James stumbled backward in fear, and then clambered aside, hurrying to get out from between the two dragons.
Norberta swung her head back, now forgetting Merlin and his glowing staff. Her eyes locked onto the second dragon and her nostrils flared. Slowly, she arose from her hunkered crouch. Her tail swayed back and forth, sweeping low over the cobbles.
The second dragon, clearly the very circus dragon, Montague Python, that Norberta had been sensing for months, approached her cautiously, flicking a snakelike tongue from its long, black snout. His body was rather smaller than hers, sleek and long, but with much larger diaphanous wings that glinted with oily pearlescence. A sinuous black tail curled up and then stamped down on the ground, clapping its steely barbed tip to the cobbles with a ringing clang.
A commotion of movement came from the circus tent as its entrance flaps were wrestled from inside. A figure clambered out, stumbling nearly between Montague’s fore legs. It was a large man with an impressively round belly, clad in an ivory vest and huge shirtsleeves gathered in tight cuffs with gold buttons. He wore black riding trousers with suspenders hanging and flopping about his knees.
“Oh bloody Nora,” he said in a high, breathless voice, looking up at the two dragons as they sniffed each other cautiously, drawing nearer and nearer, beginning to twine their long necks. “It’s love at first sight, it is!”
Montague raised his tail and clapped it down again, ringing its barbed tip to the cobbles in what was clearly a sort of mating dance.
James felt his father and Merlin join him at his side. Merlin lowered his staff to the pavement with a resigned clack. Harry put a hand on his son’s shoulder, heavily. James sensed in the gesture both cautious pride and weary rebuke.
The ringmaster—for that’s clearly what he was, Mr. Archibald Hokus himself —lowered his gaze from the twining dragons and looked over at James, Harry, and Merlin, his cheeks red and his eyes glistening.
“It’s just a beautiful thing, isn’t it?” he sniffed.
A pound of footsteps and distant voices approached from the mouth of the nearby alley. James glanced back to see Hagrid loping heavily into the shadow of the circus camp, where he slowed to a stunned, clumsy halt, his hands falling limp to his sides, dropping his pink umbrella. His black eyes stared up at the two dragons and his mouth opened in a gape of perfect, speechless delight.
“Oh, Norberta!” he said, his voice suddenly choked with happy tears.
James drew a helpless, exhausted sigh and turned his attention back to the dragons. They circled each other slowly, sniffing each other, Montague flicking his purple tongue, Norberta flaring her scaly nostrils.
They growled to each other, making low, purring gurgles deep in their throats.
James glanced down. Heddlebun still lay where she had fallen, one limp ear flattened over her face. Cautiously, he approached her, pocketing his wand as he went. He wondered if she was dead, but then he saw the hitching rise and fall of her chest.
He felt his father coming alongside as he lowered to one knee over the elf.
She was sobbing. James sensed that she was lying there not because she was injured, but because her plan—a last resort borne of abject desperation—had come to ruin and failure. Hopeless to begin with, now she was hopeless and without any recourse.
Quietly but firmly, Harry asked, “There were others of your kind in the alley. How many are in your little elven uprising?”
Heddlebun’s sobbing paused. She lifted one large hand weakly and pushed her ear away from her face. James expected her to look up with remorse and defeat, or even fear. Instead, when she lifted her huge eyes to them, though still thick with tears, her gaze was hard. Her mouth turned down in a trembling scowl of bitter resentment.
“All of us,” she said in a low, emphatic voice. “The Elven Uprising is every… single… one.”
20. – World in collapse
The ship ride back to Hogwarts was a long and solemn affair, despite the happiness borne of Norberta’s unscheduled union with Montague Python. Archibald Hokus had insisted that Norberta, being lamed already with her wounded wing and long accustomed to the ministrations of humans, join their traveling circus as an accompaniment to Montague’s act.
“She will revitalize our entire program!” he had proclaimed after corralling both dragons in the safety of Montague’s paddock. “We’ve wanted a second dragon for years! Montague’s our star performer, of course. Now, with Norberta his grand love added to the show, we shall truly be a wonder of the wizarding world! I can see it now!” He raised his arms and framed his hands, as if envisioning a tent-sized placard, “Montague & Norberta! The Beast-Wedding of the Century! Of the Millennium!”
At Harry’s insistence, Hokus had vowed to have Norberta officially registered the very following day, as “a rescued orphan beast of origins unknown” as per Ministry regulations.
In response to this, Hagrid had offered his tearful goodbyes, blowing his nose prodigiously on a hankie provided by Ron from one of his coat pockets.
“Keep it, Hagrid,” Ron had said as the half giant offered it limply back to him. “Think of it as a, er, memento of the night.”
Harry took Heddlebun into custody, magically shackling her with a lanyard charm as they returned to the Gertrude, much more quickly and stealthily now that Norberta was no longer part of their entourage. Thus, less than twenty minutes later, back on board and standing on the gently rocking bow, James’ dad had quietly consulted with Ron and Hermione, explaining why he’d returned with a captive house elf in tow rather than a lovesick dragon, and debating what they should do with her.
“Officially speaking, we’re all home snug in our beds right now,”
Ron reminded them. “We can’t just pop over to the Ministry with a magical prisoner all of a sudden. Things like that require explanations.”
“Titus is on duty tonight,” Hermione suggested. “He could bring her in. But can you trust him, Harry?” Things had been better lately between James’ father and his partner, Titus Hardcastle, but everyone still remembered that, for a brief time during James’ fourth year, Titus had sided with his superiors at the Ministry against his boss and friend.
“I can,” Harry answered, “But I won’t. Even if Titus was willing to guard our secrets, this little elf has no such obligation or concern.
More importantly, I don’t think the Wizengamot would have the slightest clue what to do with her. There are no laws on the books regarding rogue house elves, simply because there has never been any need. What she represents is an all new dilemma for the wizarding world, and one that no one is prepared to confront. Not with so many other, larger cauldrons to boil at the moment.”