefcase worked on both briefcases, letting him see what he expected to see. That’s how it preserved the illusion that the fake case was the real one!”
Understanding dawned on James. “The Fool-the-Eye Charm extended to the real briefcase, making it look like the fake one, since that’s what Jackson expected! That’s brilliant!” James clapped Zane on the shoulder. “Nice one, you goon! And you doubted yourself!”
Zane looked uncharacteristically humble. He grinned. “Come on, let’s go find Ralph and make sure he’s okay. You really think he needed to eat two of those Nosebleed Nougats?”
“You’re the one that said we needed a diversion.”
James stuffed Jackson’s briefcase under his robe, clutching it under his arm, and the two boys ran to find Ralph, stopping only long enough to collect the Invisibility Cloak from the floor of the empty Technomancy classroom.
Five minutes later, the three boys clambered up to the Gryffindor common room, rushing to hide Jackson’s briefcase before their next class. James buried it in the bottom of his trunk, then Zane produced his wand.
“Just learned this new spell from Gennifer,” he explained. “It’s a special kind of Locking Spell.”
“Wait,” James stopped Zane before he could cast the spell. “How will I get it open again?”
“Oh. Well, I don’t know, to tell you the truth. It’s the counter-spell to Alohomora. I wouldn’t think it’d work against the owner of the trunk, though. Just anybody else. Spells are smart that way, aren’t they?” “Here,” Ralph said, crossing the room. He opened and closed the window, then stood back. “Try it on the window latch. You don’t need that open, anyway. It’s dead cold out there.”
Zane shrugged, and then pointed his wand at the window. “Colloportus.” The window lock clacked shut.
“Well, it works, all right,” Ralph observed. “Now try to open it.”
Zane, wand still raised, said, “Alohomora.” The lock jiggled once, but remained locked. Zane pocketed his wand. “You try it, James. It’s your window, isn’t it?”
James used the same spell on the window lock. The lock unhinged neatly and the window swung open.
“See?” Zane grinned. “Spells are smart. I bet old Stonewall could tell us how that works, but I’m not going to be asking him any more questions, I’ll tell you that.”
James closed his trunk with Jackson’s case inside and Zane performed the Locking Spell on it.
On the way back down to their classrooms, Ralph asked, “Won’t somebody else notice that Jackson’s carrying a different briefcase? What if one of the other teachers asks him about it?”
“Not going to happen, Ralphinator,” Zane said confidently. “He’s been carrying that thing long enough that everyone expects to see him with it. As long as they expect to see his case in his hand, the Visumineptio charm will make sure that is what they see. We’re the only ones that’ll see that it’s your buddy’s old rock-hound bag.”
Ralph still seemed worried. “Will the charm wear off over time? Or will it work as long as people think that the fake case is the real one?”
Neither James nor Zane knew the answer to that. “We just have to hope it lasts long enough,” James said.
13. Revelation of the Robe
That evening after dinner, the three boys ran up to the Gryffindor sleeping quarters again, pausing only when James noticed the staring woman in the background of a painting of some maidens milking a pair of ridiculously plump cows. He berated the tall and ugly woman, who was dressed like a nun, demanding to know what she was looking at. After half a minute, Zane and Ralph got impatient and each grabbed one of James’ elbows, dragging him away. In the sleeping quarters, they clustered around James’ trunk while James unlocked it and pulled out Jackson’s case. He set it on the edge of his bed and the three of them stared at it.
“Do we have to open it?” Ralph asked.
James nodded. “We have to know we have the robe, don’t we? It’s been driving me crazy all day. What if I was wrong and the thing in there is just some of Jackson’s laundry? I can’t help thinking that he’s the sort that’d carry around a totally meaningless briefcase just to get people talking about it. You should’ve seen how he was this morning when he thought he’d caught Zane and me. He was right mad.”
Zane plopped onto the bed. “What if we can’t even open it?”
“Can’t be that much of a lock if it popped open that day in D.A.D.A,” James reasoned.
Ralph stood back, giving James room. “Let’s get it over with then. Try and open it.” James approached the case and tried the lock. He’d expected it not to work and was prepared to try the assortment of Opening and Unlocking Spells the three had collected. Instead, the brass catch on top of the case popped open easily. So easily, in fact, that James was momentarily sure it had clicked open a split second before he’d actually touched it. He froze, but neither of the other two boys seemed to have noticed.
