"Maybe it's just part of being eleven hundred years old," James called from the darkness of the hut, grunting to himself. "Maybe he can, sort of, spread it all out over a lifetime, so it doesn't affect him as much at any given moment. You think?"
Ralph heaved a sigh. "I try not to, at least when it comes to Merlin. He makes my head hurt. The food was good tonight though. The chicken and kabobs and everything. I've never had whelk before, especially cooked like that."
"You mean spit-roasted by a dragon?" James replied, dragging a huge quilt through the door of the hut. "Kind of gives it a weird aftertaste, don't you think? I thought it tasted a little like the potions closet smells on a humid day."
Ralph shrugged, helping tug the quilt over Hagrid's huge snoring bulk. "There. Sleep well, Hagrid. See you next year."
"Ugh, stop saying things like that," James said, rolling his eyes.
"What?"
James shook his head. "I just don't want to be reminded. Come on, there's McGonagall. If she beats us back to the gates, she's likely to give us detention for being late even if we aren't going to be here to serve it."
The boys ran across the field at an angle, meeting the former Headmistress at the courtyard entrance. They surprised her as they came bounding up.
"Boys!" she exclaimed, blinking owlishly at them, her eyes strangely bright. "You should be inside now that the ceremony is over. It's late."
"We know, Professor… er," James said, looking up at the tall woman. "Er, are you… er?"
"I'll have you know I have allergies," McGonagall sniffed, dabbing at her eyes and striding quickly through the gates. "The babelthrush is particularly fetid this time of year, that's all. Now come."
Inside, Harry, Ginny, and the rest were milling near the doorway of the Great Hall as the candles lit themselves for the evening. Students moved through the huge open doors in knots, drifting toward the stairs and their common rooms. Lucy, Rose, and Albus met James and Ralph as they entered.
"Dad's arranged for us to have extra beds in the dormitories," Albus said, munching a biscuit he'd found in the Great Hall. "You and Lucy with the Gryffindors, me and Ralph downstairs with our own mates."
James asked, "What about Charlie and Jules and Harold and everybody else?"
"They're just going home tonight. No point in their hanging around here until tomorrow morning, is there? It's not like they're going anywhere."
"Ugh! Stop reminding me," Rose said, throwing up her hands. "I'm so jealous I can hardly stand it. You lot going off on some big holiday and me having to stay here and do Arithmancy and Charms and Debellows' stupid version of D.A.D.A. all year."
"But you like Arithmancy," Ralph said, frowning.
She sighed angrily. "Just because I'm good at it doesn't mean I like it."
"I'd trade places with you in a heartbeat," Albus griped. "It isn't like I want to go on this stupid trip."
"You think that makes it any better?" Rose fumed. "The injustice of it all is breathtaking."
From across the hall, Hermione's voice called to her daughter. "You and your brother should probably get upstairs, Rose. Tomorrow's first day of school. Aren't you excited?"
Rose glowered darkly at her mother, and then shared the look with James, Ralph and Albus.
Lucy patted her older cousin on the arm. "I'll take lots of pictures for you, Rose. And we'll write. Won't we?" She looked meaningfully at the boys, who muttered their assent and shuffled their feet on the dusty floor.
Rose nodded skeptically.
"All of you had better get up to bed, then," Harry Potter said, nodding toward his sons. "Lily will be staying with your mother and me in the Room of Requirement. We don't want to have to come and wake you lot up when it's time to leave."
Albus frowned. "When are we leaving?"
"I suggest we meet here by the main doors at five thirty," Harry answered, looking at the rest of the adults, who nodded agreement.
James grumbled, "This just gets worse and worse."
"It really was a beautiful wedding," Ginny sighed, ignoring James. "In its own special way. Don't you think?"
"Minerva," Harry smiled, peering closely at the older woman. "Are you…?"
"I have allergies!" McGonagall answered stridently, waving a hankie. "They make my eyes water!"
Harry nodded and put an arm around the woman's narrow shoulders, leading her toward the faculty corridors. Ginny, Ron, and Hermione followed, talking amongst themselves.
Shortly, Albus and Ralph said goodnight and drifted down the stairs toward the Slytherin cellars. James and Lucy joined Rose on the stairs, tromping their way up to the Gryffindor common room.
