“Wait here, Prechka,” James said into the giantess’ enormous, lumpy face. She nodded slowly, seriously, and then stood again. He could only hope that her understanding of their wishes was better than Grawp’s, who had wandered off in search of food after only a few minutes when he’d brought them out here last year.
“This way,” Zane said, pointing. James could see the glitter of moonlight on water through the trees.
As quietly as possible, the boys threaded through the tree trunks and underbrush. Within a few minutes, they emerged at the perimeter of the lake. The island of the Grotto Keep could be seen further along the edge of the water. It loomed monstrously, grown to gothic, cathedral proportions for its ultimate night. The dragon’s head bridge was clearly visible, open wide, both welcoming and threatening at the same time. James heard Ralph gulp. Silently, they made their way toward it.
As they reached the opening onto the bridge, the moon slipped from behind a raft of wispy clouds. The island of the Grotto Keep unveiled fully in that silvery glow. There was virtually no hint of the wild, wooded nature of the island now. The dragon’s head bridge was a carefully sculpted horror, yawning open before them. At its throat, the vine encrusted gate was as solid-looking and ornate as wrought iron. James could clearly read the poem inscribed on the doors.
“It’s closed,” Zane whispered, rather hopefully. “Does that mean anything?”
James shook his head. “I don’t know. Come on, let’s see if we can get in.”
Single file, the three boys tiptoed across the bridge. James, in the lead, saw the bridge’s upper jaw open further as they approached the gate. It didn’t creak this time. The motion was silent and oily, almost unnoticeable. The gates, however, remained firmly closed. James made to reach for his wand, and then stopped, hissing in pain. He’d forgotten about the splint on his fractured right arm.
“Ralph, you’ll have to do it,” James said, sidling to the right to let Ralph in front of him. “My wand hand’s no use. Besides, you’re the spells genius.”
“Wh-what am I supposed to do?” Ralph stammered, pulling out his wand.
“Just use the Unlocking Spell.”
“Whoa, wait!” Zane said, throwing up a hand. “Last time we tried that, we were almost tree food, remember?”
“That was then,” James said reasonably. “The island wasn’t ready. Tonight’s the night it exists for, I think. It’ll let us in this time. Besides, this is Ralph. If anybody can do it, he can.”
Zane grimaced, but couldn’t offer any argument. He took a step backwards, giving Ralph room. Ralph pointed his wand at the gates nervously, his wand hand shaking. He cleared his throat.
“What is it? I always forget!”
“Alohomora,” James whispered encouragingly. “Emphasis on the second and fourth syllables. You’ve done it loads of time. Don’t worry.”
Ralph stiffened, trying to halt the shivering of his arm. He took a deep breath and, in a tremulous voice, spoke the command.
Immediately the vines twining the gates began to loosen. The letters of the poem dissolved into curls and tendrils, contracting from the wooden shapes of the doors. After a few seconds, the doors swung silently open.
Ralph glanced back at James and Zane, his eyes wide and worried. “Well, it worked, I guess.”
“I’d say so, Ralph,” Zane said, moving forward. The three of them stepped carefully into the darkness beyond the gates.
The inside of the Grotto Keep was circular and mostly empty, surrounded by trees that had grown into the shapes of pillars, supporting a thick, domed ceiling of branches and spring leaves. The floor of the grotto was terraced with stone, forming steps that descended toward the middle. There, in the very center, a round bowl of earth was lit in a beam of bright moonlight that pierced a hole in the center of the domed canopy. The Merlin throne stood in that beam of moonlight, and in front of it, silhouetted against the moonlight, her back to them, was Madame Delacroix.
James felt weak with fear. He froze in place, and only distantly felt Ralph’s hand groping at him, tugging him backwards into the shadow of one of the tree trunk pillars. He stumbled a little, and then dropped down behind the bulk of the tree, next to Ralph and Zane. Carefully, slowly, James peered around the tree-pillar, his eyes wide and his heart thundering.
