The Vault of Destinies (James Potter #3) (4 page)

N
ot so very far away, the sun shone on a broad hilltop, warming the early autumn air and inspiring a vibrant chorus of cicadas in the marsh and birdsong in the nearby forest. Butterflies and bumblebees meandered and flitted, stitching invisible patterns among the flowers. The shadow of an enormous castle stretched over the face of the hilltop, its shape blurring as the wind made ripples across the overgrown lawn. A boy ran across the castle's shadow, leaving a rambling wake in the tall grass.

"What are you waiting for?" the boy, Albus Potter, called, glancing behind him.

"You're out of bounds," his brother James yelled from some distance away, cupping his hands to his mouth. "The field ended back by that big boulder, you nimrod. You can't even see the ball under all that grass."

"That's part of the challenge!" Albus called back, grinning. "Are we playing wizard football or what?"

"It's all right," a girl's voice called from some distance away. James glanced aside and saw his raven-haired cousin, Lucy, crouched in front of a stand of young trees, shuffling slowly sideways. "The goal's moved away from him. I'm trying to keep up with it, but it's a bit of a challenge. Oh, there it goes again!" Sure enough, the saplings that formed the goal behind her seemed to sidle away across the grass, walking on their roots like very tall, woodsy squid. Lucy scuttled to keep up with them while simultaneously keeping an eye on Albus.

"I'm open, Al!" Ralph Deedle called, catching up to his friend and fellow Slytherin. He waved his hands helpfully. Albus nodded, turned, and booted at something in the grass. A threadbare football appeared momentarily as it arced through the air. Ralph squared himself to trap the ball, but it never reached him. Instead, it jigged mysteriously into the sunlight and spun away at an angle.

"Hey!" Albus and Ralph both called in unison, looking in the direction the ball was hurtling. It dropped to the ground near the feet of a red-haired girl, who ran up to it, brandishing her wand.

"Are we playing wizard football or what?" she hollered, kicking the ball toward the opposite side of the hilltop.

"Rose!" James called, running to catch up to his cousin. "Look out behind you! It's Ted!"

Rose ducked as a cloud of blue moths suddenly blew over her, conjured from the end of Ted Lupin's wand. He hooted as he ran past, aiming his foot for the ball, but she was very quick with her own wand. With a flick of her wrist and a flash, she transfigured a dead leaf into a banana peel. An instant later, Ted Lupin's foot landed on it and it squirted away beneath him, hurling him to the ground.

"Good fundamentals, Rosie!" Ron Weasley bellowed from what was, for the moment, the sidelines. "Bring it on home now! James is in the clear! Their Keeper's still fending off that Tickling Hex! Aim low!"

Rose bared her teeth grimly and kicked the ball toward James, who trapped it easily and began to maneuver it toward the outcropping of rocks that was currently serving as his team's goal. Standing before the goal, George Weasley, who was notoriously ticklish, struggled to pay attention as a large white feather darted around him, occasionally pecking at him and making him convulse with angry laughter.

James was about to shoot for goal when a voice cried out next to his ear. "Yargh! Leggo the ball! Get 'im!" Shadows fell over him and hands grabbed at his hair and cloak. James tried to bat them off without looking, but it was no use. His younger cousins, the twins Harold and Jules, circled around him on toy brooms, grabbing at him and chomping their teeth like airborne piranhas. James glanced up at them in exasperation, tripped over his own feet, and went down into the grass like a sack of bricks. Harold and Jules glanced at each other for a moment and then dove into the grass to continue their attack. The football rolled to a stop nearby as George ran forward to kick it.

"
Barricado
!" James cried, stabbing out with his wand as Harold grabbed double fists of his hair.

A tiny brick wall suddenly erupted out of the ground next to the football, a split second before George Weasley's foot came into contact with it. The ball sprang off George's foot, immediately struck the tiny wall, and shot up into the air, arcing high over George's head. He craned his neck to watch. With a dull thud, the ball bounced between the rocks behind him.

"Goal!" James shouted, throwing both of his hands into the air.

"Cheat!" Harold and Jules called out, falling on James again and driving him to the ground.

Rose ran past James and George, reaching to scoop up the football. "The first rule of wizard football is that there are no rules," she reminded everyone, raising her voice. "James scored that one with a Barricade Charm, and I had the assist with a transfigured banana peel. That's five more points for Team Hippogriff."

