Darkness filled the pub’s back hall and the staircase leading up to rental rooms. A moment later, bluish light bloomed as the rear door blasted open. The four poured out into a tiny courtyard, turning immediately to the enchanted brick wall that separated Muggle London from Diagon Alley.
But the wall was barely still there. Bricks pattered down from an enormous, ragged, dragon-sized hole. Beyond this, the dragon herself loped and careened down the winding wizarding thoroughfare of Diagon Alley, her wings tearing at eaves, her tail bashing aside signs and awnings. Witches and wizards leapt into doorways as she thundered past.
Merlin disapparated again, vanishing into a pinpoint of light, this time leaving Millie behind.
“The circus!” Harry announced, pointing. Beneath the dark sky, James could just see the peaks of coloured tents and fluttering banners over a line of nearby gabled roofs. “Stay here!” his father commanded, shooting him a steely glance. A moment later, he vanished with a ringing crack.
“Like bloody hell I’m staying here,” James said, turning to Millie. He reached for her hand.
She recoiled from it in surprise, her eyes glassy in the dimness.
“What are you doing!?”
“I’m apparating to the circus!” he said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. “Come on!”
“But I don’t want to go to the circus!” she cried, nearly hysterical with fear and confusion. “And you don’t know how to apparate yet!
I’m… I’m being the voice of reason!”
“I’ve apparated once before!” he insisted, pushing his hand toward her again. “Er, sort of.”
“I’m not going!” she said firmly, and stamped her foot. “You’re all crazy! Do you know that!? Crossing streets is one thing! But this is just… just…!”
James slumped helplessly, and then gave up on her. He glanced up again to the fluttering banners and illuminated peaks of the circus tents. They were barely a quarter mile away. He tried to pinpoint where exactly they were, calling up a mental map of Wizarding London.
He decided, somewhat haphazardly, that the circus was erected in the square where Diagon Alley and Sartori Alley intersected. With this picture firmly established in his mind, he stepped away from Millie, fisted his hands, squeezed his eyes shut, and flexed the mental muscle that he had last used when trying to cross a Hogwarts classroom.
There was no Edgar Edgecomb to toss a firecracker at him this time. He felt the world twang away, unreeling in a blur. Then, just as it had with his father a minute before, it reasserted itself around him. His feet struck down on hard stone and he swayed only slightly, sticking out his arms for balance.
He opened his eyes and looked around. He was standing in the dead center of the square formed by the intersection of Sartori and Diagon Alleys. He’d apparated into a fountain, in fact, though one fortunately drained for the winter. On both sides, enormous tents, striped orange, blue, and white, stretched up into darkness, their canvas sides fluttering in the cold wind.
The noise of Norberta’s approach was behind him. The ground trembled with her pounding footsteps. The air rang with her feverish roar.
James turned on the spot and clambered over the ledge of the empty fountain, running out of the space between the tents, his wand in his outstretched hand. At the nearest corner, Gringotts bank loomed, its pillars reaching high to the marble cornices of its roof. As James looked, a corner gargoyle broke loose, tumbled end over end, and smashed to bits on the cobbles below. Norberta barreled around the corner, stepped and slid on the remains of the gargoyle, then dug in her claws and thundered straight toward James, her eyes blazing, her jaws open to show her rows of dagger teeth.
Heddlebun was still clinging to her neck, speaking to her, exploiting her dragonish nature and driving her to frenzy.
James skidded to a halt as the dragon’s shadow loomed over him.
Scrambling, nearly falling backwards, he began to retreat.
Bolts of red and purple light erupted from the alley behind Norberta. Merlin and James’ dad, it seemed, were still giving chase, aiming to stop Norberta’s rampage. Soon, they would have to resort to killing curses. Avada Kedavra might not be enough to destroy a dragon, James thought hectically, but Merlin surely knew a spell that would.
Remembering his own wand, James struggled to aim it. He tripped, fell to the cold cobbles, and felt the stampede of Norberta’s claws closing in on him. He threw himself onto his back, aimed his wand into the air, and shouted, “Expeliarmus!”
It was a purely instinctive reaction, culled from his many dueling sessions in Professor Debellows’ classroom. Norberta had no weapon to be expelled, of course. And yet, suddenly, her feet dug into the pavement, grinding over the cobbles as she skidded and slewed to a halt, plowing a cloud of dust before her.
The great dragon came to rest a dozen feet from James, and something fell to the square between them. It was small and bony, with flapping ears and large hands.
It was Heddlebun the elf. She lay where she had fallen, unmoving.
And suddenly James understood: the elf herself had been the weapon. James’ dueling shot had expelled her from the hapless dragon, who now hunkered in distressed confusion, huffing the air, looking around to see where she was.
Merlin and James’s father appeared from the mouth of the alley, rounding Gringotts bank at a run, wand and staff raised. They paused when they saw the halted dragon, with James climbing to his feet before it.
“Beware, James!” his father called, wasting no time on chastising him for his disobedience. “If Norberta smells the male dragon before Merlin can mesmerize her again…!”
James glanced up. Norberta’s nostrils flared before him. Her gold-foil eyes widened. Her head began to rise on the serpentine length of her neck, into the light of the circus tents beyond.
Merlin approached from behind the dragon, his staff held high, its runes glowing with soft golden light. He began to speak to her, his voice low, the syllables indecipherable yet strangely haunting.
Norberta blinked. Slowly, her head swept to the side, arcing back to peer at the headmaster in the darkness. The glow of his staff pulsed hypnotically.
It was working. Norberta was very nearly under Merlin’s prodigious spell again, undoing the maddening trance that Heddlebun had spun in her mind.
But then, much to James’ surprise, the ground shook again. He glanced down, alarmed and confused: Norberta’s claws were still firmly planted on the cobbles. And yet the ground shook once more, forming an undeniable, low beat. Something else was moving in the square, something large enough to make the ground shudder and the marble fountain behind James rattle like a cupboard of crockery.
A chuff of hot air, redolent of brimstone, blew over James from behind, fluttering his hair.
He turned slowly, eyes wide.
A second dragon hove out of the shadows between the circus tents, swaying back and forth like a cobra, its eyes glowing amethyst purple.