The train shunted and clattered as it began to roll forward. The chuff of the engine rose both in pitch and rhythm, becoming a steady, noisy beat in the air. The faces on the platform began to drift sideways, receding away. James shouldered his cousin aside as much as possible and spied his own parents watching, smiling in the sunlight. His mum saw him and waved. He waved back tentatively, nervously, thinking of the upcoming interview.
“She’s changed, I expect,” his dad had said the day before, when the official request had come by owl from the offices of the Daily Prophet. “I don’t think there’s anything to worry about, James. The world has bigger cauldrons to boil these days. What possible harm could she do anymore?”
Aunt Hermione had been far less magnanimous when she’d heard about it only moments before, on Platform Nine and Three Quarters. “You just remind her whose nephew you are,” she’d whispered into his ear, unsmiling. “I doubt she’s forgotten me, or a certain glass jar.”
A sharp rap came from the window of the compartment door.
James glanced back to see a man on the other side, peering through with a cane raised in his fist, prepared to knock again. He was a small man with large hands, clean-shaven beneath a bland bowler hat, wearing tiny wire-framed spectacles and a tweed vest. His eyes flicked over the occupants of the compartment and landed on James.
“James Potter?” he called through the glass.
James nodded, and the tension in his chest cinched a few notches tighter.
“I’m Mr. Bullova from the Daily Prophet,” he said, still raising his voice to speak through the glass window. “We spoke yesterday via floo? We’re ready for you if you are.” He stepped back, not waiting for an answer.
James heaved a sigh and moved reluctantly to the door. “That sure was fast.”
“Don’t forget us little people when you’re all famous,” Albus clapped him on the shoulder as he went.
“Good to meet you, Mr. Potter,” Bullova shook his hand briefly but vigorously as James joined him in the corridor. “We’re just a few carriages up. If you’ll follow me.” He gestured and led the way, moving with a sort of mousy economy, not looking back.
James felt terribly selfconscious following the man through the carriages, knowing that he was being seen by loads of his friends and schoolmates, who by now had some idea of what was going on. Despite what he’d said to Albus, he suspected that none of them were being interviewed for the Daily Prophet about ‘the changing magical world and its impact on the younger generation’ (as Mr. Bullova had blithely put it in his invitation). But then again, as Uncle Ron had commented on the platform, none of them were the firstborn son of Harry Potter.
They passed through three connectors, finally entering a much more sumptuous carriage near the front of the train. Red carpets and brass fixtures adorned the corridor and the smell of pipe tobacco seemed to have worked its way into the very grain of the polished wood paneling. Here, teachers rather than students occupied the compartments. As James passed by, he recognized Kendrick Debellows, the Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, his crew-cut head nodding in conversation with Potions Mistress Lucia Heretofore. Across from them was a surprisingly young man with black hair and sharp features. The man glanced up as James passed the compartment, his expression merely idly curious. James had never seen him before and wondered fleetingly if he was some new teacher’s assistant. He was clearly too young to be a professor.
“And here we are,” Bullova announced crisply, stopping at the last compartment and shuttling open the door. “Just have a seat, if you would.”
Bullova stepped aside and gestured with the cane in his large left fist, ushering James inside. As James entered, Bullova shunted the door closed from the outside. James turned to look back through the compartment window, but the small man was already retreating down the corridor, a gold pocket watch open in his free hand.
James turned back to the compartment, which was much different than any of the others he had ridden in. It was larger, with four red upholstered chairs instead of benches. Between them was a small but heavy table, polished to a mirror-like shine. A small notebook, bound in buff leather, sat on the table. Atop this lay a vividly green quill. James recognized the instrument from his father’s descriptions. It was a Quick-Quotes Quill, charmed to record whatever it heard, albeit with questionable embellishments.
James decided to sit while he waited. He chose the chair nearest the outside window and plopped into it, thankful for the moment of quiet, but restless to get the interview over with.
The outskirts of London streamed past the window, resplendent in the morning sun. James watched the city blur along for a moment, and then turned his attention back to the Quill.
Experimentally, he cleared his throat.
The Quick-Quotes Quill jumped to attention, flicking into the air as the notebook snapped open, riffling to a blank page. With a tiny pecking sound, the Quill tapped down onto the page and vibrated bolt upright, as if waiting.
Fascinated but a little leary, James leaned closer to the table.
“My name,” he said slowly, experimentally, “is James Sirius Potter.”
The Quill began to scratch busily across the page, stopping after only a few seconds.
James leaned closer still, craning his head to read the upside-down writing.
The young Potter introduces himself with a degree of palpable pride, clearly content with the pedigree of his famed lineage.
“The pedigree of his…” James read, furrowing his brow. “I didn’t…! What do you mean ‘palpable pride’?”
The Quill began to scribble again. James made to grab for it, but the Quill leapt and feinted easily around his reaching hand, pecking back to the notebook without the slightest pause and continuing mid-sentence.
James jumped to his feet, meaning to grab the notebook away from the Quill, but a sudden buzzing noise startled him. Something small flitted around his head, and then droned toward the window, where it landed with a faint bump on the windowsill. James saw that it was a beetle. He almost dismissed it and resumed his mission to tear away the offending notebook page (upon which the Quill was still writing furiously) when a sudden suspicion—nearly a certainty—fell over him like a leaden wave. He looked closer at the beetle, which seemed to be regarding him from its perch on the sill. Its antenna waved faintly.
James’ shoulders slumped. With a sigh, he sat back down in the chair. Before him, the Quill finally finished its paragraph and jerked upright again, waiting.
The beetle unfurled its delicate wings, buzzed them, and lofted from the windowsill, casting its tiny shadow onto the table, where it landed near the notebook and Quill. It trundled toward the edge nearest James, glinting iridescent green in the flickering sunbeams, and then stopped, seeming to eye him again with its tiny, unblinking orbs.