The holidays were coming soon. Maybe he could do it then, while they were apart for a while.
He felt slightly better having decided this, and relegated the worries to a back corner of his mind until the time came for him to act on this new plan.
That evening, he and Rose met Ralph outside the Apparition classroom.
“What do you keep looking for?” James asked, noticing Rose’s backwards glance for the third time as they gathered around the classroom door.
“I don’t know,” she whispered. “I keep thinking someone is following us.”
“Who cares? We’ve got the Head Boy with us. We can’t be up to mischief.” James reached for the door handle and gave it a tug. The door rattled but didn’t budge. “Oh. Well. Unlocking a classroom door isn’t mischief, exactly. Especially the way Rose does it.”
Rose hid a look of pride as she fingered her wand. “I might have left my notes in there, after all. Or we might have heard a suspicious noise. We’re just doing our duty, checking it out.”
A suspicious noise suddenly echoed from the depths of the hall behind them—a scrape and a thump, as if someone around a corner had dropped a book. Ralph jumped, and then ran a hand over his face in nervous annoyance.
“Stop winding me up,” he nudged James with his elbow. “If we’re going to do this, let’s get it over with. There’s no rule against practicing stuff we’re learning. And this classroom is usually unlocked.”
James had an idea that the classroom was locked right now because it was temporarily exempt from the anti-Disapparation spell that blanketed the school, but chose not to remind Ralph of that fact.
Rose spoke the unlocking spell and her wand burst a spark of golden light. The bolt clicked and the door budged open. James gave it a push and the well-oiled hinges swung silently, revealing the darkened classroom. The three crept inside.
By moonlight, the empty half of the room looked like a haunted dance floor, decorated strangely with pale hoops, three ranged beneath the windows, matched with three more beneath the chalkboard. The class tables and chairs were pushed close together in the rear of the room, overlooking the as-yet unused practice area.
“Well?” James asked, glancing aside at Rose and Ralph with an unexpected stab of trepidation. “Who’s first?”
“This was your idea, cousin,” Rose said, prodding him forward.
“You have the honours.”
James nodded and swallowed hard. But then, suddenly, Ralph moved past him, stepping carefully inside one of the hoops.
“I’m Head Boy,” he gulped. “It’s, like, my duty to go first. To make sure it’s safe and all. Also,” he admitted, offering James a sheepish grimace, “if I don’t get this over with now, my nerve will go right out the window.”
James blinked at his friend, both impressed and suddenly worried. What if something did go horribly wrong? What if Ralph got splinched, or skunched, or contrasected? James realized he didn’t even know what contrasecting was. He cursed himself for not paying more attention in class.
“Rose,” he muttered out of the corner of his mouth, “what’s contrasecting?”
Rose glanced aside at him and frowned. “Why do you ask?”
James raised a cautionary hand to Ralph, opened his mouth to offer a warning, but at that moment the big boy squeezed his eyes tight shut, fisted his hand on his wand, and gulped a breath. The oversized wand in Ralph’s hand sizzled suddenly with pinkish light, and then vanished, along with the boy himself, leaving only a bang of rushing air.
An agonizingly long moment later, the pink light of Ralph’s wand illuminated the opposite side of the classroom and Ralph reappeared with a pop. He thumped to the floor and his knees buckled slightly.
“Brilliant, Ralph!” Rose said, moving to examine him, her eyes sharp. “You look fine. No visible splinching. And only a little residual magic,” she commented, glancing back over her shoulder. James saw it as well: a faint trail of pink light was still settling to the classroom floor, drawing a line from where Ralph had begun to where he now stood, breathing hard, his eyes wide and startled.
“Why did it do that?” Ralph panted, frowning worriedly at the settling pink glow.
“Magical exhaust,” Rose nodded, as if she’d expected this. “It’s all in Twycross’ book. First timers rely too much on the magic of their wands, rather than their own intrinsic power. They propel themselves a little, like disapparation is a spell to cast, not an ability to hone. It’s perfectly normal. You’ll learn to let go of the wand as you practice.
Think of it as magical training wheels.”
“Wow,” Ralph breathed, and then gave a nervous laugh. “Look at me. I did it!”
James clapped his friend on the back, happy that his own momentary worry had gone unspoken. “I knew you were up to it, Ralph,” he lied. “Just wait until we tell Zane you nailed your first Disapparation! He’ll hate that he wasn’t here to see it!”
Rose shrugged. “Ralph could just Apparate to Alma Aleron and tell him himself.”
“No way,” Ralph raised both hands and took a step backwards.
“Let’s not get crazy. A step across a classroom is way different than a trip across the ocean.”
Rose rolled her eyes impatiently, “Actually, no, it isn’t. Neither of you pay the slightest attention in class, do you?”
“Your turn, James,” Ralph gave him a friendly push toward the rings beneath the windows. “If I can do it, it’ll be a cinch for you.”
James nodded and approached the windows, placing his feet carefully inside one of the white rings. He gripped his own wand in his right hand, happy to use whatever “training wheels” were available to him for his first solo apparition. He turned around to face the opposite side of the room, and blinked in startled surprise.
Behind Rose and Ralph, three figures stood huddled in the partially open classroom door. Despite their silhouetted shadows, James could still make out their nasty grins and beady eyes.
“What do you, want?” he asked, masking his surprise with anger.
Rose and Ralph spun on the spot to see the three younger students peering around the door frame. Edgar Edgecombe was in the middle, flanked as usual by his mates, Quincy Ogden and Polly Heathrow. Ogden’s greasy black hair hid one eye as he glared at them, while Heathrow, the tallest of the three, narrowed her eyes with unmistakable glee.
“Get out of here, all of you,” Rose said, jamming her fists onto her hips. “This is a closed practice. You won’t even be in this class for six more years.”
“You’re not in this class,” Polly Heathrow said, raising her pointed chin at Rose. “And practicing Apparition is against the rules.
Surprised I need to remind you of that, Granger. ”
“The name’s Weasley,” Rose said, rising to her full height.