"
Five
points!" Albus cried angrily, trotting to a stop nearby. "How do you figure that math?"

"One point for the goal," Rose sniffed, bouncing the ball on her right palm, "two points each for magical finesse."

"Those were
one
-point spells," Albus argued. "I could have done those in my sleep!"

"Then maybe someone should throw a Nap-a-bye Charm on you," James said, finally shooing his cousins away. "Maybe you'll play better in your dreams, eh?"

"At least I don't need any stupid baby brick walls to make
my
goals for me," Albus groused, producing his wand. "I have this crazy idea that goals are made with my feet!"

"Too bad they're so busy getting stuck in your mouth," James countered, obviously pleased with his turn of phrase. "But I can help you with that!"

Albus saw James' intention a moment before it happened. He scrambled to raise his own wand and both boys called the incantation at the exact same moment. Two bolts of magic crossed over the sunny hilltop and both Albus and James spun into the air, pulled by their ankles.

"
What
is going on here?" a female voice cried shrilly, wavering on the edge of outright fury. All eyes spun guiltily. Ginny Potter, James and Albus' mother, was striding purposely across the hilltop, approaching the gathering, her eyes blazing. Young Lily Potter followed in her wake, hiding a delighted grin behind her hands.

"I've been looking all over for the lot of you!" Ginny exclaimed. "And here I find you out in the grass making messes of yourselves in your dress robes! Ronald Weasley!" she cried, suddenly spotting her brother, who shrank away. She balled her fists. "I should have known!"

"What!" Ron cried, raising his hands. "They were bored!
I
was bored! I was… overseeing them, making sure they didn't get into trouble! Besides, George is out here too, if you haven't noticed!"

Ginny exhaled wearily and shook her head. "You're both as bad as the children. All of you, back to the castle this instant. Everyone's waiting. If we don't hurry we'll be late for the ceremony."

A meter above the grass, James hung upside down across from his brother. Albus met his gaze and sighed, his black hair hanging lank from his head. "I'll do you if you do me," he said. "On three."

James nodded. "One…"

"Liberacorpus,"
Ted said, flicking his wand. Both boys dropped out of the air and tumbled messily to the hillside. "You're welcome," Ted grinned, pocketing his wand. "Come on. You don't want to keep your mum waiting."

The gathering trotted to catch up to Ginny as she stalked back toward the castle gates, where a small throng had gathered, dressed, as was she, in colourful robes, hats, capes, and cloaks.

"How do I look?" James asked Rose as they crossed the lawn.

She eyed him critically. "Good," she said mournfully. "Your rolling in the dirt is no match for your mother's Laveolus Charms. Not so much as a grass stain."

James cursed under his breath. "I don't see why we need to wear these stupid dress robes anyway. Nobody even knows if a giant's wedding is a formal affair, do they? Hagrid says we're the first humans to see such a thing in forever.
He
doesn't even know how we're supposed to dress for it."

"Better safe than sorry," Ralph commented, adjusting his high, starched collar. "Especially with blokes big enough to swat you like a flobberworm."

James shook his head. "Grawp and Prechka are our friends. Er, more or less. They wouldn't
hurt
any of us."

"I'm not worried about
them,"
Ralph said, his eyes widening. "I'm talking about all their family. And that King of theirs! Relations with the giant tribes are ticklish even at the best of times! You told me they even laid into Hagrid once!"

Rose shrugged. "That was a long time ago. Buck up, Ralph. I bet it's considered poor taste to kill the friends of the bride and groom."

"At least
during
the wedding," Lucy added reasonably.

As they neared the waiting witches and wizards by the courtyard gates, James saw that his dad, Harry Potter, was standing near Merlinus Ambrosius, the current Headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. The casual observer might have assumed that the two men were merely waiting, passing the time with idle banter, but James knew his dad better than that. The eldest Potter and the Headmaster had been spending a lot of time in discussion since yesterday evening, their voices low, their eyes roaming, watching. There was a secret sense of weighty matters and carefully unspoken fears in the air between the men, even when they were smiling. James knew what some of it was about although he didn't understand any of it very much. He only knew that whatever it was, it was the reason that everything in his life had suddenly, messily, been turned on its head, like the world's most indiscriminate
Levicorpus
jinx. He sighed angrily and looked up at the castle, soaking in the sight of it. Sunlight glimmered from the windows and glared off the blue slate of the highest turrets. Lucy fell in step next to him.

