The Curse of the GateKeeper (James Potter #2) (28 page)

"You've just been thinking about it all too much," Rose said reasonably. "No one is expecting you to be your father. Don't obsess over it."

James agreed, and he hoped Rose was right. As he said goodnight and climbed the stairs, he wondered about the phantom itch on his forehead. He really hadn't given it any thought until now, but it was a just a little bit strange, wasn't it, having a persistent itch in the place of his father's famous scar? No way would he be asking Madam Curio about it. It was bad enough, what with Cameron Creevey expecting him to shoot fireworks out of his bum on one hand, and Scorpius Malfoy accusing him of delusions of grandeur on the other. The last thing he needed was for a rumor to get started that James Potter was scratching at a phantom lightning bolt scar. Especially on top of the fact that he very well might be starting a club reminiscent of his dad's Dumbledore's Army.

As James was getting ready for bed, it occurred to him that, had he not had the conversation with Tabitha Corsica and gone away feeling worried and peeved, he might not have agreed so easily to the creation of the new D.A.D.A. club after all. Her words had left him feeling small and ridiculous, but the idea of starting a new Defence Club gave him a feeling of importance again. Was that reason enough to go through with it? He hoped it was a good idea, but really, he wasn't overly concerned about it. There were still two hurdles that needed to be overcome for the club to happen. The first was to get Merlin's approval, the second was to find Cedric and ask him to teach it. If either refused, then the club would never be. That seemed like good enough odds to James. Thinking that, he closed his eyes and drifted to sleep.

A grey, humid afternoon greeted James, Rose, and Ralph as they finished their Saturday lunch and headed out to wander the school grounds. It was one of those strange days at the beginning of autumn when it is too muggy to wear a jacket but too wet and breezy to go without. Rose huddled in a heavy jumper as James and Ralph threw rocks into the lake, admiring the splashes.

"I think we should just ask him straight up," Ralph said, heaving a stone sidearm. "Like you said last night, Rose, there's no reason for him to say no."

"That's what I thought then," Rose replied. "But that was last night."

James glanced back at her. "A lot's changed since then, has it?"

"I stayed up late last night, reading," Rose said. "I wanted to get a head start on some of the books our Wizlit textbook suggested, like I told you in the library."

"You sure don't waste time," Ralph commented.

"I happen to like reading. Besides, not surprisingly, our Headmaster shows up occasionally in some of those books and I thought it'd be worth checking into his history a bit more before we talked to him."

Ralph lowered his throwing arm and looked up at the sky, squinting. "It's so weird. I was there when it happened, but I keep forgetting our Headmaster is the famous Merlin from all the old legends and myths. It's a little hard to wrap your mind around, isn't it?"

"I told you a lot of people find it a bit unsettling that Merlinus Ambrosius is Headmaster of Hogwarts," Rose said meaningfully. "And I found out why, a little bit. There's loads of stories about him in the old books of the kings. It's almost impossible to figure out what's made-up and what might be real, but even if only a tiny bit of it is true, it's pretty worrying."

"Like what?" James asked, prying a large rock out of the bank of the lake.

"Like kings used to hire him to curse armies. Not bad armies, necessarily; just any army that any king with enough treasure happened to dislike. More than once, when Merlin got to the army he was paid to curse, they would send out people to pay him more to go back and curse the king that'd originally hired him. And he did!"

"Sounds pretty practical, if you ask me," Ralph said, heaving a stone with both hands. It splashed nearby, wetting both James' and Ralph's shoes.

"This isn't funny, Ralph," Rose admonished. "He was a magical mercenary. A man like that wouldn't have any loyalty at all! Some of those armies he cursed… they got completely slaughtered, sometimes even before they got to the battle! There'd be floods, cyclones, even earthquakes where the ground would open up right beneath the army camp, swallowing them all whole."

"That can't be true," James commented. "I mean, Merlin's powerful, but nobody can do that."

