He liked Millie. He liked the way her eyes sparkled when she saw him in the halls, and her unselfconscious precociousness, and the way she didn’t always reach for his hand, or sit next to him in class, or accompany him into the Great Hall for dinner. If she had obsessed and fawned over him (the way Chance Jackson had begun to with Albus, although Albus himself seemed not to mind) James would have quickly felt stifled and overwhelmed. Instead, Millie maintained a sense of pleasant, teasing unpredictability and mystery.
Often, instead of joining James at his table in the library, she would breeze past and sit with a group of fellow Hufflepuffs. He would glance up at her throughout the evening, watching her laugh with her friends, or bite the feather of her quill as she read, or practice spell-motions with her wand while studying the diagrams in The Caster’s Lexicon. But every now and then he would catch her glancing up at him, just as he was her. Usually she would look away, smiling sheepishly. Sometimes, however, her eyes would lock with his, briefly, sharing a surprisingly intimate moment across the hushed anonymity of the library.
James became aware that Millie’s family was what Scorpius referred to as “old magic”: exceedingly wealthy, historically pureblood, and aristocratically connected. Millie herself scoffed at any suggestion that her family was influential in any way, or that she took any cache from it if they were.
“I barely represent them at all, much to my mother’s chagrin,” she told James with a wry smile. “You’ll meet the Vandergriff kith and kin soon enough, I hope. You can make up your own judgment about them when you do.”
On some occasions James felt bold enough to kiss Millie, usually in the evenings after he walked her to the Hufflepuff common room, where they huddled in the nook formed by the stacks of barrels. He would kiss her until her lips formed a delighted smile and she withdrew, her face as flushed as his, whispering breathless goodnights. He would watch her duck into the hidden entry, and then walk back the way he’d come, hot and tingling beneath his collar, blaming it on the flickering torches that lined the walls around the kitchens.
Sometimes he thought guiltily of Petra. When he did, he would insist to himself that she was probably doing the same thing with Professor Odin-Vann. After all, it wasn’t like James and Petra were, or had ever been, “a thing”. Petra wouldn’t feel jealous of Millie. She would be delighted that James was happy.
He repeated this to himself, while simultaneously hoping that it wasn’t remotely true.
Midnight Quidditch started up again, and as much as Graham had warned James not to be involved, he simply couldn’t bring himself to stay away. It wasn’t merely that it counted, in James’ mind, as extra team practice. He also relished, more than anything, the chance to ride his beloved skrim, surfing the dark air in ways that no broom could quite duplicate.
Scorpius informed James of weekly matches via notes passed in Herbology class, which James quickly read and, per arrangement, immediately fed to the giant potted Cobra Lily.
He told no one of the Night Quidditch matches, especially Ralph, who would have felt exquisitely awkward knowing of such things in his new role as Head Boy. And yet, despite informal rules to the contrary, James was by no means the only official house Quidditch player who also appeared in the clandestine matches. His sister Lily had been on the night league even longer than she’d been playing for the Gryffindor team. Both Nolan Beetlebrick and Trenton Bloch appeared on the Slytherin night team. Julien Jackson had begun to play for the Hufflepuffs only after she had snuck out the previous year to chastise Stanley Jasper, the daytime Hufflepuff Seeker, about his extra-curricular involvement, only to become swept up irresistibly in the night league herself.
As usual, the teams compensated for their nights of lost sleep via a special potion brewed by Scorpius and Ashley Doone from a questionably legal plant called Somnambulis. Officially, Professor Longbottom had ceased growing the plant three years earlier.
Unofficially, Scorpius was still able to “steal” a fresh supply every three weeks from a cluttered back corner of the greenhouse.
Professor Longbottom himself still attended some night league matches, albeit anonymously, dressed in a deep hooded robe and rarely speaking. Nor was he the only secret observer. On any given night, the grandstands were peppered with as many as two dozen robed and disguised figures, most seated well away from each other, all slipping away wordlessly as the matches concluded. James was quietly certain that one of the observers was, in fact, Professor McGonagall, as evidenced by her familiar purposeful walk and rigid posture.
Unlike daytime matches, which were wild and deafening affairs, the night league was characterized by feverishly hushed matches, punctuated only by harsh whispers, the whoosh of the gently glowing Bludgers, and the occasional bone-rattling crunch and yelp as one of the balls struck its mark. The loudest moments were when rasped arguments broke out over the always nebulous and changing league rules, or when goals were made, whereupon hoarse cheers and jeers would waft over the pitch, accompanied by the dull thumping of gloved hands, applauding by moon glow.
At the end of the third match of the season, as Scorpius was summoning the blue-glowing Bludgers and forcing them into the old trunk, James approached with his skrim clutched under one arm, dripping sweat, his shoes soaked with pre-dawn dew.
“There’s one thing the Night League is still missing,” he said, half whispering in the misty dark. “Something to really set it apart from the daytime matches.”
“Playing in the pitch dark of the wee hours on one of those daft flying ironing boards isn’t enough for you, is it?”
“Game magic,” James nodded, ignoring Scorpius’ grumpy mood. The Gryffindors had just lost to Hufflepuff, after all, although James himself wasn’t particularly upset about it. The daylight teams were set to compete later that week, and James was confident of a solid win for that matchup.
“Game magic?” Scorpius scowled, his face lit blue by the glow of the struggling Bludgers. “That’s from that ridiculous American game.
Cudgelclutch. We don’t do that.”
“We don’t, but we should,” James insisted. “All we’re doing now is playing Quidditch in the dark.”
“With skrims optional,” Lily suggested, coming alongside James and mopping her brow with her sleeve.
“And snitches only worth twenty points,” Julien Jackson piped up smugly. “Sorry James. A good catch isn’t enough to seal a victory when the moon’s up.”
James nodded, unperturbed. “Night league’s different enough, but it could be better still, while also keeping us sharp with our wands.
When I first started, we used to use dueling spells, remember? But that got too dangerous, with people getting blasted right off their brooms or getting petrified and running into the grandstands. Game magic is specially designed for use during sport. Imagine using a gravity well charm to redirect a Bludger away from your head. Or a Bonefuse hex to make your opponent drop the Quaffle!”