"Humdrugula," Rose called curtly as she approached the portrait of the Fat Lady. The frame swung away from the wall and the sound of raucous voices, laughter, and a crackling fire filled the hall from beyond.
"I wasn't even told the password," James mourned to Lucy as they approached the portrait hole.
"Passwords are for students only," the Fat Lady sang happily from the other side of the open frame. James rolled his eyes in annoyance.
"James!" a voice called out. "I got your bed! Isn't it cool?"
James looked and saw Cameron Creevey grinning at him from over the back of the hearth sofa, flanked by two boggling first-years. "It's got your name on it and everything. My mates are dead jealous, of course. I've been telling the new students about last year. Remember when we went off to Hogsmeade in the tunnel beneath the Whomping Willow? Remember the wolf when we came back?"
"I remember you getting knocked out cold in the dirt," James answered unhappily. Rose poked him in the stomach with her elbow, but Cameron seemed unperturbed.
"See?" he said, turning back to the two first-years. "I told you! It was excellent."
James shook his head and joined Rose at a corner table where Ted Lupin was sitting with his former school crew. Lucy followed James, looking around with open curiosity, her face calm and watchful.
"Hey, James, Gremlin salute," Damien Damascus announced, raising his fists to either side of his head, the pinky fingers extended to form wiggling ears. Rose, Sabrina Hildegard, and Ted joined in, sticking out their tongues dutifully. James performed the salute as well, but halfheartedly.
"Things are looking a little slim for the Gremlins this year," Sabrina said, lowering her hands to the table before her, where she was folding an auger out of a page of the Daily Prophet. "What with Noah and Petra joining Ted in the fabled outside world and James running off to hobnob with his cronies in the States."
"Yeah," Damien said, raising his eyebrows derisively. "What's up with that anyway?"
James opened his mouth to reply, but Ted spoke first. "It's right here, isn't it? Front page, top of the fold." He pulled the paper out from under Sabrina's elbow and held it up for all to see. James had already seen the headline, which read, 'H. POTTER, AURORS TO JOIN INTERNATIONAL INVESTIGATIVE TASK FORCE'. Below the headline was a moving photograph of James' dad and Titus Hardcastle, standing before a podium at the Ministry while flashbulbs erupted from the crowd in front of them. The smaller headlines next to the photo read, 'MUGGLE LEADERS STILL MISSING: W.U.L.F. CLAIMS CREDIT FOR KIDNAPPINGS DESPITE MINISTRY DENIALS. FAMED NYC SKYSCRAPER DISCOVERED IN VENEZUELA, BLAMED ON "ALIENS"'.
"The whole thing's gone all international now that there's been bigwig kidnappings both here and in the States," Ted sighed, dropping the newspaper. "I don't envy your dad one bit, James. It was one thing teasing the American press into believing it was little green men that nicked their building. Getting a bunch of foreign agencies to work together is like getting horklumps to play chess."
Damien frowned askance at Ted. "How would you know about such things, Lupin?"
"I do this thing called 'reading'," Ted said, tapping the side of his nose. "I learned it from Petra. You should try it sometime!"
"It's 'Morgan' now, remember?" Sabrina corrected without looking up. "She calls herself Morgan ever since that whole debacle at her grandparents' place
."
"Talking of which," Ted said, sitting up in his chair, "she and the new Headmaster are having themselves a serious little chat right about now, up in his office. I heard Uncle Harry discussing it with the old man himself, and she admitted it when I got back to the castle. Seems there's some question of whether she's going to be allowed to come along on this little jaunt of yours, Potter."
"What's that mean?" James asked, watching Ted dig something out of his robes. "She's of age now. They can't stop her if she wants to go on a trip."
"Can't they now?" Damien mused, leaning back and steepling his fingers. "I mean, there's detention, and then there's detention, if you know what I mean. There's some tricky legal questions, after all, what with both of her grandparents ending up dead. The Muggle police don't know much of anything, thanks to Merlin, but that hardly means everything's all sunshine and rainbows. The stuff we saw at that farm, well, let's just say it makes Professor Longbottom's Snapping Thornroot look like daffodil salad. Our Petra is one complicated little witch, if you ask me."
