G. Lippert - JAMES POTTER AND THE VAULT OF DESTINIES

"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 th is 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.

"Bloody hell," Ralph said in a high, wavering voice. "I knew I should have just sent a gift."

Several hours later, as the sun descended beyond the trees, casting the world into copper twilight, the troop of witches and wizards shambled back out of the Forbidden Forest, looking decidedly less crisp than they had when they'd entered. James and Ralph walked with Hagrid, who had gotten rather louder and substantially more rambling as the evening had progressed. The halfgiant's footsteps meandered back and forth across the path, one huge hand each on James and Ralph's heads.