Delacroix hadn’t moved. Her back was still to them, and she was still staring motionlessly at the throne. The Merlin throne was tall, straight-backed and narrow. It was made of polished wood, but was somehow more delicate than James had expected. The mass of it was formed of carvings of vines and leaves, curling and tangled. The only solid parts were the seat and the center of the backrest. The throne looked as if it had been grown rather than carved, much like the Grotto Keep itself. No one else was visible. Apparently, Delacroix had arrived early. James was wondering how long she’d been standing there, motionless, watching the throne, when there was the sound of someone else’s footsteps behind them, on the dragon’s head bridge. James held his breath, and sensed Ralph and Zane hunkering down as low as they could next to him, hiding among the low underbrush lining the Keep.
A man’s voice spoke a low command in some strange language James didn’t recognize. It sounded both beautiful and frightening. There was the sound of the gate’s vines unfurling again, and then footsteps clacked hollowly on the stone steps of the terraced floor. Professor Jackson moved into view, walking resolutely down into the center of the Grotto Keep behind Madame Delacroix.
“Professor Jackson,” Madame Delacroix said, her heavily accented voice ringing in the stone bowl of the grotto, “you never fail to meet my expectations.” She still hadn’t turned around.
“Nor you mine, Madame. You are early.” “I was savoring de moment, Theodore. It’s been a long time coming. I’d be tempted to say ‘too long’, if I was a believer in chance. I am not, of course. This is how it was meant to be. I have done what I was meant to do. Even you have performed the role you were preordained to perform.”
“Do you really believe so, Madame?” Jackson asked, stopping several feet behind Delacroix. James noticed that Jackson had his hickory wand in his hand. “I wonder. I, as you know, am neither a believer in chance nor destiny. I am a believer in choices.”
“It matters not what you believe, Theodore, as long as your choices lead to the right ends.”
“I have the robe,” Jackson said flatly, abandoning the pretense of polite conversation. “I have always had it. You will not get it from me. I am here to see to that. I am here to stop you, Madame, despite your best efforts to keep me away.”
James almost gasped. He covered his mouth with his hand, stifling it. Jackson was here to stop her! But how? James felt a cold dread dawning on him. Next to him, Ralph whispered almost silently, “Did he say…”
“Shh!” Zane hissed urgently. “Listen!”
Delacroix was making a strange, rhythmic sound. Her shoulders shook slightly with it, and James realized she was laughing. “My dear, dear Theodore, I have never attempted to thwart you. Why, if I had not allowed a token resistance to your presence on dis trip, you’d have never chosen to come at all. Your stubbornness and suspicious nature are my best tools. And I needed you, Professor. I needed what you had, what you believed so ardently dat you were protecting.”
Jackson stiffened. “Do you believe I was foolish enough to bring the robe with me tonight? Then you are more arrogant than I thought. No, the robe is safe. It is secured with the best hexes and counter Accio charms ever created. I know that, for they were created by me. You shall not find it, of that I am certain.”
But Delacroix was laughing harder. She still hadn’t turned around. The beam of light illuminating the chair seemed to be growing brighter, and James realized it was the accumulated light of the planets. They were moving into place. The time of the Hall of Elders’ Crossing was nearly upon them.
“Oh, Professor, your confidence cheers me. With enemies such as yourself, my success is all the more delicious. Do you think I have
n’t known all along dat you guarded the robe of Merlinus in your case at all times? Do you think I was not preparing for de robe to be delivered to me from the moment I first arrived here? I haven’t had to lift so much as a finger, and yet de robe comes to me of its own accord dis very night.”
James had a horrible thought. He remembered that day in Defense Against the Dark Arts, when Jackson had followed Professor Franklyn into the classroom, speaking in low tones. Madame Delacroix had come to the door to tell Jackson his class was waiting. James had glanced down at that moment, and the case had mysteriously come open. Was it possible that Madame Delacroix had caused that to happen, just so that James would see inside? Had she tried to use him somehow? He remembered Zane and Ralph saying that the capture of the robe had been easy. Somehow too easy. He shuddered.
“James,” Ralph whispered urgently, “you didn’t bring the robe with you tonight, did you?”
“Of course not!” James replied. “I’m not crazy!”
Zane leaned in to keep his voice as quiet as possible. “Then what’s in the book bag?”