"That doesn't mean she's guilty of anything horrible," James said, sitting up. "She and her sister are lucky to be shut of the lot of them. Sounds to me like they were pretty rotten to both of them."
"They've been staying with you and your parents since the day they got out of there, right?" Rose asked, raising her eyebrows. "Did they tell you what happened that day?"
James sat back again, looking out over the common room. "Well, not really. She said that her grandfather had denied his wizard powers for the sake of his Muggle wife, some awful woman named Phyllis, who was just beastly. And she said that Phyllis tried to send Petra's sister Izabella off to some work farm place for people who are soft in the head. Petra told me that they did what they had to do to get out of there together."
"I guess that's close enough to the truth," Damien nodded. "Although it isn't all of it. That's for sure."
"What do you know about it?" James asked, meeting Damien's eyes.
"Not a whole lot more than you do, but I'm just saying—there was magic going on there the likes of which I've never seen. Merlin made us swear secrecy about it, which is fine by me. You probably wouldn't believe it anyway. All I know is that if Petra was doing it, then that wasn't the Petra I thought I knew."
"'Morgan'," Sabrina corrected again, holding up her neatly folded auger. "What do you say, Lupin? You ready to go six circles with the reigning champion?"
"Not now, not now," Ted answered distractedly, producing a rather surprising amount of miscellany from his pockets and dumping it all onto the table. "There's Gremlinery afoot. Where are they, then…"
James, Lucy, and Rose leaned over the table as Ted rooted quickly through the pile of odds and ends. A dog-eared origami frog leapt out of the detritus, limping crookedly. Every Flavor Beans and loose Knuts rolled every which way. "Aha!" Ted announced triumphantly, sitting back and producing a velvet bag tied with a silver cord. "Gather 'round, comrades. This could be interesting."
Sabrina put down the auger and frowned studiously as Ted undid the bag. "Extendable Ears?" she said, peering at its contents. "How are those going to work? You said Morgan and the Headmaster were meeting in his office. That's all the way across the castle."
"Ah, ah, ah," Ted corrected, smiling mischievously. "These are the new Extendable Ears Mark II, with a Remote Sensing Hex built right in. Just mark the object you want to serve as the receiver—in this case, an innocent peppermint that I slipped into the Headmaster's pocket on the way back to the castle, and voilà—" Here, Ted Metamorphed his face into a caricature of George Weasley, proceeding with George's infectious enthusiasm, "Instant illicit audio illumination for all your eavesdropping endeavors." He changed his face back to himself and pulled a handful of pinkish shapes out of the bag. "Strictly experimental at this point, but working at the Three 'W's does have its perks."
James took one of the pink shapes as Ted handed it to him. It was made out of foam rubber and shaped like a large ear. "What do I do with it?"
"Well," Damien said, examining his critically, "I don't guess that you eat it." Experimentally, he stuck the foam ear up to his own ear and listened. His eyes widened. "It's working!" he whispered raspily. "I can hear them!"
As one, the Gremlins and Lucy clapped the ears to the sides of their heads. James discovered that the shape was fashioned to fit neatly over his own ear so that it could be worn hands-free. He jammed it on and then leaned back, frowning slightly at the distant, echoing voices he was hearing.
"Is it them?" Sabrina asked, squinting quizzically. "They're hard to make out."
Ted nodded distractedly. "It's them, they're just far away. Shut it and listen."
James strained his ears to hear over the noise of the common room. Dimly, he perceived the rumbling baritone of the Headmaster, and then the tremulous tenor of Petra's response. Slowly, faintly, the voices became clear.
"Unfortunate as it was, I am less concerned about the way in which you chose to exercise your powers," the Headmaster was saying, "than I am about your more recent dreams. I have come to believe that such things often have implications we do not immediately comprehend."
"It's just a dream," Petra answered, her voice tiny and distant. "It's a lot like some others that I've had, only the other way around. I used to dream of decisions I thought I wanted to change. Now, I'm dreaming of disasters I barely avoided. I'm a little glad of them, really. They remind me."
Merlin's voice came again, calm and measured. "What do they remind you of?"
