The Curse of the GateKeeper (James Potter #2) (46 page)

"Just go!" Ravenclaw urged desperately. "Just as you did before!"

Slytherin lunged again, finally forcing his way through the decimated portrait hole. Both Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw shot him with Stunning Spells, but in his mutated form, they only slightly weakened him. He snapped and roared at them.

James turned away and flung himself against the Mirror. The moment he touched it, the reflection sank away, revealing the familiar silvery smoke. It swirled dizzyingly before James' face.

"Go, James!" Hufflepuff cried. There was a whoosh and a horrid slashing sound. One of the witches screamed, but James couldn't tell which.

"I wish I was anywhere else!" James said aloud, then, panicked, he amended that. "I wish I was home! I wish I was in my own time! Right now!"

Directly behind him, Slytherin roared, his voice both human and beastly. James felt the air of Slytherin's beating wings and sensed the coming slash of the bat-like talons.

And then all of it was gone. The hidden chamber winked away, sucked into the swirling silvery mists. James felt the same odd sensation of flipping, as if he was being reversed through the Mirror. There was a rush of noise and speed, and then he was falling. He tumbled forward, catching himself on his hands and knees, and his wand clattered to the ground in front of him.

James looked up. He was in a small dim room. It seemed to be full of dusty trunks and stacked crates. He scrambled around, looking back in the direction from which he'd stumbled.

There, looking exactly the same but for a thick coating of dust, was Slytherin's Magic Mirror. The first word of the now-ancient inscription was still plainly visible: 'Erised'.

"James?" a girl's voice asked, startling him. "Is it you? It is! Wake up, you two! It happened!"

"Rose?" James asked, completely perplexed. She appeared from the shadows near the door, disheveled and covered with cobwebs. James blinked at her. "What are you doing here? Where am I?"

Ralph was climbing sleepily to his feet. "It's the middle of the bloody night. What else matters?"

"He knew!" Rose said, almost hopping with excitement. "He said you'd turn back up here if we made the Mirror ready, and you did! The three of us have been waiting here ever since dinner! We've been worried sick! James, what happened? Where have you been!?"

"Wait a minute," James said, climbing to his feet. "How'd Ralph know I would be showing up here? Nobody could possibly have known that."

"Not me," Ralph said sleepily, clapping James on the shoulder, "although I'd love to take credit for it. No, this was all his idea."

Ralph hooked a thumb over his shoulder. James looked and saw the boy getting slowly to his feet, a tired, crooked smile on his face.

"About time, Potter," Scorpius drawled. "Have a nice little trip?"

J
ames insisted that, curious as everyone was, he was too exhausted for lengthy explanations. He told them merely that he'd travelled back to the time of the founders, and that he'd discovered far more than he intended about Merlin. He promised to explain everything in detail the next morning, which was Saturday. Reluctantly, the others agreed, and the four students crept out of the storage room. James allowed Ralph and Scorpius to lead the way through the dark corridors, returning to the main hall.

"You actually met the founders?" Rose demanded in a hoarse whisper, refusing to wait for details.

James nodded wearily. "I did. They were a lot more… real… than I ever imagined."

Rose shook her head wonderingly. "What was Helga Hufflepuff like? She's the one we hear the least about."

"She was tough," James said, "but nice. She wanted to talk things out with Slytherin even after he'd tried to kill the lot of us. But she wasn't a pushover. None of them were. They were hardcore. I'll tell you more tomorrow. How'd you all know I'd gone missing?"

"Well, it's been a whole day, hasn't it?" Ralph said in a whisper. "Besides, Cedric woke me up in the middle of the night last night. He told me exactly what happened. He thinks Merlin had bewitched the gargoyle to alert him, somehow, anytime somebody used the password to go up to the Headmaster's office. Merlin's been stalking all over the school, obviously mad as a hornet, but he hasn't said anything. Rose thinks he's been looking for something."

"I think he was looking for the Mirror of Erised!" Rose interjected. "I bet he sensed it was here, hidden away somewhere but couldn't find it. It's protected from discovery somehow. I bet it's got him in a total lather!"

"So how did you all find it?" James asked as they reached the stairs.

Ralph looked at Scorpius, who shrugged.

"I knew where to look," the pale boy said. "And when. More or less."

The four stopped at the base of the dark staircases. On the closest landing, the Heracles window had once again changed, Heracles' face reverting back to the caricature of Scorpius. Filch would be fuming.

James shook his head. "I just can't work it out, Scorpius. How could you possibly know?"

Scorpius drew a deep sigh. "I was told. My father knew all about it. He's been studying the writings of the founders for years. It's a sort of hobby of his. He wanted to learn about Salazar Slytherin, mainly, to see what he was really like, but then he got interested in the journals of Rowena Ravenclaw. She wrote down absolutely everything. Father worked out some of the clues and codes of Ravenclaw's diaries. Apparently, she
intended
for them to be discovered. She describes a boy who visited her and the other founders, a boy supposedly from the distant future. She discovered that if he was to succeed in returning through the right Mirror, someone would have to prepare it on this side, in
this
time. She'd determined it was her duty to make sure that happened, so she developed the codex and left clues for the right person to figure it all out. My father was apparently that person. The clues gave a timeframe and instructions."

James' head was spinning. "But how could she work that out? How could she know an exact timeframe?"

