The Curse of the GateKeeper (James Potter #2) (62 page)

"They feed you all right up here?" James asked.

Nobby clicked his beak and ruffled his feathers luxuriously. James noticed that the corners of the Owlery floor were cluttered with the bones of rodents.

"I guess you get along just fine up here, don't you?" James said, smiling. The great bird seemed to agree. He ducked his head under James' stroking hand, preening. After a minute, James took the letter out of his pocket. He attached it carefully to Nobby's leg with a bit of string.

"This is really important, Nobby," James explained. "Get it to Dad as soon as possible, all right? And wait to see if he writes anything in return. If he does, bring it with you when you come back."

Nobby clicked his beak again and shuffled on the perch, obviously anxious to depart. As soon as James released his leg, Nobby spread his wings. He balanced for a moment, and then thrust upwards, flapping toward the Owlery's huge windows. He circled, disturbing some of the other owls on their perches, and then, with a flick of his rudderlike tail, he was gone.

James felt much better. He retraced his steps out of the Owlery and down the narrow stairway. When he got to the corridor below, he stopped. The halls had been almost entirely empty during his walk to the Owlery, but now someone was standing in the dark corridor, looking out one of the tall windows. James thought this was particularly odd since the Owlery was nowhere near any of the common rooms. The figure was in silhouette against the low full moon outside the window. James could only tell that the figure was a girl with long hair. He had a strange, fleeting hope that it was Petra, but he didn't think so. James made his way along the hall and the girl didn't move as he approached. He had almost passed her when she spoke without turning around.

"A little late to be sending post," she mused. "Must be rather important, James."

James' blood cooled. It was Tabitha Corsica. "What's it to you?" he asked, not breaking his stride. He meant to leave her with that, but her next words brought him to a halt.

"The Gatekeeper won't be stopped, you know," she said idly, half turning to look at James over her shoulder. "No matter who you tell about it. It's too late for that."

James was stunned. His mind was racing so that he didn't know what to say. How could Tabitha know about the Gatekeeper? Neither James, Rose, nor Ralph had told anyone about it. But even as he wondered, he realized that the answer was all too obvious. Tabitha knew about the Gatekeeper because she was part of the plot to control it, to unleash in on the earth. There was simply no other explanation.

Tabitha turned back toward the moon. She leaned comfortably on the stone windowsill. "You believe you grasp what is happening, don't you? You've convinced yourself that you understand the full implications of the Curse of the Gatekeeper." She laughed lightly. "That's what I love about you Potters. You all see the world in the plainest terms. You somehow manage to miss the essential details and the big picture. Never has it been more obvious than now."

James started to speak, but his voice was hoarse and frightened. He cleared his throat and tried again. "Are you here to stop me?"

"Stop you?" Tabitha replied, still not turning around. "Stop you from what? Didn't you hear me? It's too late to stop anything. The descent of the Gatekeeper is accomplished. Its day is at hand. There is only one more task to complete, and that task is very nearly done. I'm only here now to gloat, James. I wanted to see your face when you found out that your world was about to end." Finally, Tabitha turned fully around. James took an involuntary step backwards. He'd never seen Tabitha this way. Her hair was lank and her face looked very pale, even gaunt. Her eyes were tinged with red, avid and hungry.

"Yes," she breathed, leaning slightly forward. "That's the expression I was hoping for. You see it now, don't you? The Curse of the Gatekeeper is finally at hand, but it isn't a curse for everyone. It will end your world, and the blighted world of the Muggles, but it will not be a curse to those who've remained pure of heart. It will be a blessing to us. Salazar Slytherin knew it in his time, when he orchestrated this day. The descent of the Gatekeeper hearkens the age of pureblood perfection! No longer will we be shackled by the laws of weak governments, no more will we live in the shadows of the Muggle drones, hiding like beetles under a rock. For us, the Gatekeeper is a harbinger of supremacy!"

James took another step backwards, wilting in the ferocity of that mad gaze. "You… you can't really believe that," he stammered. "No one controls the Gatekeeper. It'll bring doom to everyone and everything. Even its human host will be killed by it in the end."

Tabitha smiled slowly. "How curious that you believe no one can control the Gatekeeper. And yet I know why you have clung to that belief. You persist in trusting Merlinus Ambrosius, whose very presence in this age is your doing. You convince yourself that, in the end, he will not side with us. This offers you a shred of hope, doesn't it?"

