G. Lippert - James Potter and the Curse of the Gatekeeper

The four of them talked for the next hour. James grew grudgingly confident that Scorpius may indeed be able to teach them some decent defensive spells. It turned out that he had, in fact, been tutored from an early age by his grandfather, Lucius Malfoy, who was currently in seclusion and not speaking to the family. Scorpius admitted that he hadn't seen his grandfather for a few years, ever since he and Scorpius' dad had had a rather serious row.

The fire had burned down to glowing coals and the four students were beginning to pack up for the night when Deirdre Finnigan, one of Cameron Creevey's first-year friends, barreled into the common room, panting and red-faced. She glanced wildly around the room, and then pressed through the crowd, heading directly for a rear corner.

"What's with her?" Scorpius muttered.

Rose said, "She's heading for Petra's table."

The entire room hushed as the significance of Deirdre's announcement became known. "It's true!" she was saying. "I saw them leading her to the hospital wing! She could barely stand up!"

Petra simply looked at Deirdre, her mouth slightly open.

"Who?" Hugo called from across the room. "What happened?"

"Josephina Bartlett!" Deirdre cried breathlessly, turning to face the room. "She ate a cursed peppermint and it struck her with a terrible fear of heights! They found her hugging the floor of the balcony outside the Ravenclaw common room. She couldn't even stand up! Her friends said the peppermint had come in a box of chocolates from a secret admirer, but it was obviously from some enemy instead. Madam Curio says she'll be a little better by morning, but the effects won't completely wear off for months!"

"A fear-of-heights peppermint?" Graham said, screwing up his face. "Does Weasleys' make those?"

"I don't think so," Sabrina said. "That sounds like a custom curse."

Damien narrowed his eyes. "One guess who Josephina's 'secret admirer' is. I heard all about how she and Corsica went at it during the audition."

"You're all missing the point," Deirdre said, nearly bouncing. "Josephina's been cursed with a fear of heights! She'll hardly be able to climb a curb for months!"

Sabrina's eyes widened. "She can't climb onto the stage in the amphitheater! If she can't get onto the stage…"

"She can't play the part of Astra," Damien finished, grinning. "As much as I hate to see anyone benefit from another's misfortune, let me be the first to congratulate our good friend Petra… the new and improved Astra de Beaugois!"

Petra looked around, an expression of surprise and disbelief on her face. "Well, I wouldn't have wanted to get the role this way," she said. "But I suppose I wouldn't turn it down either."

Sabrina whooped happily. A cheer arose from the gathered students and James saw Petra smile for the first time in weeks. Suddenly, he remembered that he was playing the part of Treus, Astra's younger love interest. His face reddened considerably as he looked across the room at Petra. He noticed Rose was smiling knowingly at him.

"What?" he said, patting his cheeks. "I'm hot. I'm sitting right next to the fireplace."

"Mm-hmm," Rose grinned, nodding. "Oh, this is going to be so much fun, cousin. I expect you'd better start practicing up. Petra's going to have pretty high expectations for 'the kiss of true and everlasting love'."

Over the next week, autumn finally descended in full, putting a brisk chill into the air and painting the trees with vibrant oranges, reds, and yellows. Hagrid took his Care of Magical Creatures class into their winter classroom: a huge, ancient barn with stone walls and thick, cobwebbed rafters. There, he'd assembled an impressive array of fantastic creatures, all arranged in order of size. Along the entrance wall was a range of cages and pens, out of which emanated the sounds of amiable snufflings, grunts, squeals, and barks. On the other side of the dirt floor was a line of stables, each one larger than the last. The nearest one sheltered a hippogriff whose name, according to the sign painted on the gate, was Flintflank. The creature snapped its beak at the nearby cages, apparently hungry for their contents. The larger stables had thick doors, preventing any peek at their occupants. The last two doors were plated with iron and barred with huge crossbeams. They were easily twenty feet tall. Occasionally, an unsettlingly resonant growl or burst of roar would shake the barn.

James shrugged out of his cloak as he walked through the great front door, surprised at the warmth of the space despite the day's crisp chill.

"How's he heat a place like this?" Ralph asked, craning his head up at the high, wooden ceiling. "It's right balmy in here."

The students filed into the barn, peering curiously into the cages or tentatively approaching the hippogriff's stable. The great beast stamped its foreleg and tossed its beaked head.

"Stay well back now," Hagrid called. "We'll meet old Flintflank a bit later in the year. Until then, it's best if he sees yeh from across the room instead of right in front of 'im. Let's start the season off by gettin' t'know some of the smaller beasts here in the cages an' such."

Hagrid led the class over to the smaller cages lining the wall. He fiddled with one of the locks as he spoke. "We've been right lucky over the years to come across so many examples of the magical world's most unusual creatures. A former student o' mine has become something of an expert on beast tracking, and she brings me any creatures she finds that've been injured or fallen sick. I do my best to nurse 'em back to health, but a few of 'em never gets to the point of being able to survive in the wild again. I give 'em the best home I can, o' course. The end result is that we've become rather well-known around the magical world for our menagerie," Hagrid turned, cradling a small lump of breathing brown fur in his arm. "Why, experts come from the world over to meet and study our little family. Isn't that right, Punkin?"

Ralph leaned toward James and whispered, "I talked to Rose this morning. She thinks she's found out something important about Merlin."

James whispered back, "Whatever it is, I don't want to hear it. She's always digging up new dirt from some old legend or crusty history book. We know most of that stuff's not true."

"I don't know it's not true," Ralph murmured, "I just know he doesn't quite seem like that anymore. Either way, she says you'll want to hear it. It explains a little bit of where all the stories came from about how he didn't love the Muggle world. She says it 'puts it all in context', whatever that means."

James pressed his lips together doubtfully. He'd told Rose and Scorpius that he intended to prove Merlin wasn't involved in the conspiracy they'd witnessed in the Mirror, but he hadn't yet done it. In fact, the idea of doing so frightened him quite a lot. It wasn't that he didn't have a plan. He did, and it was quite simple. It would require some bravery and the help of Cedric's ghost, and it could get him into quite a lot of trouble if he was caught, but none of those things were what worried him. He felt a strange, pressing reluctance to go ahead with it, mostly because he was secretly afraid of what he might discover. If he was right, then Merlin wasn't involved, and James could prove it to Rose and everyone else. But what if he was wrong? Despite his words to the contrary, James was worried about it. What if he went through with his plan and found that the Headmaster was, in fact, in league with the former Death Eaters and that horrible, smoky entity? Worse, what if the entity was the thing the cave skeleton, Farrigan, had talked about: the Gatekeeper, which Merlin was supposedly responsible for bringing into the world? The Headmaster had been acting rather secretive and suspicious. He'd forbidden James from telling anyone what the skeleton of Farrigan had said, and that was worrisome in itself. If what the skeleton had said wasn't true, why would Merlin care if James told anyone?