G. Lippert - JAMES POTTER AND THE VAULT OF DESTINIES

James looked and saw Cameron Creevey grinning at him from over the back of the hearth sofa, flanked by two boggling first-years. "It's got your name on it and everything. My mates are dead jealous, of course. I've been telling the new students about last year. Remember when we went off to Hogsmeade in the tunnel beneath the Whomping Willow? Remember the wolf when we came back?"

"I remember you getting knocked out cold in the dirt," James answered unhappily. Rose poked him in the stomach with her elbow, but Cameron seemed unperturbed.

"See?" he said, turning back to the two first-years. "I told you! It was excellent."

James shook his head and joined Rose at a corner table where Ted Lupin was sitting with his former school crew. Lucy followed James, looking around with open curiosity, her face calm and watchful.

"Hey, James, Gremlin salute," Damien Damascus announced, raising his fists to either side of his head, the pinky fingers extended to form wiggling ears. Rose, Sabrina Hildegard, and Ted joined in, sticking out their tongues dutifully. James performed the salute as well, but halfheartedly.

"Things are looking a little slim for the Gremlins this year," Sabrina said, lowering her hands to the table before her, where she was folding an auger out of a page of the Daily Prophet. "What with Noah and Petra joining Ted in the fabled outside world and James running off to hobnob with his cronies in the States."

"Yeah," Damien said, raising his eyebrows derisively. "What's up with that anyway?"

James opened his mouth to reply, but Ted spoke first. "It's right here, isn't it? Front page, top of the fold." He pulled the paper out from under Sabrina's elbow and held it up for all to see. James had already seen the headline, which read, 'H. POTTER, AURORS TO JOIN INTERNATIONAL INVESTIGATIVE TASK FORCE'. Below the headline was a moving photograph of James' dad and Titus Hardcastle, standing before a podium at the Ministry while flashbulbs erupted from the crowd in front of them. The smaller headlines next to the photo read, 'MUGGLE LEADERS STILL MISSING: W.U.L.F. CLAIMS CREDIT FOR KIDNAPPINGS DESPITE MINISTRY DENIALS. FAMED NYC SKYSCRAPER DISCOVERED IN VENEZUELA, BLAMED ON "ALIENS"'.

"The whole thing's gone all international now that there's been bigwig kidnappings both here and in the States," Ted sighed, dropping the newspaper. "I don't envy your dad one bit, James. It was one thing teasing the American press into believing it was little green men that nicked their building. Getting a bunch of foreign agencies to work together is like getting horklumps to play chess."

Damien frowned askance at Ted. "How would you know about such things, Lupin?"

"I do this thing called 'reading'," Ted said, tapping the side of his nose. "I learned it from Petra. You should try it sometime!"

"It's 'Morgan' now, remember?" Sabrina corrected without looking up. "She calls herself Morgan ever since that whole debacle at her grandparents' place."

"Talking of which," Te d said, sitting up in his chair, "she and the new Headmaster are having themselves a serious little chat right about now, up in his office. I heard Uncle Harry discussing it with the old man himself, and she admitted it when I got back to the castle. Seems there's some question of whether she's going to be allowed to come along on this little jaunt of yours, Potter."

"What's that mean?" James asked, watching Ted dig something out of his robes. "She's of age now. They can't stop her if she wants to go on a trip."

"Can't they now?" Damien mused, leaning back and steepling his fingers. "I mean, there's detention, and then there's detention , if you know what I mean. There's some tricky legal questions, after all, what with both of her grandparents ending up dead. The Muggle police don't know much of anything, thanks to Merlin, but that hardly means everything's all sunshine and rainbows. The stuff we saw at that farm, well, let's just say it makes Professor Longbottom's Snapping Thornroot look like daffodil salad. Our Petra is one complicated little witch, if you ask me."

"That doesn't mean she's guilty of anything horrible," James said, sitting up. "She and her sister are lucky to be shut of the lot of them. Sounds to me like they were pretty rotten to both of them."

"They've been staying with you and your parents since the day they got out of there, right?" Rose asked, raising her eyebrows. "Did they tell you what happened that day?"

James sat back again, looking out over the common room. "Well, not really. She said that her grandfather had denied his wizard powers for the sake of his Muggle wife, some awful woman named Phyllis, who was just beastly. And she said that Phyllis tried to send Petra's sister Izabella off to some work farm place for people who are soft in the head. Petra told me that they did what they had to do to get out of there together."

"I guess that's close enough to the truth," Damien nodded. "Although it isn't all of it. That's for sure."

"What do you know about it?" James asked, meeting Damien's eyes.

"Not a whole lot more than you do, but I'm just saying—there was magic going on there the likes of which I've never seen. Merlin made us swear secrecy about it, which is fine by me. You probably wouldn't believe it anyway. All I know is that if Petra was doing it, then that wasn't the Petra I thought I knew."

"'Morgan'," Sabrina corrected again, holding up her neatly folded auger. "What do you say, Lupin? You ready to go six circles with the reigning champion?"

"Not now, not now," Ted answered distractedly, producing a rather surprising amount of miscellany from his pockets and dumping it all onto the table. "There's Gremlinery afoot. Where are they, then…"

James, Lucy, and Rose leaned over the table as Ted rooted quickly through the pile of odds and ends. A dog-eared origami frog leapt out of the detritus, limping crookedly. Every Flavor Beans and loose Knuts rolled every which way. "Aha!" Ted announced triumphantly, sitting back and producing a velvet bag tied with a silver cord. "Gather 'round, comrades. This could be interesting."

Sabrina put down the auger and frowned studiously as Ted undid the bag. "Extendable Ears?" she said, peering at its contents. "How are those going to work? You said Morgan and the Headmaster were meeting in his office. That's all the way across the castle."

"Ah, ah, ah," Ted corrected, smiling mischievously. "These are the new Extendable Ears Mark II, with a Remote Sensing Hex built right in. Just mark the object you want to serve as the receiver—in this case, an innocent peppermint that I slipped into the Headmaster's pocket on the way back to the castle, and voilà—" Here, Ted Metamorphed his face into a caricature of George Weasley, proceeding with George's infectious enthusiasm, "Instant illicit audio illumination for all your eavesdropping endeavors." He changed his face back to himself and pulled a handful of pinkish shapes out of the bag. "Strictly experimental at this point, but working at the Three 'W's does have its perks."

James took one of the pink shapes as Ted handed it to him. It was made out of foam rubber and shaped like a large ear. "What do I do with it?"

"Well," Damien said, examining his critically, "I don't guess that you eat it." Experimentally, he stuck the foam ear up to his own ear and listened. His eyes widened. "It's working!" he whispered raspily. "I can hear them!"

As one, the Gremlins and Lucy clapped the ears to the sides of their heads. James discovered that the shape was fashioned to fit neatly over his own ear so that it could be worn hands-free. He jammed it on and then leaned back, frowning slightly at the distant, echoing voices he was hearing.

"Is it them?" Sabrina asked, squinting quizzically. "They're hard to make out."