James nodded. He hadn't known it until this moment, but Tabitha was right. In the deepest part of James' heart, he did trust Merlin. He didn't know exactly why, but he did. Despite his doubts and fears and despite all the evidence to the contrary, James simply didn't believe that Merlin would use the Beacon Stone for evil. He believed that Merlin would use it instead to battle the Gatekeeper, even if it was a losing battle.

Tabitha's smile grew indulgent. "Cherish that hope as long as you can, James," she said, almost whispering. "And when the Gatekeeper is ours, when Merlin hands the stone over and joins us, I hope I can be there to see the light of that hope die in your eyes. I really do."

James finally began to feel some anger. He drew himself to his full height and took a step forward. "You're lying," he said firmly. "You're just trying to scare me. You know that your plans can still be stopped. It isn't too late, no matter what you say. You can tell whoever put you up to this that you've given me your message, for all the good it did. But I'm not going to back down. We'll find the other half of the Beacon Stone."

Tabitha's smile vanished as James said this. She looked at him with something like open bewilderment. And then, slowly, the smile resurfaced, dawning on her face like a sunrise. "The other half of the Beacon Stone?" she said in an amused voice. "You don't yet realize it, do you? No wonder you've been so full of vim and vigor! My dear James, we already have the 'other half' of the Beacon Stone! It's been in our possession for years! We used our arts to seek it out. It wasn't particularly difficult, you know. Your father simply dropped it in the Forbidden Forest. He left it for anyone to find if they had an inkling of where to look. I was there on the very night that it was pulled from the earth!" Tabitha laughed again, lightly, and yet James heard a tinkling madness in it. She stopped, inhaled, and shook her head. "How dreadfully unfortunate for you, James. But, oh! That's what that letter to your father was about, wasn't it? You were asking him where the stone had gone! Oh, I really am so sorry that you've wasted your time. But now you do see how precarious your situation is, don't you? It really is only a matter of Merlinus' rather famously fickle loyalties. How deliciously exciting this must be for you!"

James' anger hadn't abated in the face of this revelation. If anything, it had intensified. "I don't believe you, Corsica. You'll say anything just to keep me from working against you. It won't work! Even if your people do have half of the Beacon Stone, Merlin won't join you. I won't let him! So tell your cronies that I got your message, and that I told the lot of you to stuff it where the Nargles don't bite."

With that, James turned on his heel and began to stalk away. After a few steps, he stopped and looked back. "And I'll tell you one more thing, and this is just for you, Corsica: I know you think you've got my brother wrapped around your little finger, but if you get him involved in this in any way, I will personally come for you. Don't think I don't mean that."

"Albus?" Tabitha said, the smile now gone from her face. "I think he's big enough to make his own decisions, don't you?"

James narrowed his eyes and nodded slowly. "You bet he is."

As James turned again and stalked off, Tabitha called after him, her voice echoing in the corridor, "Cherish that hope, James… Cherish it for as long as you can…"

James was shaking by the time he climbed back through the portrait hole. The encounter with Tabitha had completely unnerved him despite his brave words. It was all too overwhelming. Was it true that James' dad had simply dropped the Resurrection Stone in the Forest before his confrontation with Voldemort? If Tabitha and her secret cohorts did indeed have half of the Beacon Stone already, what hope was there? James now realized that, in spite of everything, he did trust Merlin not to side with evil. But was it that Merlin was trustworthy, or that James simply couldn't face the possibility that the famous sorcerer might betray them? With a shudder, he remembered that Judith, the Lady of the Lake, had also trusted Merlin, right up until the point that he'd killed her. Strangely, in the face of all of this, all James wanted to do was go to bed and sleep.

He climbed to his dormitory, stripped off his clothes, and fell into bed. The moon shone in through the small window across the room, needling at his eyes. James rolled over, pulling his pillow over his face. It wasn't until he was almost asleep, just as all of his racing thoughts were finally quieting, that one final, strangely worrying question popped into his head. James sat up, staring out the window at that bright, silvery moon while the question repeated itself in his mind: how had Tabitha Corsica known that he was at the Owlery?

James stared hard at the moon, but it offered no answers. He flopped back onto his pillow. Finally, eventually, he fell asleep.

