Hermione grudgingly agreed. “But perhaps we should take Millie and James with us, then. They’ve done their part.”
“No way!” Millie exclaimed, and then composed herself. “I mean, I’d much rather stay and watch. If you don’t mind, Madame.”
“Ugh,” Hermione rolled her eyes. “Don’t call me Madame.”
“I’m with Millie,” James said, “And Uncle Ron’s right. What could go wrong? We’ve got the great Merlinus Ambrosius with us!”
Harry nudged his son and muttered, “I think ‘the great Merlinus Ambrosius’ is fairly immune to flattery.”
“You would think wrongly,” Merlin observed idly from some distance away, not turning around.
“So be it,” Hermione said, raising both hands. “But just remember, without me or your friend Ralph here, it’s up to Millie to be the voice of reason.” She glanced at James, then his father and Merlin.
“Because I know none of you three will be.”
“Come, love,” Ron said, offering Hermione his arm. “Allow me whisk you away on a winter’s moonlit boat ride down the romantic and pristine Thames River.”
Hermione smiled at his roguish grin and took his arm. Together they turned and hurried away, returning the way they had come.
James and Millie watched them go.
“They’re so cute,” she sighed.
James shrugged. “Cute is relative, I suppose.”
“We should keep moving,” Harry said briskly, turning and resuming their walk along the footpath. Merlin strode onward down the centre of the road, and the magically disguised Norberta budged forward to follow, her engine throttling, her air brakes hissing and squeaking their release.
“Patience will be our ally,” Merlin reminded them. “We have nothing to fear so long as we all keep our heads about us and our feet on the ground.”
“Or our wheels on the road,” Millie added, skipping forward with what James considered far too much glibness.
“As you say, Miss Vandergriff,” Merlin answered calmly.
With painstaking deliberation, the group walked along the street, turned left, away from the brighter lights and thrum of nearby traffic, and maintained a steady, sedate pace into an area of multi-level parking structures, closed office buildings, occasional pubs (open and thumping with music), and corner groceries (closed and barricaded for the night).
As they meandered from street to street, Merlin walked down the centre line with Norberta the refuse truck prowling along right behind him, backwards and grumbling deep in her engine, with the remainder of her entourage walking beside her on nearby footpaths. Occasional cars passed them, usually hurrying to get around the slow-moving truck, their drivers barely sparing a second glance at the strange assembly. As they neared crossings or small roundabouts, Merlin would first consult quietly with Harry Potter, who seemed to know these streets extremely well, and then turn to speak calming, indecipherable words to the refuse truck at his heel, which thrummed its engine, shuddered on its dirty tyres, and hissed from its air-brakes.
The truck still smelled of the fiery brimstone guts of Norberta, now exhaling from the huge open rear compactor of the truck.
At one angle in the narrow street, a pair of young men, one skinny and one fat, emerged from the neon glow of a questionable-looking basement pub, each carrying nearly empty bottles of ale and swaying slightly on their feet. They stumbled out into the path of Merlin and the gently throttling truck, both of which came to a halt under the red glare of a traffic light.
“Blimey,” the skinny man said, pushing his long ginger hair out of his face. “This bloke is huge.” He stopped in the street and pointed up at Merlin with the hand still holding a brown ale bottle. “Are you seeing this bloke? He’s bloody hyooge!”
“I don’t think either of you are seeing anyone,” Merlin suggested, arching an eyebrow for subtle emphasis. “Huge or otherwise. Merely a common city vehicle about an honest night’s work.”
“Yeah,” the fatter man said, frowning and squinting. “I don’t see nothing but a bleedin’ refuse truck. Come on, yeh piker.” He tugged his ginger mate on the elbow, nearly pulling him off his feet.
The ginger man recovered, shrugged, and then tossed his bottle into the open rear compactor of the refuse truck. With a hiss of hydraulics and a shimmy-clatter that shook the entire truck, the compactor closed on the bottle, chewed it up into tinkling bits, and then let out a strangely brimstone-smelling belch.
The traffic light overhead clicked green. The troupe walked forward again, angling into an alley lined with parked cars glinting under streetlamps.
“Dad,” James said quietly, “I heard something over the holiday that I wanted to ask you about.”
Harry ambled easily, scuffing his boots on the footpath. “What’s that, son?”
James turned and glanced back at Millie who was walking behind them, watching the gently rolling Norberta-truck. “I spoke to Millie’s grandmother. Or, she spoke to me, actually. She told me some stuff about Grimmauld Place.”
“You met the Countess?” Harry smiled aside at his son. “She’s quite an impressive Lady, I’m told.”
James nodded and shrugged. “She says that when you inherited the Black mansion, you inherited a sort of… er… title with it.”
“Did she say so,” Harry commented. There was no curiosity in his voice, and James wondered if perhaps his dad did know more about the Black estate than he’d ever admitted. “A title. Well, blimey.”
“She said it’s more than just a title, though,” James went on, frowning as he thought back. “She says that it’s a responsibility. A sort of ancient guardianship over some huge, elemental human force.
They’re lots of them, she says, and they’re all colours. Red was the Barony of Love, Green was for ambition and greed, that sort of thing.
Except that a lot of the titles have died off or something, leaving their forces unguarded, just running all out of control in the world.”
“Sounds serious,” Harry nodded, pursing his lips.
“Grandmother Eunice is a little, er, eccentric,” Millie commented, approaching from behind and falling in beside James. “She believes all sorts of crazy old things. She’s never read the Quibbler, but she’s got loads in common with it.”
“Sure didn’t sound like the Quibbler to me,” James muttered.
“Grandmother can be very convincing,” Millie said, her tone turning lofty. “After all, one doesn’t usually expect a Countess to be a bit of a wee barmpot. But there’s a reason she no longer brings up such things with my parents, or Bent and Mattie.”
From the centre of the narrow street, Merlin said, “I knew the Viscount Blacke in my time. A thoroughly vicious and duplicitous man, capable of deeds legendary in their capriciousness and vanity. We were friends, in a sense.”