"It really is a shame, you know," she said, as if reading his thoughts.

"Don't remind me," he muttered darkly. "Tomorrow's the first day of school. We already missed the Sorting yesterday. Someone else has probably already claimed my bed in Gryffindor Tower."

"Well," Lucy replied carefully, "I hear that your bed still has the words 'whiny Potter git' burned onto the headboard, even though they don't glow anymore. So maybe that's not such a bad thing, is it?"

James nodded, not amused. "It's easy for you. You won't know what you're missing."

Lucy shrugged. "Is that better, somehow?"

"Forget it," James said, sighing. "We'll be back soon enough. Probably after Christmas holiday, like my dad says."

Lucy didn't reply this time. James glanced at her. She was two years younger than him, but in some ways she seemed older, much more mature, strangely enigmatic. Her black eyes were inscrutable.

"Lucy," a voice announced, interrupting James just as he opened his mouth to speak. He glanced aside and saw his Uncle Percy, Lucy's father, approaching, resplendent in his navy blue dress robes and mortarboard cap. "Come along now. We can't afford to be late. The usher is waiting for us. Where were you anyway? Never mind, never mind."

He put a hand around her shoulder and led her away. She glanced back at James, her expression mildly sardonic, as if to say this is my life, aren't you jealous? Percy rejoined his wife, Audrey, who glanced down at Lucy, registered her presence for one second, and then returned her attention to the woman standing next to her, who was dressed in a red robe and a fairly ridiculous floral hat with a live white owl nested in it. Molly, Lucy's younger sister, stood next to their mother looking bored and vaguely haughty.

James liked Molly and both of Lucy's parents although he knew them rather less than he did his Aunt Hermione and Uncle Ron. Percy traveled an awful lot, due to his job at the Ministry, and he often took his wife and daughters with him when he went. James had always thought that such a life might be rather exciting—traveling to faraway lands, meeting exotic witches and wizards, staying in grand hotels and embassies—but he'd never thought it would actually happen to him. Lucy was used to it even if she didn't seem to particularly enjoy it herself; after all, she'd been accompanying her family on such trips ever since she'd been a baby, since they'd brought her home from the orphanage in Osaka, before Molly had ever been born. She'd had time to get so familiar with the routine of travel that it was virtually drudgery. James knew his cousin well enough to know that she had been looking quite forward to the consistency and pleasant predictability of her first year at Hogwarts.

Thinking that, he felt a little bad about telling her that the coming trip would be easier for her. At least he'd had two years at Hogwarts already, two years of classes and studies, dorm life and meals in the Great Hall, even if all of it had been overlaid with some fairly spectacular events. Just when Lucy had been expecting to get her first taste of such things, it had gotten neatly snatched away from her. Considering Lucy's personality, it was easy to forget that she was, if anything, probably even more upset about it than he was.

"Welcome back, James, Albus," his father said, smiling and tousling the boys' heads. James ducked away, frowning, and ran his hand through his hair, matting it down.

"Well then," a woman's voice trilled, barely concealing her impatience. James looked toward the front of the small group and saw Professor Minerva McGonagall, her eyes ticking over them severely. "Now that we are all nominally present, shall we proceed?"

"Lead the way, Professor," Merlin said in his low, rumbling voice, bowing his head and gesturing toward the forest. "We'd hate to keep our giantish friends waiting any longer, especially on such a momentous occasion.

McGonagall nodded curtly, turned, and began to cross the lawn, striding toward the arms of the Forbidden Forest beyond. The troupe followed.

A short time later, deep in the shadow of the huge, gnarled trees, Ralph spoke up.

"I think we're nearly there," he said, his voice tight and his eyes widening. James looked up. The path curved up around a steep incline toward a rocky crest, and standing atop that crest, framed between the trees, stood a monstrous, lumpy shape. The giant was easily twenty-five feet tall, with arms that looked like a herd of swine stuffed into a tube sock and legs so thick and hairy that they appeared to take up two thirds of the rest of the body. The head looked like a small, hairy potato perched atop the creature's stubby neck. It was dressed in yards of burlap, enormous leather sandals, and a cloak made of at least a dozen bearskins. It regarded them gravely as they approached.