James felt terror and anger mingling inside him. “The Marauder’s Map and the Invisibility Cloak!”
Ralph reached up and clutched James’ shoulder, turning him so that they were face to face. Ralph’s expression was horrible. “James, you don’t have the Invisibility Cloak!” he rasped, his voice cracking. “I do! You left it with me in the Slytherin holding pen, remember? I used it to escape! It’s in my trunk, back in the Slytherin boys’ quarters!”
James simply stared at Ralph, petrified. Below them, in the center of the Grotto Keep, Madame Delacroix continued to cackle.
“Mr. James Potter,” she called through her laughter, “please feel free to join us. Bring your friends if you so desire.”
James felt rooted to the spot. He wouldn’t go down there, of course. He would run. He knew now that he had the robe of Merlinus in his book bag, that he had been tricked into bringing it along, tricked into thinking it was the Invisibility Cloak. Now was the moment to flee. And yet he didn’t. Ralph pushed him, urging him to go, but Zane, on James’ other side, slowly stood up and pulled out his wand.
“The voodoo queen thinks she’s pretty smart,” he said out loud, stepping around the pillar and pointing his wand at her. “You’re as ugly as you are evil. Stupefy!”
James gasped as the bolt of red light shot from Zane’s wand. The curse struck Madame Delacroix directly in the back and James watched for her to collapse unconscious. She didn’t move, however, and James was dismayed to see that the bolt of red light had passed straight through her. It struck the ground near the throne and vanished harmlessly. Delacroix was still laughing as she turned to face Zane.
“Ugly, am I?” Her laughter dried up as her gaze met Zane’s. She was no longer blind or old. It was, in fact, her wraith, the projected version of herself. “Evil? Perhaps, but only as a hobby.” The wraith of Madame Delacroix raised a hand and Zane was lifted from his feet roughly. His wand flew from his hand and he thumped against the tree-pillar, his shoes three feet from the ground. He seemed to be stuck there, as if on a hook. “If I was truly evil, I would kill you now, wouldn’t I?” She grinned at him, and then pivoted, pointing her arm at the place where James hid. “Mr. Potter, please, it is silly of you to fight me. You are, after all, almost my apprentice in dis endeavor. Bring Mr. Deedle with you. Let’s all enjoy the spectacle, shall we?”
Jackson had turned when Zane came forward, watching with a noticeable lack of surprise, his wand still out, but pointed at the floor. Now he looked on as James and Ralph stood jerkily, as if against their will, and began to march down the steps toward the center of the grotto. His eyes met James’, his bushy dark brows low and furious. “Stop, Potter,” he said quietly, raising his wand halfway, pointing it at the floor in front of James and Ralph. Their feet stopped moving, as if they’d suddenly landed in glue.
“Oh, Theodore, must you prolong dis?” Delacroix sighed. She swung her arm toward him and performed a complicated gesture with her fingers. Jackson’s wand flicked out of his hand as if on a string. He grabbed for it, but it darted up and away. Delacroix made another gesture with her hand, and the wand snapped in midair, as if broken over a knee. Jackson’s face didn’t change, but he slowly lowered his hand, staring hard at the two pieces of his hickory wand. Then he turned back to Delacroix, his face white with fury, and began to pace toward her. Delacroix’s hand moved like lightning, darting into the folds of her clothing and coming out with her horrible graperoot wand between her fingers.
“Dis may only be a representation of de real thing,” she said playfully, “conjured from the dirt of dis place, just like dis version of myself, but I assure you, Theodore, it is exactly as powerful as I think it is. Don’t make me destroy you.”
Jackson stopped in his tracks, but his face didn’t change. “I can’t let you go through with this, Delacroix. You know that.”
“Oh, but you already have!” she cackled gleefully. She pointed the wand at Jackson and flicked it. A bolt of ugly orange light shot from it, sending Jackson flying violently backwards. He landed hard on the upper stone steps, grunting in pain. He struggled to get up, and Delacroix rolled her eyes. “Heroes,” she said disdainfully, and flicked her wand again. Jackson flew off the ground and rammed against another of the tree-pillars lining the grotto. He hung there, apparently knocked unconscious.
