Ted sighed. "Believe me, James, I know. But I was just a baby. I didn't know them. I miss them, sure, but it's like missing a place you can't remember ever being. It's just a curiously-shaped hole in my heart, with nothing in it. But George…" he shrugged helplessly. "He was a twin. He lost half of himself. He knows what used to be in that hole. He lives with that awareness every day."
James considered this as he peered back through the open door of Weasley's Wizard Wheezes. Uncle George still stood behind the counter, not looking up. He seemed not even to have moved.
"Good bye, Uncle George," Rose called gently, raising a hand.
George did look up then, and nodded farewell. James expected to see tears in his uncle's eyes, but there weren't. He almost wished there had been. Somehow tears would have been better than the blank, calm deadness he saw there instead.
Something moved in a back corner of the store, flitting behind a display of exploding wands. James only just saw it as the door swung shut-- a figure in a dark robe, the hood pulled up to shadow the face. The figure seemed to turn toward him. A moment later, the glass door closed and Ted stood just inside, waving goodbye and blocking the view.
"Did you see…?" James asked, cocking his head and pointing vaguely.
"What?" Rose asked hollowly.
James considered it, and then shook his head. "Nothing, I guess." There were plenty of people in Hogsmeade who preferred to keep their identities hidden beneath cowls and hoods. Granted, most of them lurked in the Hog's Head or dim corners of the Three Broomsticks, but it was possible that one of them had need of a bag of Dungbombs or a Nose Biting Teacup. He turned away and began to follow Rose and Scorpius, heading away from the lowering sunset.
Silently, the three made their way along the High Street, past the two-story News Stand and its rooftop newscaster (who seemed to be closing up for the night), and onto an angled side street leading out of the village.
"We're being followed," Scorpius said conversationally.
"What?" James asked, glancing back.
"Don't look back, you clumsy berk," Scorpius chided calmly. "Just keep walking and don't let on."
Rose hugged herself against the increasingly chilly wind. "How do you know we're being followed?"
"One does not grow up a Malfoy without learning something about subterfuge," Scorpius admitted with a note of pride. "Long shadows along the High Street followed ours for the last few minutes. Two of them. When we turned, I saw their reflections in the window of that ironworks back there. They're wearing long robes and hoods."
A wave of coldness fell over James as he walked. "I saw one of them back at Uncle George's shop. They were hiding in a corner."
Rose gasped. "Listening in on us, do you think? Why didn't you say anything?!"
"I started to," James rasped nervously, "But it didn't seem like anything much at the time. Hogsmeade is loaded with dodgy looking characters, isn't it?"
Scorpius shushed them tersely. "In a moment, we're going to cross Guddymutter Avenue," he said, nodding faintly toward the next intersection. "The sun is setting along it. Follow me closely when we get there."
James held his breath as the three students walked along, maintaining an infuriatingly casual pace. As they neared the corner, Scorpius gazed idly about, angling into the shadow of a low awning. The moment he stepped out into the blazing copper sunset, however, he dodged to the right, disappearing around the corner onto Guddymutter Avenue. James grabbed Rose's arm and pulled her around the corner as well, dashing to follow Scorpius.
Immediately, Scorpius pressed himself back against the brick wall and clutched his wand against his chest. James scrambled to brandish his as well. Rose stretched out her arm, her own wand already protruding from her fist.
Two robed figures ran out into the narrow intersection, casting about and raising their arms to block the rays of the low, blinding sunset.
"Expelliarmus!" Rose and James cried at once. Scorpius, however, called a different spell.
No wands flew from the hands of the robed figures, despite the fact that both James and Rose had hit them squarely with the disarming spell. Instead, both figures spiralled up into the air, flipping upside down so that their robes fell down around their heads.
James boggled at the dangling figures where they hung in mid-air. "Levicorpus?" he exclaimed, glancing aside at Scorpius. "Not expelliarmus?"
"They don't have wands," Scorpius sighed, shaking his head. He stepped forward and tugged at the robe around the head of the nearest figure, who was struggling uselessly in the air. James noticed that the clothing beneath their robes was decidedly non-threatening. The stockier one wore jeans and a striped rugby shirt. The other seemed to be a thin girl in green capris and a grey tee shirt.