"You're forgetting where Merlin gets his magic from," Rose replied as if she'd been prepared for such an argument. "According to the legends, Merlin can tap into the power of nature. We saw him doing that the night he took us to get his stuff. Nature is huge, and it was even huger back then, with less civilization. Who knows what a wizard like that would be able to do?"

Ralph brushed his hands off on his jeans. "I don't think 'huger' is a word."

"Don't you start correcting me," Rose said, looking back and forth between James and Ralph. "Why are neither of you taking this seriously?"

"Because like I said, we were there, Rose," Ralph replied. "We saw the man Reapparate from the Dark Ages. We worked with him in the days after. He helped us get rid of that Muggle reporter, who was going to blow the lid off the whole magical world. He was completely brilliant about it. He may have been a loose cannon in the past, but he's different now, isn't he? He's trying to be good, and he seems to be doing pretty well with it."

"Well," Rose said, "it isn't just that he was a loose cannon."

James plopped down on the grass next to her. "What? Did he put ketchup on his eggs? Did he draw mustaches on portraits?"

Rose looked at him, and then looked away. "According to some of the legends, he was supposed to be the bearer of an awful curse. His returning was to be an omen of the end of the world."

James felt a twinge of worry at that, but kept his voice even. "This is the part where it's hard to separate the fact from the loony made-up stuff, right?"

"Laugh if you want," Rose said, "but the prophecy shows up in a lot of places. Some call him the Harbinger of Doom. Other places just call him the Ambassador; of what, it never says. It gets pretty creepy," she admitted, shuddering. "Especially when you are reading it in the middle of the night."

"So far, he's just been the Ambassador of an extra ten points for Gryffindor and Slytherin because we helped him go get some magic box," Ralph said, shrugging. "Come on, it's almost two. He'll be expecting us."

"You coming, James?" Rose asked, climbing to her feet.

James glanced up. "What? Oh. Yeah, sure."

The three plodded through the foggy afternoon, heading for the courtyard. In the distance, thunder rumbled like a veiled threat and the wind began to switch. James was thinking rather nervously of the skeleton in the cave, Farrigan, the long lost associate of Merlin, and of Cousin Lucy's letter about the Gatekeeper. In the light of those things, Rose's tale of the legendary curse of Merlin sounded uncomfortably familar. James couldn't remember it exactly, but the skeleton had said something about a gate, and about things coming through, all because of Merlin's return. The Borleys had come through, at the very least. Merlin acknowledged that. But he claimed to have captured all of them except for the last one, the one that had followed James from that night at the Grotto Keep. Merlin said he'd trapped them all in his mysterious Darkbag. But the skeleton had warned of something else, something worse. Like the legends, it had also called Merlin the Ambassador, but Farrigan had identified the thing Merlin was supposedly representing: the Guardian, the Sentinel of Worlds, the Gatekeeper. Lucy's letter had corroborated those legends, and now Rose's studies were confirming them as well. James shuddered as he followed Rose and Ralph into the castle.

They threaded their way through the weekend-empty corridors, passing darkened classrooms and halls. Finally, they reached the gargoyle which guarded the entrance to the spiral steps.

"You remember the password, Rose?" Ralph asked. "I couldn't even pronounce it, and you know how they are about writing things like that down."

Rose screwed up her face, thinking. Finally, she carefully pronounced, "In ois oisou."

The gargoyle moved with the sound of millstones grinding. It stepped aside, revealing the doorway.

"What's it mean?" James asked as he hopped onto the rising staircase.

Rose shook her head. "It's more of that ancient Welsh, I'd guess. Who knows what it means?"

They arrived in the hall outside the Headmaster's office and James reached to bang the door knocker.

"Wait," Rose said, grabbing James' arm. "Remember this morning? He told us to wait outside. He said he had another appointment before us."

James remembered. He carefully lowered the knocker and the three settled onto a long bench situated across from the Headmaster's door.

On the wall next to the door, amongst an arrangement of old paintings and portraits, was a face James recognized.