"Of the power of choices. And the fact that the simplest actions can have enormous consequences."
Merlin's voice lowered meaningfully. "And you know now how very true this is for you, in particular, don't you, Ms. Morganstern? Or would you prefer me to call you by your other name?"
There was a long pause. James had begun to wonder if the Extendable Ear had stopped working when the Headmaster's voice became audible again.
"Grundlewort ganache popovers," he said slowly, as if tasting the words. James looked up, his brow furrowed. Lucy met his gaze, frowned, and shook her head slightly. The voice of Merlinus went on, low and quiet, so that James had to strain his ears to hear. He leaned over the table, hunching his shoulders in concentration.
"Use only powdered grundlewort, dried and well-sifted, to avoid an overly pungent aroma. Mix with two parts huiverte extract and a pinch of tea blossom petal. Add rum three drops at a time until damp enough to knead…"
James looked aside and saw Ted staring furiously at the table in front of him, the oversized foam ear jutting from the side of his head. He noticed James' look and shrugged.
"Sounds like a recipe," Damien whispered. "Why's he teaching Petra how to make popovers?"
"Because," Merlin's voice boomed, so loud that James exclaimed in surprise and clambered at his Extendable Ear, "popover preparation is a valuable life skill that all witches and wizards should aim to perfect."
James succeeded in clawing the foam shape off his ear, turned, and recoiled at the sight of the Headmaster standing right next to him, a very large cookbook open in his hands. Merlin was smiling, but it was not the sort of smile one felt instinctively comfortable sitting beneath.
"After all," the Headmaster said, eyeing the foam ears scattered around the table, "one never knows when the need might arise for an unexpected treat. Which reminds me…" He retrieved something from the depths of his robes and held it out over the table. "I believe this belongs to you, Mr. Lupin. I'll just, er, add it to the pile." He dropped the charmed peppermint onto the mess of Ted's pocket contents.
"And a good evening to you, Headmaster," Damien said, recovering and smiling hugely. "Did you enjoy the wedding, sir?"
"Save your efforts, Mr. Damascus," Merlin replied, snapping the cookbook shut in his hand. "I have every suspicion that you will require them later in the term. Good evening, students, Mr. Lupin."
He turned to go, passing Petra as she entered through the portrait hole. Merlin nodded at h
er meaningfully, and she returned the gesture, somewhat reluctantly.
"So was any of what we just heard for real?" Ted asked as Petra joined them, squeezing in between James and Lucy on the bench side of the table.
"Depends on when you started listening," she said, avoiding his gaze. "He started fogging you right about the time we were heading back to the common room. Merlin likes to walk while he talks, you know."
Ted nodded somberly. James knew that Ted had been part of the group that had rescued Petra from her grandparents' farm, and he knew that Damien was right in saying that there was a lot more to that story than the rest of them knew. Merlin had spoken to everyone involved with the escape from Petra's grandparents, but all of those involved had been very secretive about it since. Something unspoken seemed to go between Ted and Petra as he reached across the table to collect the Extendable Ears.
Rose perked up. "So, are they going to let you go along on the trip to the States, Petra?"
"'Morgan'," Sabrina corrected again, glancing around.
"It's all right," Petra said, laughing a little. "I'm still Petra to all of you. Morgan is more of a… personal identity."
Damien nodded. "Sort of like that guy in that band, Shrieker and the Shacks, who changed his name from Uriah Hollingsworth to just Dûm. Sort of an attitude thing, right?"
"Shut it, Damien," Rose commented, giving him a shove. "So are you going to the States or what, Petra?"
"I'm going," Petra nodded. "Izzy's coming with me. And I think we're going to stay there for awhile."
"You mean longer than Christmas break?" James asked. "Because that's when we're coming back, hopefully."
"I don't think even we will be back by Christmas, James," Lucy said apologetically. "I have some idea of how these things happen, sadly enough."
"And who is this refreshingly pragmatic creature?" Damien said brightly, leaning toward Lucy.
James deflated, but only a little, considering his proximity to Petra. "My cousin, Lucy," he answered. "She was supposed to be starting here this year, although she thinks she'd have been a Ravenclaw, or even a Slytherin."