“And now,” she said, lazily pointing her wand in the direction of James and Ralph, “please, join me.”
The two boys were lifted from the ground and transported down the rest of the steps. They dropped clumsily to their feet in the grassy space at the bottom of the grotto, directly in front of the wraith of Madame Delacroix. Her eyes were emerald green and piercing. “Give me de robe. And please, don’t make me harm either of you. I only ask de one time.”
The book bag slipped off James’ shoulder and struck the ground at his feet. He looked down at it, feeling dazed and completely hopeless. “Please,” Delacroix said, and flicked her wand. James fell to his knees as if something extraordinarily heavy had landed on his shoulders. His hand plunged into the bag, clutched the robe, and pulled it out. Ralph struggled to grab it, but he seemed locked in place, unable to move more than a few inches in any direction. “Don’t, James!”
“I’m not,” he said hopelessly. Delacroix’s eyes sparkled greedily. She reached out a hand and delicately took the robe from James. “Free will is highly overrated,” she said airily.
“You won’t win,” James said angrily. “You don’t have all the relics.”
Delacroix looked up from the robe, meeting James’ eyes with an expression of polite surprise. “Don’t I, Mr. Potter?”
“No!” James said, gritting his teeth. “We didn’t get the broomstick. Tabitha still has it. I’m not even sure if she knows what it is, but I don’t see her bringing it to you now, either way.” He hoped he was right as he said it. He didn’t see the broomstick anywhere in sight, and Tabitha certainly didn’t seem to be present, unless she was hiding, like they had been.
Delacroix laughed lightly, as if James had just made a very witty remark at a party. “Dat was de perfect hiding place, wasn’t it, Mr. Potter? And Miss Corsica is such the perfect individual to harbor it for me. Why, it’s so perfect, in fact, that you never stood a chance of learning that it was, in fact, a clever lie. Interesting as it may be, Miss Corsica’s broomstick is nothing more than a convenient ruse. No, like de robe, de Merlin staff has also found its way to me tonight, regardless of what you might think. It has been cared for very well, in fact.”
The rather beautiful wraith of Madame Delacroix turned to Ralph and held out her hand. “Your wand, please, Mr. Deedle.”
“N-no,” Ralph protested, his voice almost a moan. He tried to back away.
“Don’t make me insist, please, Ralph,” Delacroix said, raising her own wand toward him.
Ralph’s hand jerked up and went to his back pocket. Trembling, he produced his rid
iculously huge wand. For the first time, James saw it for what it was. It wasn’t just unusually thick, whittled to a point at one end. It was part of something that was, at one time, much larger, worn down with age, but still, as had been repeatedly shown, extremely and inexplicably powerful. Delacroix reached out and, almost daintily, plucked the Merlin staff from Ralph’s hand.
“Dere was no point in my risking my own capture by smuggling such a thing onto the grounds. Surely someone would have detected it, had it been in my possession. Thus, I arranged for it to be sold to you and your charming father, Mr. Deedle. I was your salesman, in fact, though in a different guise. I do hope you enjoyed the use of the staff. Quite powerful, wasn’t it? Oh, but now I see,” she added, turning almost apologetic, “you thought that it was you who was de powerful one, didn’t you? I’m so sorry, Mr. Deedle. Did you really think you’d have been allowed to enter the Keep if you hadn’t had de staff of Merlin with you? Surely even you can see de humor in dat, can’t you? You, a Muggle-born. Please, forgive me.” She laughed again, lightly, maliciously.
She turned then, and very carefully began to arrange the relics on the throne. James and Ralph looked at each other miserably, and then James tried to look back at Zane, who was still stuck to the treepillar behind them, but the darkness was too thick.
Madame Delacroix stepped back from the throne, breathing in a great, long breath of anticipation. She positioned herself between Ralph and James, as if they were compatriots. “Dere we go. Oh, I am so pleased. I do hate to say it, but everything has worked out exactly as I had planned. Enjoy the spectacle, my young friends. I cannot guarantee dat Merlinus will not destroy you with his arrival, but surely you do not think dat too high a price to pay to observe such a thing.”