Scorpius shrugged. "That's a question for my father. I can't imagine why it'd matter. The fact is that she did work it out."

"It's obvious," Rose whispered. "You must have told her the time you came from. You must have given clues."

"I didn't tell them anything like that!" James said, but then a thought occurred to him. "I did tell them about Merlin's reappearance though. I told them it happened a year ago, on the night of the alignment of the planets."

"That's almost all she'd need," Rose replied. "They knew how to track those kinds of events. She probably factored out the exact date of the alignment, then added in loads of other clues you'd mentioned, like the day of the week or the month, the time during the school term, even the phase of the moon. She was dead smart, you know!"

James nodded. "No doubt about that. But still, how did you find the Mirror if Merlin can't even find it?"

Rose interrupted Scorpius, "Ravenclaw gave a sort of magical map! She embedded an enchanted signal in the Mirror of Erised, and listed the spell required to locate the signal. All we had to do then was follow it. When we found it, we were simply to touch the Mirror and wish for lost items to be returned to us. That's what we did, and then we just waited. Finally, bang! Here you are again!"

"Pretty neat, eh?" Ralph whispered, grinning. "And all because of Scorpius here. Or his dad, actually."

Scorpius rolled his eyes. "If we're done congratulating ourselves, I've got plans in the morning. You three can stay here and get cornered by Filch's ancient Kneazle-cat if you wish, but I'm off to bed." He turned and began to creep up the stairs.

James said goodnight to Ralph, then followed Scorpius up the stairs, Rose at his side.

As the three passed through the portrait hole into the Gryffindor common room, Rose smiled tiredly at James.

"I'm glad you made it back, James. We didn't know where you'd really gone, or if Scorpius' information was correct. I was really scared. I thought maybe Merlin had gotten you somehow."

James furrowed his brow, thinking of the words Rowena Ravenclaw had said to him, urging James not to be taken in by Merlin, warning him he might have to confront the sorcerer if the moment was right. He tried to smile gamely at Rose.

"I'm fine," he said. "But it was close. I'll tell you all about it tomorrow. I'll tell you everything, if you really want to know. For now, let's sleep. I'm nearly dead on my feet."

They said goodnight and climbed their respective staircases. When James got to the darkened dormitory, Scorpius was already in his bed, his back to James.

James' pilfered cleric robe had not come through the Mirror with him, so he was still dressed in his stripy pyjamas. Wearily, he put his glasses and his wand back in his bag and climbed into bed. He lay there a moment, and then sat up.

"Scorpius," he whispered. The boy didn't move, but James knew he was listening. "I don't know why you helped me, but thanks."

James lay back down. A minute went by and James was nearly asleep when he heard Scorpius move. Out of the darkness, the boy replied in a whisper, "Don't thank me yet, Potter. The time may come when you'll wish you'd never made it back. The time may come when you'll curse me for helping you."

James slept very late the next morning and awoke to a bright glare of snow and frost on the dormitory window. He washed, dressed, and clumped downstairs, looking for his friends. Eventually, he found Rose and Ralph in the library, arguing quietly over one of Professor Revalvier's homework questions.

"You two are pathetic," James said. "Doing homework on a Saturday morning."

"Technically, it's hardly morning anymore," Rose replied. "We've been waiting for you. We're dying to know what happened yesterday."

Ralph closed his book with a thump. "Besides, it's dead cold outside. Even the lake's freezing over. All the older years are mooning around trying to figure out who to go to the Yule Ball with. There's nothing else to do. By the way, did you get Zane's duck?"

James blinked. "When? The other night?"

"No, early this morning. Er, last night, by his time. He wants to hear about what happened to you, too. He said we should duck him back when you're ready to talk about it and tell him where to meet us."

James shook his head and smiled. "That's crazy!"

"That's Zane," Ralph shrugged.

"What about Scorpius?" James asked reluctantly. "Should we include him?"

Rose looked uncomfortable. "He says he knows everything he needs to know about it already."

"Whatever that means," Ralph added. "Oh yeah, that reminds me. You got something called a 'Howler' yesterday morning."

"What?" James said, frowning. "A Howler? From who?"

"Your mum," Rose answered. "It was delivered during breakfast, but you weren't there to open it. We tried to get it out of the Great Hall, but it went off before we could. I'm afraid everybody heard it. You really could've told us, James."

"What are you talking about?" James exclaimed. "What did the Howler say?"

Rose studied James' face. "You really don't know?"

"Bloody hell, Rose, you're killing me here! What did it say?"

"It was your mum's voice," Ralph said. "She was really mad, and loud as a trumpet. She said she couldn't really blame you for taking them last year because you were just being your father's son, but she'd hoped you'd learned your lesson. She said that they were dangerous, and what's more, that they belong to your father, and he was also pretty disappointed in you for nicking them again. Then she said that she hoped everyone was hearing it, including the teachers, so they'd all know that you were sneaking around with the Invisibility Cloak and the Marauder's Map, and that they should put a stop to it."

James spluttered, speechless. "But—but I didn't take them! They're still at home in Dad's trunk! I haven't touched them since last year!"

"Well," Rose said, pointing out the obvious, "they aren't at home in your dad's trunk even if you didn't take them. They've gone missing and your mum seemed pretty certain that you were the one who'd done it."