Therefore I will admit: I spoke to Hagrid, and he wisely regaled me with the whole story. We conversed on the deck of this very ship as we awaited you and your family. He told me of the house elf, and her sabotage of your otherwise courageous, if rather foolhardy, arrangement with his giantish kin.”
James slumped in mingled relief and humiliation. “I tried to tell them that Heddlebun couldn’t be trusted. I saw what she did back at the Vandergriff’s house.”
“You saw it,” Merlin clarified, “But Hagrid did not. Nor your cousin, or Mr. Walker, or Mr. Dolohov. ”
James glanced aside at him again. “Exactly. So?”
“So the truth was clear for you to see, but cloudy for them. It was your responsibility to make it clear, by whatever means necessary.
Thus, the responsibility for the error rests heavier on your shoulders than theirs.”
This wasn’t the first time that James had encountered the headmaster’s strict, unforgiving interpretation of responsibility, but it still nettled him to no end. He crossed his arms, clutching his shoulders against the chill of the hold. “So it’s all my fault, then. Is that what you want me to hear?”
Merlin shrugged again. “If there is one thing that constantly dismays me about this age, it is the speed and ease with which good people give up. Grant me a stubborn donkey over a weak-willed saint.
At least the donkey’s kick can be aimed at the proper doors.”
“So,” James said, rolling his eyes to himself, “just to be clear, are we in trouble or not?”
“That is what we are on this journey to discover,” Merlin answered, returning his gaze to the small book in his hands. To James’ eye, the book looked completely blank, but he knew that this was surely an illusion to prevent its being read by the likes of him. “For you, Mr.
Potter, the days of trouble being meted out in house points and lines are over. Make no mistake: from here onward, trouble shall be measured in laws, years, and blood.”
James chose to view this as a good thing, in the sense that it didn’t seem to indicate that the headmaster intended to give him, Ralph, or Rose any official punishment.
Soon enough, the ship tilted upwards and seemed to accelerate.
The momentum pushed James against Millie, almost driving her off her end of the short bench. Merlin, however, remained completely planted, as if his feet were rooted to the floor. He continued to read his tiny, fat book, peering down through his spectacles, even as the ship rocked upright, seemed to hover in suspension for a long, sickening moment, and then keeled slowly forward, falling flat again onto a thudding, sloshing surface.
“Londontown, I presume,” Merlin said, finally tucking his book into his robes and standing as much as the low overhead would allow.
Footsteps sounded from above, moving quickly. Merlin climbed the stairs to the deck with James and Millie following close behind.
Cold air coursed over the deck above and whistled eerily through the rigging. By the look of the city all around, the Gertrude appeared to have surfaced in exactly the same place as last time. Fortunate, of course, since the ice of the Thames had not frozen over the original hole yet.
The adults congregated on the stern of the ship and, without a word, apparated to the shore, materializing on a long boardwalk in the shadow of a dark wharf, where they were nothing more than shadows on a darker background. Millie side-along apparated with Hermione and Ron, while Harry remained last to take James.
“That was wily of you to arrange to come along the way that you did,” he said with a wry smile. “I hope your friend Millie knows enough to make it worth it.”
James shrugged a little. “She hopes so, too.”
He took his father’s hand when he offered it. A moment later, the world vanished into a whip-crack and a whirl of cold darkness.
Within a sliver of a second, James’ feet smacked down onto the leaning planks of the boardwalk.
When he looked up, Merlin had his staff in his hand, having produced it out of thin air, as he always did when he desired it. He held it aloft over the edge of the boardwalk, pointing it toward the dark ship where it bobbed in its circle of broken ice.
“Cuddiasid,” he said, reverting to the guttural language of his ancient origins. A wave of purple light swept upwards through the runes of his staff, culminating in the tip with a brief but blinding flash. When James’ eyes cleared, the Gertrude was gone. Shards of broken ice choked the hole where it had rocked only a second before. The ship was still there, James knew, but rendered utterly hidden and invisible through whatever prehistoric enchantment the sorcerer had cast over it.
“That’s pretty handy,” Millie commented, awed. “I see why you came along.”
“My usefulness has only begun to reveal itself,” Merlin said, clacking his staff to the wooden plank next to his feet. “Assuming that your usefulness serves as well as Mr. Potter hopes.”
Millie looked uncomfortably from Merlin to James.
Hagrid spoke up, pointing to the brightly glowing shape of Tower Bridge in the near distance. “Norberta went that way. Down into th’ city, southwest from th’ south tower.”
Harry struck out, inviting the others to follow. “Then let us get into the proper vicinity. Perhaps we will get lucky and stumble upon the unmistakable stench of dragon manure.”
Ron shrugged gamely. “That’s the only time that smell’s been called ‘lucky’, I wager.”
“Wellnow,” Hagrid suggested, shrugging his coat more tightly about his shoulders, “I’ve always found dragon scat t’ ‘ave a not unpleasant odor, as a matter o’ fact. Now hippogriff guano, gor…” He shook his head violently, “noble creatures they may be, but there’s a stink to peel the varnish off yer broomstick.”
Following along behind, Hermione sniffed, “I expect there are better topics of conversation we might explore.”
From there, the troupe walked in silence as they approached the lights and sounds of the city, climbing a switchback of concrete stairs to a thoroughfare lit with brilliant orange-ish streetlamps on tall, industrial-looking posts. The street was surprisingly busy for the hour, filled with gleaming black taxis, lorries belching smoke, red double-decker buses, and endless automobiles. Dozens of traffic lights hung over cross-roads, blinking their red, amber, and green eyes at the lines of vehicles below.
In one direction, Tower Bridge loomed over low rooftops. In the other, a massive roundabout spun with vehicles, lit like a flying saucer, like a larger-than-life version of the Wocket from James’ first year.
Merlin stepped out to cross the crowded thoroughfare, completely ignoring the rushing vehicles that bore down on him, their headlamps glaring and painting his robes with brightness.