"Lucia Gruberova?" Rose exclaimed in a shocked voice as Scorpius yanked the robe away from the girl's head. "But how… why…?!"
"I demand you put me down!" a muffled voice commanded. James recognized the nasally haughtiness of Morton Comstock struggling under his inverted robe.
"Let them down, Scorpius," he said, pocketing his wand. "They're obviously harmless. How did you know?"
Scorpius flicked his wand at Lucia and Comstock, flipping them over and dropping them messily to their feet. "I said they were following us," he drawled lazily. "I didn't say they were any good at it."
Rose moved toward Lucia, helping to straighten her dishevelled robes. "But how did you even get here? Hogsmeade is unplottable! No Muggle can get inside."
"I don't know what unplottable means," Comstock said, poking his head angrily back out of his mussed hood, "but all we did was pop through the cabinet this morning and follow the lot of you. It wasn't exactly difficult."
"It couldn't have been that easy," James insisted. "How'd you get past Tabitha Corsica and the rest of the teachers in the courtyard?"
"We didn't go by way of the courtyard, genius," Comstock sneered. "We ducked through the halls and went out the back way."
"The old rotunda entrance," Rose shook her head. "Nobody was guarding that, of course."
James frowned. "So why didn't we just go that way?"
"Because Filch kept a census of everyone who didn't have a pass for Hogsmeade," Rose sighed briskly. "If we went missing without reason, he'd pile us with so much detention we'd never be heard from again."
"Or maybe you were just too thick to think of it," Comstock countered. "Leave it to us 'Muggles' to be better sneaks than the lot of you."
"Shut up, Morton," Lucia exclaimed breathlessly. "We're only following them back now because you forgot how we came."
Rose smiled ruefully. "That's unplottability for you. The magic may be weakening along with the laws of secrecy, but you couldn't just walk out of here without having somebody lead you. You'd have ended up going in circles all night."
"But why come here at all?" James asked Lucia, ignoring Comstock. "What made it worth the risk?"
Lucia stared at James in disbelief for a moment, and then shook her head wonderingly. "Are you serious? It's Hogsmeade! I've been reading about it since I was a kid but never dared to dream it was real! And then this school year starts and we find out that everything we read about really happened, that those places exist, and we're the first Muggles ever to be allowed to know about it! How could I resist sneaking in and seeing it all for myself? Can you even imagine how jealous my friends back home would be? Gretchen Plotz would have a litter of kittens! That would teach her to not invite me to her stupid birthday party. Like I'd want to go anyway, the shallow little minx. Not that I can tell her about any of this, of course. She wasn't chosen for the exchange program. But soon enough, maybe the whole world will know about this, and then… well. Sorry." She suddenly clamped her mouth shut, apparently deciding she had said too much.
Comstock shook his head. "I'm just here because I was hoping I might find something in this mad, backwards world of yours worth getting excited about. Seriously. You have a world of magic at your disposal and you send messages around
in little notes tied to the legs of owls? That's the best you can do?"
"They have the Floo network, you dolt!" Lucia exclaimed, unable to stop herself. "And Portkeys! And Disapparation!" She glanced back at James. "That's a real thing, right? Disapparation?"
"Er," James stammered. "Er, yeah. But… like… none of us knows how to do it yet."
"Speak for yourself," Scorpius muttered.
Rose shook her head impatiently. "Regardless, we really should be getting back. You can follow us out if you like, but don't you dare get caught with us. It'd mean more trouble for us than either of you are worth."
Comstock grunted his agreement and sullenly followed as Rose and Scorpius struck off once again, heading out of the village.
"I didn't mean to overhear your conversation," Lucia said apologetically, sidling next to James as they neared the forest. "Morton wanted to wait for you in the alley across the street, but I couldn't resist getting a peek inside Weasley's Wizard Wheezes."
James shrugged. "Was it everything you'd hoped?"