“Well?” Ralph whispered. Zane leaned over the case. The mouth of it had come open slightly.
“Can’t see anything in there,” Zane said. “It’s too dark. Open the rotten thing, James. It’s yours more than either of ours.”
James touched the case, grasped the handles, and used them to pull it open. He could see the folds of black cloth. A vague, musty smell wafted from the open case. James thought it smelled like the inside of a jack-o’-lantern a week after Halloween. He remembered Luna saying that the robe had once been used to cover the body of a dead king and he shuddered.
Zane’s voice was low and slightly hoarse. “Is that it? I can’t tell what it is.”
“Don’t,” Ralph warned, but James had already reached into the case. He pulled the robe out. The cloth unfolded smoothly, spotlessly black and clean. There seemed to be acres of it. Ralph backed further away as James let the robe pool on the floor at his feet. The last of it came out of the case and James realized he was holding the hood of it. It was a large hood, with golden braids at the throat.
Zane nodded, his face pale and serious. “That’s it, no doubt. What are we gonna do with it?”
“Nothing,” Ralph answered firmly. “Stick it back in the case, James. That thing’s scary. You can feel the magic of it, can’t you? I bet Jackson put some kind of Shield Charm or something on the case to contain it. Otherwise, somebody would’ve felt it. Go on, put it away. I don’t want to touch it.”
“Hold on,” James said vaguely. He could indeed feel the magic of the cloak, just as Ralph had said, but it didn’t feel scary. It was powerful, but curious. The smell of the robe had changed as James pulled it out. What had at first smelled faintly rotten now smelled merely earthy, like fallen leaves and wet moss, wild, even exciting. Holding the robe in his hands, James had the most unusual sensation. It was as if he could feel, in the deepest pit of his being, the very air in the room, filling the space like water, streaming through cracks in the frame of the window, cold, like ice-blue vapor. The sensation expanded and he sensed the wind moving around the turret that housed the sleeping quarters. It was alive, swirling over the conical roof, channeling into missing shingles and exposed rafters. James faintly remembered children’s stories about how Merlin was a master of nature, how he felt it and used it, and how it obeyed his whims. James knew he was tapping into that power somehow, as if it was embedded in the very fabric of the relic robe. The sensation grew and spiraled. Now James felt the creatures of the deepening evening: the pattering heartbeats of mice in the attics, the blood-purple world of t
he bats in the forest, the dreaming haze of a hibernating bear, even the dormant life of the trees and grass, their roots like hands clutched in the earth, clinging to life in the dead of winter.
James knew what he was doing, but didn’t seem to be operating his own arms. He raised the hood, turning himself into it. The robe slid over his shoulders, and just as the hood settled over his head, hiding his eyes, James heard the alarmed and warning cries of Zane and Ralph. They were fading, as if down a long, sleepy tunnel. They were gone.
He was walking. Leaves crunched under his feet, which were large and shoeless, tough with calluses. He breathed in, filling his lungs, and his chest expanded like a barrel. Big, he was. Tall, with muscled arms that felt like coiled pythons and legs as thick and sturdy as tree trunks. The earth was quiet around him, but alive. He felt it through the soles of his feet when he walked. The vibrancy of the forest streamed into him, strengthening him. But there was less of it than there should be. The world had changed, and was still changing. It was being tamed, losing its feral wildness and strength. Alongside it, his power was dimming as well. He was still unmatched, but there were blind spots in his communion with the earth, and those blind spots were growing, shutting him off bit by bit, reducing him. The realms of men were expanding, scouring the earth, parsing it into meaningless plots and fields, breaking up the magic polarities of the wilderness. It angered him. He had moved among the growing kingdoms of men, advised and assisted them, always for a price, but he hadn’t foreseen this result. His magical brothers and sisters were no help. Their magic was different than his. That which made him so powerful, his connection to the earth, was also becoming his only weakness. In a cold rage, he walked. As he passed, the trees spoke to him, but even the woodsy voices of the naiads and the dryads was dimming. Their echo was confused and broken, divided.