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

Philia's face had gone beet red with anger. "I'll teach you to speak to me that way, you—"

"Do stop, Philia," Tabitha interrupted, amused. "Scorpius is right. This is their club. We must abide by his rules. While we are in this room. Let us see what he can teach us, since he has apparently been so well-educated."

Scorpius glared at Philia, daring her to defy Tabitha. After a moment, Philia's face hardened. She pocketed her wand and folded her arms.

"Just as I thought," Scorpius said, turning to face the gathered club members again. "First things first. You must learn to defend, parry, and Stun before you can learn to make good use of anything more powerful. Skip the basics and you will be target practice for any git with a wand. Fortunately, we are well on our way with those skills, and I can only hope that our new Slytherin friends can keep up with us. But later, once you have mastered those techniques, you will be ready… to learn this."

Scorpius spun on his heel and flung out his arm, aiming his wand at the broken clockwork dummy. "Avada Kedavra!" he roared, baring his teeth. The bolt that shot from his wand was so bright and so green that it lit the entire room. It struck the dummy in the chest, and its arms and legs flailed full length, trembling violently. Then, with a clank and a rattle, the dummy fell off its frame. It clumped to the floor in a heap.

Scorpius stared at it, his eyes slit and his teeth still bared.

Nolan Beetlebrick stepped out of the perimeter of the crowd and kicked at the dummy with his foot. A cog tumbled out of it and rolled across the floor. "Well," the boy said, nodding, "you definitely killed it."

There was a round of nervous, scattered applause. Rose looked over at James, her eyes wide and worried. Her expression seemed to ask what have we done?. James simply shook his head slowly.

"This could be better than I thought," Albus said, nudging James. "Way to go, big brother."

As they left the gym a while later, James caught up to Ralph. "What happened to you? Where were you back there?" he demanded.

Ralph glanced at James defensively. "What? I was there the whole time!"

"You didn't say a word when Tabitha and Goyle showed up and started killing the target dummies!"

"Well," Ralph replied, shrugging and walking quickly, "it looked to me like you and Rose had it under control."

"Under control? You call completely losing our grip on the club 'under control'? Scorpius is planning to teach Unforgivable Curses!"

Ralph didn't say anything as he walked. James stared at him angrily, his eyes narrowed. "You want to learn them too, don't you?" he demanded.

Ralph pressed his lips together, refusing to reply. James turned in front of him, stopping him in the hall, but Ralph spoke first.

"Don't, James," he said, dropping his eyes and shaking his head. "Look, you're my best mate in the whole school, but we come from two different worlds. You Gryffindors can be all sweet and courageous about things like the Unforgivable Curses, but frankly, yeah, it does make sense to me to learn them. I'm sorry."

James' mouth dropped open. "Ralph, there's a reason they're called 'unforgivable'. We can't even use them to fight the Gatekeeper if it comes to that! That thing isn't even human! So there's no excuse for learning them."

"Isn't there?" Ralph said. James knew Ralph hated confrontations, but the bigger boy forced himself to look James in the eye. "Are you telling me you wouldn't have used an Unforgivable Curse to stop Voldemort from killing your grandparents?"

James backed up a step, speechless. He started to reply, but Ralph went on, cutting him off. "What about when my uncle was getting ready to murder Ted Lupin's dad? Would you have used an Unforgivable Curse to stop him from doing that? Or even my own grandparents when they were driving my dad to a Muggle orphanage, telling him they didn't want him anymore, that no Squib was good enough to be their son? What if someone had been there to Imperio them, and force them to take him back home, and make them love him the way parents are supposed to love their kids? Are you telling me you'd have decided not to do it because only 'bad' people use Unforgivable Curses?"

James stammered, shocked at the quiet ferocity in Ralph's eyes. "Ralph, I… no. I mean…"

Ralph shook his head and looked away. "I can't blame you for not understanding that, James. But honestly, if using an Unforgivable Curse could bring back the people you'd thought were lost forever, wouldn't you do it? If it could return the things that were taken from you by people who were stupid and selfish and mean… wouldn't you?" Ralph looked at James again, his eyes bright. "Because I'd do it, James. I really would. Without a second thought."

With that, Ralph pushed past James and walked into the dimness of the corridor. James knew there was no point in following him, but he was frightened by the things Ralph had said. He'd never seen such passion in the big boy before, but apparently, it had been there all along, just under the surface.

Rose caught up to James, shaking her head worriedly. "We'll have to corner Scorpius in the common room," she said. "He's still back there surrounded by everybody. He's showing them how to do the Levicorpus jinx. What's the matter ?"

James shook his head, still looking after Ralph. "I don't know, Rose. None of this is going the way it's supposed to. And to tell you the truth, I don't have any idea what I'm supposed to do about it."

"I'll tell you what you need to do about it, James," Rose said seriously.

James glanced at her, furrowing his brow. "And what would that be?"

"Same thing you did last year when you ran into trouble," Rose replied, arching her eyebrows. "Go ask for help from somebody who does know what to do."

By the beginning of next week, James had still not spoken to Scorpius about his speech at the last Defence Club. It wasn't that he hadn't had the opportunity; it was more that he simply didn't know what to say. James knew Scorpius only well enough to know that if he demanded Scorpius not teach Unforgivable Curses to the club, Scorpius would probably begin the next meeting with them. He considered simply removing Scorpius as teacher for the club, but the fact of the matter was that Scorpius was a fairly good teacher, and he did seem to know an awful lot.

The worst part was that James was unable to discuss the problem with Ralph since Ralph apparently wanted to learn the curses. James could sort of understand the things Ralph had said, but all the reasons Ralph had listed for learning the curses were already in the past. Learning the curses now wouldn't bring back James' grandparents or Ted's dad. Perhaps Ralph thought there were more such tragedies to come and he wanted to be prepared for them. Either way, it was worrying. Ralph had been moody and quiet ever since the conversation in the hall, and James decided it was best just to leave him alone for a while.

Fortunately, James was completely distracted from all these things for a short while during Tuesday's Care of Magical Creatures class. Hagrid led the students around to the back of the barn, shushing them and keeping them behind him with one enormous hand.

"Grawp's getting rather good at this," Hagrid whispered, "but we don't want to distract 'im. It's ticklish work, walkin' a dragon."

As the group crept around the edge of the barn, James peered past Ralph, struggling to see. In the near distance, just at the edge of the Forest, Grawp was walking very slowly, looking back over his shoulder. He seemed to have something like an iron door strapped to his left forearm like a shield. A very thick chain led from Grawp's upraised right hand, ending at a collar on Norberta's long neck. Amazingly, the dragon was ambling docilely behind Grawp, sniffing at the trees and occasionally rooting her snout into the ground, snapping at something.