"Look," James nudged Ralph, pointing. "I remember him. Old Stonewall used him in Technomancy last year to teach us about magical portraits."

The portrait of Cornelius Yarrow, former Hogwarts bursar, peered at James over his spectacles. "I remember you too, young man. You had a rather unseemly number of questions regarding the subject. I hope you were satisfied."

"I was," James answered. "I especially liked the part about how only the original artist can destroy a magical portrait. It was really wicked when Stonewall melted his painting of that horrid clown."

"Your Professor Jackson did leave out one small detail," Yarrow sniffed, chafing at the memory. "There is one other person who can destroy a portrait, although it has never been known to happen."

"Seems like a pretty important detail to leave out," James frowned doubtfully. "Frankly, with all due respect, I'd trust him rather more on the subject than—"

Two things happened simultaneously, interrupting James. The door to the Headmaster's office unlatched and swung open and a stab of pain shot through James' forehead. He clapped a hand to his head and squeezed his eyes shut, hissing in surprise.

"James?" Rose asked, concerned.

Almost as quickly as it had come, the pain vanished. James kept his hand to his forehead but risked opening his eyes. The first thing he saw was the view through the Headmaster's open doorway. Merlin was standing behind his desk, his face grave and his eyes piercing. He was staring very hard at James through the doorway, but the look on his face did not seem worried or alarmed. If anything, he looked intently watchful, perhaps even wary.

"Are you all right, James?" another voice asked. James lowered his hand and looked around. Petra Morganstern was standing in the hall, having just exited the Headmaster's office. She looked flushed, and her eyes were red, as if she'd been crying.

"I'm fine," James answered. "I… I should be wearing my glasses." He glanced at Rose and Ralph, warning them not to say anything.

"Oh," Petra said, looking away. "Well, I'll see you later. I've got… things to do."

James watched her walk away, wondering once again why Petra seemed so melancholy all of a sudden. And what in the world had Merlin said to her to upset her even more? James stood, looking back into the Headmaster's office again. Merlin was no longer staring at him with that hard, watchful look. He was turned to the side, studying a complicated brass device in his hands.

"Come in, my friends," Merlin called without looking.

As the three students entered the office, James couldn't help looking around in awe. Save for the old headmasters' portraits and the desk, the room was virtually unrecognizable as the same space McGonagall had occupied last term. A massive stuffed crocodile hung from the ceiling, looking like an exhibit in a museum. Bookshelves crowded the floor, crammed with enormous volumes in thick, leather covers. Alongside these were arcane tools and fixtures, none smaller than a cabinet, and all mind-bogglingly complex. Attached to the wall behind Merlin's desk was a glass case housing a thick black sack, hung on silver hooks. James recognized it as the mysterious Darkbag. The centerpiece of the room, however, was a very large, long mirror with a rectangular golden frame. The silvered glass of the mirror only half-reflected the room. Beyond the reflection, a swirling, leaden mist rolled and shifted. It was both beautiful and vaguely sickening. The mirror rested on a long brass easel in the center of the room, facing the Headmaster's desk.

"As promised," the Headmaster said, "the contents of my cache. Not all of it, of course, but enough to make my job rather easier."

There was only one chair facing the Headmaster's desk. James, Ralph, and Rose gathered around it, though none chose to sit on it. They continued to look around the room in awe.

"You've noticed my Mirror, Mr. Potter," Merlin said conversationally, still not looking up from the strange device he was holding. "Very curious, yes? I see that you wish to ask me about it. Please feel free."

"What does it do?" James replied bluntly.

"The real question, Mr. Potter, is what doesn't it do?" Merlin said, finally setting the strange brass device on his desk and looking up. "It is the legendary Amsera Certh, the quintessential Magic Mirror of time immemorial. With the help of its Focusing Book, it can show you the past and the future. It can show you places you have been and replay ancient memories. It can even tell you, if you so wish, who is the fairest in the land. I fail to see the practical purpose of such information, but the Mirror's designer was a bit of an eccentric."