T
he next week seemed to shuttle past with the inertia of a freight train. As the end of the term loomed, the library grew busier and busier. The older students moved about in a sort of harried fog, studying and drilling each other on topics James could barely understand. Even the Gremlins seemed tense. Noah, Sabrina, Damien, and Petra sat on the couch before the fireplace, surrounded by loose parchments, books, and candy wrappers. James waved at them as he passed, heading down to the library.

"Hey, Damien," he said, "thanks for helping out in the Headmaster's office the other day."

"Just doing my job," Damien muttered, his nose buried in a huge book of star charts.

On the way down to the library, James considered the events of the previous days. It was all moving so fast that it was becoming hard to keep track of. On Monday, James had informed Scorpius that he, Ralph, and Rose had been ordered to shut down the Defence Club as punishment for sneaking into Hogsmeade. Scorpius had been strangely unperturbed.

"A pity that you won't be able to keep attending," he'd said blithely, looking up over his glasses from the book he'd been studying.

"I don't think you understand," James said, sitting down. "The club's been disbanded. Merlin ordered it."

Scorpius looked down at his book again, turning a page. "I understand it as well as I wish. As far as I'm concerned, you three have been banned from leading the club. As co-teacher, I've no intention of shutting it down. We'll rename it if necessary. We'll call it, oh, 'Scorpius' Army'."

"That's not funny," James said, shaking his head.

"No?" Scorpius replied. "Well, I sat up all night thinking of it. So, drat."

James thought about it for a moment, and then asked quietly, "You'll really keep teaching the club? Even though Merlin thinks it's been shut down?"

"I'm sure I don't know what you mean," Scorpius answered. "If the Headmaster has determined that the Defence Club should be dissolved, then dissolved it will be. It's pure and simple coincidence that I, along with the Specter of Silence and the Grey Lady, will be teaching an entirely new club that happens to meet in the same place at the same time to study the same topics. Surely, the Headmaster would recognize the difference."

James shook his head, smiling crookedly. "You really are a chip off the old Slytherin block, aren't you? You're as twisted as a corkscrew!"

"Being twisted simply means being able to think around corners," Scorpius said, returning to his book. "My father taught me that."

James started to get up, then stopped and looked back at the pale boy. "Cedric actually has you calling him the 'Specter of Silence'?"

Scorpius adjusted his glasses. "Who am I to argue with a ghost's choice of name?"

Apparently, Scorpius had been as good as his word. On Thursday evening, James, Rose, and Ralph had hovered in the halls near the gymnasium. Sure enough, as they passed the pebbled glass doors, they could hear the sounds of the club, practicing and drilling under Cedric's and the Grey Lady's patient tutelage.

Preparations for
The Triumvirate
were also coming along swiftly. Jason Smith's props crew was working double-time, having produced most of the sets and prop elements, including a huge wind machine that worked on treadle power. Gennifer Tellus was feverishly commanding her costume shop, managing all the adjustments, alterations and last-minute costuming details. Josephina Bartlett had recovered from her hex-induced vertigo enough to climb onto the stage, although she couldn't approach the edge without getting dizzy. Nevertheless, a contingent of Ravenclaw girls had begun a rather snarky campaign to reinstate Josephina in the role of Astra. To that end, they had painted a slew of signs and pinned petitions onto several notice boards. The petitions hadn't accumulated many signatures, however, and apart from Josephina's entourage, even the rest of the Ravenclaws seemed to quietly support Petra in the role. For his own part, James was impressed to realize that he had now learned almost all of his lines. There had been a time when he hardly believed it was possible, but the persistent rehearsals and late-night script readings had apparently paid off. Noah and Petra seemed by turns affectionate and cold during rehearsals, obviously reflecting the ongoing tumult of their relationship. James had still not practiced his kissing scene with Petra, although they'd read through the lines a dozen times. Professor Curry assured them that it need not be a real kiss, but simply that they lean toward one another and touch cheeks. They'd be in silhouette to the audience, and the lights would go out the moment the kiss occurred, thus ending act three. To James' great dismay, however, he was forced to obey Tabitha Corsica's direction whenever Professor Curry wasn't around. Tabitha seemed to take perverse pleasure in forcing James to recite his monologues over and over, constantly critiquing him and belittling him in front of the other actors and crew. As James sweated in the bright stage lights, rereading his rallying speech for the ninth time, his dislike of Tabitha's pretty, smug face slowly intensified into a bright little furnace of hatred.