The rudder is hanging on by a toothpick, but that’s sort of academic, since the wheel is smashed in two.” Behind Rose, Heddlebun slunk along closely, wringing her hands, glancing around as if trying to see in every direction at once. The house elf appeared exquisitely uncomfortable this close to the Muggle city.
“We can reparo most o’ that,” Hagrid soothed, keeping his voice low over the expanse of ice. “An’ what we can’t, we likely don’t need, at least fer the journey back home. It’ll be fine, Rosie.”
“We can’t reparo what’s been torn off under the ice,” Rose said, clearly struggling to control her exasperation. “But assuming enough bits of the window glass are still scattered around the deck, we should at least be able to seal up the wheelhouse and mend the wheel. We may get back home, but just barely. Assuming there are no other unexpected disasters along the way.”
Zane clapped Rose lightly on the shoulder. “That’s the spirit, Rosie.”
She gave him a withering glare. James knew that it was a short list of people who could get away with calling his cousin “Rosie”, and Zane Walker was not one of them.
Ralph shook his head at the wounded ship, eyes wide. “Thanks, but I think I’ll take a cab home, if you don’t mind.”
“It’ll be fine, Ralph,” James said, not fully believing it himself.
“We’ve rode in worse. Er… probably.” With some effort, he turned the big boy around and the group began to cross the ice, heading into the shadow of a ramshackle pier and the extravagantly derelict hulk of a warehouse beyond. The rusty walls and roof of the structure sagged ominously. The windows were enormous square sockets, fogged with grime wherever they weren’t broken and gaping like shocked eyes. The decrepit building made even the bedraggled Gertrude look like a showroom model by comparison.
“If all went well,” Hagrid said, boosting Rose onto the pier from the ice, “Grawpie and Prechka should be awaitin’ just inside, along with Norberta. We’ll get ‘er out, onto the ship, and be home before the clock strikes two. Grawp and Prechka can be on their way back to the mountains under cover o’ darkness. Neat as can be.”
Shivering as he climbed a metal ladder onto the concrete pier, Zane said, “Your optimism is an inspiration to us all, Hagrid.”
Heddlebun stole from shadow to shadow, her huge eyes bulging as she took in the unfamiliar sights. Rusted barges lined the pier, locked into the ice and loaded with gloom. Snow skirled and wafted all around, clouding the air and forming ghostly haloes around the security lights that lined the pier, erected on leaning wooden poles. Hagrid paused just outside the range of the nearest lamp and raised his right arm. In his hand he held aloft what appeared to be a cigarette lighter. He clicked the button on its barrel and the security light winked out.
In a low voice, James asked, “Where’d you get a Deluminator?”
Rose answered smugly, “I liberated it from dad’s dresser over the holidays. That’s how a Gremlin does things. Feel free to take notes.”
Hagrid used the Deluminator to snuff the remaining lights along the pier one by one as the troupe made their way along. They climbed ramps of iron stairs to higher levels, and then followed a length of broken pavement toward a line of enormous bay doors. Every door was closed and locked with a rusted chain and padlock, except for the door at the very end, which was wrenched up and badly dented, its chain dangling and swinging in the low, whistling wind.
“That’s the one, then,” Hagrid nodded, clumping closer to the looming warehouse. Keeping his voice low, he added, “Stay close now.
And keep quiet.”
Hugging himself and huddling next to Hagrid, Zane asked, “How do we know they’re in there?”
As if in answer, a huge, grating noise shook the warehouse. The metal doors rattled on their tracks and a few remaining windows tinkled, shattering in their frames. A burst of yellow light briefly illuminated the darkness inside, dissipating into orange flickers.
“Either that’s them,” James gulped, “Or the boundaries of the magical world are way worse off than we thought.”
Hagrid crept into the shadow of the open bay door. Inside, just visible in the gloom, was a cavernous space surrounded by banks of high windows. A lacework of struts and girders crowded the upper reaches.
From these hung complicated machinery that James assumed had, at one time, operated cranes for moving cargo.
Hagrid’s voice was an echoing rasp in the darkness as he called, “Grawpie?”
Another grating grunt filled the space, and James smelled the familiar chemical reek of Dragon breath. A burst of yellow flame illuminated the pocked concrete floor, piles of old shipping crates, the carcass of a lorry propped on blocks, and three dark bulks hiding behind it.
“Grawpie!” Hagrid cried, relieved, and hurried toward the lorry, the others following close behind. “Prechka! And sweet Norberta! You made it!”
James’ feet gritted on the broken concrete floor as he hurried to stay close to Hagrid, but he faltered as the giants stepped out from behind the lorry. He’d forgotten what it was like to be in close company with such gigantic people. Grawp’s head peered over the lorry’s cab, his hair as thick and matted as a thicket of briars, his Quaffle-sized eyes glimmering reflections of the high windows. Prechka, however, dwarfed even him. Looming amidst the girders high overhead, her head looked impossibly small on the mountainous bulk of her shoulders. When her feet came down on the concrete floor, it cracked and buckled. The rafters shook, sifting thick dust down onto the smaller people below.
Grawp spoke with slow emphasis, in what he clearly thought was a careful hush. “Brother Hagrid. Grawp and Prechka hide, but Norberta loud. Norberta smell other dragon in Sea of Light.”
“There, there,” Hagrid reached and patted his half-brother on the elbow. “Yeh done well, Grawpie. Both o’ yeh. We’ll take Norberta from ‘ere. Heddlebun?”
But Heddlebun, James noticed, was already about her work.
The tiny elf had ducked under the derelict lorry and was now whispering to Norberta, who lowered her huge serpentine neck to listen. The dragon’s breath, which had been short and chuffing with anxiety only moments before, now came in slower, longer gusts, with less reek of brimstone. James couldn’t make out Heddlebun’s words. He couldn’t even tell if she was speaking a language he understood. But Norberta comprehended well enough, and that was all that mattered. A coil of tension unwound from James’ shoulders, and only in its absence did he realize just how worried he had been about the prospect of leading Norberta back to the ship.
The ground shook as Prechka lowered to one knee behind the lorry. Impatiently, she pushed it like a toy, making room for her bulk.
The lorry rocked as it slid on its blocks, scraping and crunching along the concrete floor. Zane had to leap backward as it reared precipitously near him.