"Actually," Lucia frowned thoughtfully. "I'm not sure it was." She glanced aside at him guiltily, and added, "I mean, it was great and all. If I had any wizarding money I definitely would have bought something. But after imagining it for so long, it was… well… sort of…" She fluttered her hands vaguely, "normal? I guess?"
"You expected something different?"
"Oh, I don't know!" Lucia covered her face with both hands for a moment. When she lowered them, she struggled to compose herself. "I'm not like Morton. He's got about as much imagination as a brick. My problem is that I have, maybe, just a bit too much imagination. It's nobody's fault that things sometimes don't live up to what I imagine."
James nodded. "I guess I can understand that."
Lucia glanced aside at him gratefully as they angled into the dense shadows of the forest path. "Sometimes it's a good thing that things turn out to be more normal than I expect. I mean look at us! Here I am walking along with-- I can barely bring myself to say it!-- the son of Harry Potter!" She said the name with such reverence that James couldn't help grinning aside at her. "But you're not at all too much or anything!" She went on quickly. "I can talk to you! You're totally normal, just a real, everyday person who happens to be the son of… of…!"
James nodded, his grin turning wry. "I know, I know. Believe me, it hasn't always been fun. But yeah, we're still just a normal family, with normal problems and stuff."
"Oh, I doubt that!" Lucia enthused. "But still, it's so cool that you would say that."
James blinked at her, still smiling vaguely. "I guess so."
They walked for awhile in silence, following the darkening silhouettes of Morton Comstock, Rose and Scorpius. The forest spread away in all directions, falling into gloom as the sun dipped beneath the horizon. Overhead, wind threaded through the tree branches, rattling them and pushing a ceiling of low, dense clouds.
"So," Lucia asked, dropping her voice slightly. "Is it really true that some people… er… think that he's coming back?"
James glanced aside at Lucia in the dimness. "You mean Dumbledore?"
She nodded, her eyes bright with interest. "A lot of my friends never believed that he really died. They just couldn't accept it, thought that he faked it somehow. Or that the phoenix symbol that flew overhead at his funeral somehow meant he was going to come back to life. That's what phoenixes do after all, isn't it? But, of course, we all just thought they were stories. Now that I know Dumbledore was a real person… well, I guess even in the wizarding world, dead is dead. Right?"
James hesitated before answering. Lucia drew a quick breath and went on, warming to the subject.
"But even when I thought all of this was just a story, I never believed Dumbledore would come back. Not the way my friends thought he would. J. K. Row-- er!" She caught herself and smiled guiltily at James. "Er, I mean Professor Revalvier… she would never pull any cheap trick like that, bringing back a character we all thought had really died. Even if the readers really wanted it. It would seem… cheap, somehow. But do you want to know what I always thought?" This last she asked in a hushed voice, caught between embarrassment and excitement. Her dark eyes glimmered in the twilight. "I always thought Dumbledore would come back as a ghost."
A sudden wind whipped past the five students, whickering in the trees and carrying dead leaves into the air like startled birds. James wished they hadn't allowed Rose, Scorpius and Comstock to get so far ahead.
"It would make sense, don't you think?" Lucia asked, ignoring the quickening wind and dark. "He died so suddenly, with so much left to do. That's what makes ghosts, right? Unfinished business? And I'll tell you something else…" She leaned close to James and lowered her voice to a secretive whisper. "I think he'd come back angry."
James nearly stumbled on the path. He turned toward Lucia, strangely dismayed at what she had said. She blinked at the expression on his face and straightened.
A moment later, both of them bumped straight into Scorpius and Rose, who had stopped on the path.
"Why are we stopping?" Comstock asked impatiently from several paces ahead.
"Shh!" Rose hissed, raising a hand. "Voices."
James recovered himself from his collision with Rose and took a step back, listening hard. All he could hear was the rustle of the wind high in the trees and the whicker of dead leaves skirling along the path. And then, in a lull between gusts, there it was: a low mutter, a voice in the directionless distance.
"Other students coming back from Hogsmeade?" James asked querulously. "Maybe it's even Albus and some of his Slytherin mates. They could be playing a trick on us."
"That's an adult," Scorpius said, shaking his head slowly. "A man."
