G. Lippert - James Potter and the Hall of the Elders' Crossing

"Where's the Hall of Elder's Crossing?" James asked again.

Snape regarded him, shaking his head minutely. "As I said, Potter, you do not know what you're asking."

Zane spoke up. "Why not?"

"Because the Hall of Elders' Crossing is not a place, Mr. Walker. You, of all people, should have recognized that. If any of you had been paying even a shred of attention for the last several months, you'd know it. The Hall of Elders' Crossing is an event. Think about it for a moment, Mr. Walker. Elders' Crossing."

Zane blinked. "Elders," he said thoughtfully. "Wait a minute. That's what the astronomers of the Middle Ages called the astrological signs. The planets. They called them 'the Elder Ones'."

"So the Hall of Elder's Crossing…" James concentrated, and then widened his eyes in revelation. "The alignment of the planets! The Hall of Elders' Crossing is when all the planets cross each other in their paths. When they… make a hall!"

"The alignment of the planets," Ralph agreed in an awed voice. "It's not a place, but a time."

Snape stared hard at all three boys. "It's both," he said resignedly. "It's the moment the planets align, and it's the place that all three of the relics of Merlinus Ambrosius are brought together. That's when and where the return of Merlin can only be accomplished. That is his requirement. And unless I am greatly mistaken, if you mean to go through with this foolhardy plan of yours, you have less than one week."

Zane snapped his fingers. "That's why the voodoo queen's been drilling us to work out the exact moment of the alignment! She said it would be a night we'd never forget, and she meant it! That's when they mean to bring the relics together."

"The Grotto Keep," James whispered. "They'll do it there. The throne is already there." The other two boys nodded. James felt flushed with fear and excitement. He looked at the portrait of Severus Snape. "Thanks."

"Don't thank me. Take my advice. If you plan to go through with this, I will not be able to help you. No one will. Don't be a fool."

James backed away, extinguishing his wand and pocketing it. "Come on, you two. Let's get back."

Snape watched as James consulted the Marauder's Map. It wasn't Snape's first encounter with the map. On one occasion, the map had insulted him fairly cheekily. Having assured themselves that Filch was still in his office, the three crowded back under the Invisibility Cloak and shuffled back through the door of the Headmistress' office and into the hall. Snape considered waking Filch, who he knew was sleeping in his office with a half empty bottle of fire whiskey on his desk. One of Snape's self portraits resided in a hunting painting in Filch's office, and Snape could easily use that painting to alert Filch to the three boys' sneaking. Reluctantly, he decided not to. Like it or not, such petty tricks gave him little pleasure anymore. The ghost of Cedric Diggory, who Snape had come to recognize before anyone else, closed the door behind the boys and shot the bolt.

"Thank you, Mr. Diggory," Snape said quietly, amidst the snores of the other paintings. "Feel free to accompany them back to their dormitories. Or not. I don't much care."

Cedric nodded to Snape. Snape knew the ghost didn't like to talk to him. Something about a ghost talking to a painting seemed to disturb the boy. Nothing technically human on either end, Snape figured. Cedric dismissed himself and walked through the locked wooden door.

One of the paintings near Snape stopped snoring.

"He isn't precisely like his father, is he?" a thoughtful, older voice said.

Snape settled back into his portrait. "He's only like him in the worst of ways. He's a Potter."

"Now who's passing easy judgments?" the other voice said with a hint of teasing.

"It's not an easy judgment. I've watched him. He's as arrogant and foolish as the others that bore his last name. Don't pretend you don't see it."

"I see that he came to ask for your help."

Snape nodded grudgingly. "One can only hope that that instinct has a chance to mature. He asked for help only when he ran out of other options. And he didn't, you'll notice, actually take any of my advice."

The older voice was silent for a moment, and then asked, "Will you tell Minerva?"

"Perhaps," Snape said, considering. "Perhaps not. For now, I will do as I've done all along. I will watch."

"You believe there is a chance he and his friends might succeed, then?"

Snape didn't answer. A minute later, the older voice spoke again. "He is being manipulated. He doesn't know it."

Snape nodded. "I assumed there was no point in telling him."

"You're probably right, Severus. You have an instinct for such things."

Snape replied pointedly, "I learned when not to talk from the master, Albus."

"Indeed you did, Severus. Indeed you did."

15. The M uggle S py

Martin J. Prescott was a Reporter. He always thought of the word as if it was capitalized. For Martin, being a Reporter was more than a job. It was his identity. He wasn't just another face reading from a teleprompter or another name next to a dateline. He was what the producers in the age of the twenty-fourhour news cycle called 'a personality'. He accented the news. He framed it. He colored it. Not in any negative way, or so he firmly believed. He simply added that subtle dash of flair that made news into News, in other words, something people might want to watch or read. For one thing, Martin J. Prescott had the look. He wore white button-down shirts with jeans, and he usually had his shirt sleeves rolled up a bit. If he wore a tie, it was invariably of an impeccable style, but loosened just a tad: enough to say yes, I've been wor king extremely hard, but I respect my viewers enough to maintain a degree of professionalism. Martin was thin, youngish, with sharp, handsome features and very dark hair that always looked windblown and fabulous. But, as Martin was proud of saying to the attendees at the occasional Press Club breakfast, his appearance wasn't what made him a Reporter. It was his sense of people, and of news. He knew how to plug the one into the other in a way that produced the biggest emotional jolt.

But the last thing that made Martin J. Prescott a Reporter was that he loved the story. Where the other high-paid and high-profile news faces had long since assembled a team of lackeys to tramp far and wide, collecting footage and filming interviews while they themselves huddled in their dressing rooms reading about their ratings, Martin prided himself in doing all his own travel and research. The truth of it was that Martin enjoyed the reporting, but what he absolutely loved was the chase. Being a member of the press was like being a hunter, except that the former aimed with a camera rather than a gun. Martin liked to stalk his prey himself. He delighted in the pursuit, in the blurry jostle of handheld camera footage, the shouted, perfectlytimed question, the long stakeout of a courtroom back door or a suspicious hotel room. Martin did it all himself, often alone, often filming himself in the act, providing his viewers breathless moments of high tension and confrontation. No one else did it like him, and this had made him famous.

Martin had, as they say of the very best Reporters, a nose for news. His nose told him that the story he was chasing right now, if it panned out, if he could simply provide the real, unadulterated footage, was quite possibly the story of a lifetime. Even now, crouched among the brush and weeds, dirty and salty with two days' worth of sweat, his fabulous hair matted and soiled with twigs and leaves, even after all the setbacks and failures, he still felt this was the story that would cement his career. In fact, the harder he'd had to work for it, the more doggedly he'd pursued it. Even after the ghost. Even after being kicked out of a third story window by a homicidal kid. Even after his harrowing brush with the gigantic spider. Martin viewed setbacks as proof of value. The harder it was, the more it was worth pursuing. He took a grim satisfaction in knowing that, had he merely hired a team of investigators to check this out, they'd have turned back months ago, when they'd first met the strange, magical resistance of the place, without a solitary blip of a story. This was the kind of story that could only be told by him. This, he told himself with satisfaction, was anchorman material. No more field reports. No more special interest segments. If this panned out, Martin J. Prescott would be able to pave his own way in any major newsroom in the country. But why stop there? With this under his belt, he could anchor anywhere in the world, couldn't he?