"I can't understand what he's saying," Rose whispered, frowning with concentration.
James shivered as the wind threaded through his hair again. "Why can't we ever come back from Hogsmeade without having some stupid adventure?"
"Shh!" Rose shushed him again.
But the voice seemed to have drifted away. Silence filled the lulls between windy gusts. James glanced around for some sign of the speaker. The forest seemed suddenly alive with subtle motion; rattling branches, dancing tall grass, waving bushes and vines.
"Over there!" Lucia suddenly proclaimed in a small, strained voice. She pointed into a dense thicket of trees.
"What?" Rose asked, dropping her own voice to a harsh whisper.
Lucia shook her head. "Something moved. Someone walking along, I think. There was a flutter of robes. It's… it's gone now."
Scorpius sighed briskly. "Come on, let's get back. There's nothing in these woods to be afraid of."
"Except the giant spiders," Lucia squeaked.
"There're hardly any of them left," Rose said reassuringly.
"And the centaurs?" Lucia suggested.
Rose nodded consideringly. "Plenty of those still."
Not to mention the trees, James thought, but didn't say. Since Merlin's return, many of the spirits of the trees-- the dryads-- had awoken, and not all of them, James knew from experience, were especially friendly. He glanced up at the creaking, moaning limbs high overhead. Too bad Merlin was no longer here to ward them away, to keep their age-old wildness in check.
And then, out of the corner of his eye, James saw it as well: a flutter of robes, the suggestion of a swift, silent pace cutting through the densest part of the forest. He whipped his head toward it, but it was already gone.
"Lucia's right," he announced quietly. There's someone over there. On our right."
Scorpius paused mid-step. James saw that he had his wand in his hand. He fingered it speculatively. A moment later, the blond boy stalked off the path, pushing through the weeds and brush.
"Where's he going?" Comstock demanded.
"Scorpius!" Rose called nervously. A moment later, she squared her shoulders, whipped out her own wand, and trotted after him.
"This is ridiculous," James grumbled in exasperation. To
Lucia he said, "Stay on the path. We'll be back in a minute."
"No chance!" Lucia cried, jumping to follow James as he dodged into the trees. "I'm not standing there in the open with some… some thing wandering around out there! I'll stick by the people with the wands, thanks very much!"
"Hurry it up, you lot," Comstock called in an annoyed voice.
James ducked through the brush, catching up to Rose and Scorpius with Lucia following close behind. Fortunately, the increasing wind filled the entire forest with a cacophony of creaking limbs, shushing leaves, and clattering branches, covering the noise of their tromp through the underbrush. And sure enough, after only a few hundred feet they saw the figure. It crested a low hill ahead of them, flitting calmly through the trees, its cloak fluttering behind, it's peaked hat bent rakishly in the wind.
Lucia froze in place at the sight of it. "Is it a ghost?" she begged, her voice reduced to a terrified rasp.
James shook his head, but he couldn't truly be sure.
"Whoever or whatever it is," Scorpius said, forging ahead brazenly. "They're heading towards Hogwarts."
Rose nodded. "But off the main path. They don't want to be seen."
"Scorpius!" James called as the boy trotted forward. "What are you going to do if you catch him? Stop him and demand to know what he's up to, sneaking around in the Forbidden Forest on a stormy night?"
Scorpius glanced back for a moment, meeting James' eyes consideringly. "I suppose that's exactly what I'll do," he nodded.
Standing between them, Rose looked from Scorpius to James, her expression tense. After a moment, James nodded.
Lucia grabbed James' arm and giggled nervously. "I guess this is pretty exciting, isn't it?"
Together, the four broke into a run, threading noisily through the valley and up the crest of the hill. James saw the glittering lights of the castle emerge through the trees as they thrashed forward, dodging low branches and jumping over mossy logs. Scorpius reached the crest of the hill first. James saw him as only a dark shape against the dusky sky, stumbling between the trees where they had last spied the skulking figure. A moment later, Scorpius' silhouette dipped away. Rose followed, dropping over what seemed to be a rocky ledge. James clambered after her, Lucia still gripping his arm tightly, panting next to him.