If only there was a way to find out.
James cast anxiously around the entry hall. A large coatroom stood on one side. On the other was a narrow door, closed but unlocked. For lack of any better idea, James took a lunging step forward and grasped the handle, yanking the door open.
It was a utility closet. A vacuum cleaner stood in the centre, surrounded by shelves of cleaning supplies, folded serving towels, feather dusters, spray-cans of furniture polish, a rack of hanging black coats for the servants to wear when greeting guests in bad weather, and a leaning collection of mops and brooms.
James began to close the door in frustration, and then stopped, his eye catching on the brooms.
Was it possible? He scanned the wooden handles. One of them was more curved than the others, dull with age but polished a deep chestnut, with a small brass plate screwed to one side of the handle. On the plate, curlicue letters spelled: WoodSprite ’75.
James had never heard of a broom called a WoodSprite. He didn’t even know which century the “’75” referred to. He only knew, with immense relief, that the Vandergriffs had consigned someone’s ancient broom to the servants for mere sweeping. He grabbed it, yanked it from its fellows with a clatter, and leapt for the front door.
It was bitterly cold outside, with fresh snowflakes falling silently through the dome of interwoven trees that canopied the Vandergriff’s peninsula estate. James barely felt the wintry air as he tugged the door closed behind him and straddled the antique broom.
The taillights of Blake’s car were mere red pinpricks in the distance, obscured by the falling snow. They brightened momentarily as James watched, showing a tap of the car’s brakes. Then, the vehicle turned off the tree-lined drive, accelerated, and vanished into the Muggle neighborhood beyond.
James kicked off from the mansion’s portico and drove the broom forward as fast as it would go. The WoodSprite felt like a Flobberworm compared to his own ThunderStreak, yet James knew that it would be plenty fast enough to catch up to Blake’s car and keep pace with it. If, that was, he could overtake them before losing them in the warren of neighborhoods beyond the shore road.
Snowflakes streamed past, stinging James’ cheeks and blurring his vision, but he only squinted and pressed onward, swooping low along the narrow drive, feeling the pulse of the trees as they rushed overhead. The fringe of forest began to close ahead of him as he watched, hiding the Vandergriff’s drive from the cul-de-sac beyond.
James hunkered low and drew in his elbows, and still he had to slalom dangerously through the contracting trees, bursting out of them only a moment before they twined firmly together, completely blocking the drive.
With a kick and a swerve, James angled upward, above the glow of the streetlamps, and sped into the night, following the boulevard below.
Blake’s car was no longer in sight.
Angry panic throttled James’ thoughts, but he merely leaned lower over the broom and pressed onward, glaring down at the snowy, illuminated road below. At the junction, he glanced frantically from right to left. There, much further away than he expected, was the same pair of taillights just turning right, passing behind a grand house. James kicked forward again in pursuit.
Soon enough, he caught up to the car, slowed, and followed it more sedately, staying well above the light of the streets below, watching as the car ambled through more junctions, tooled past flashing traffic lights, and eventually made its way into a nearby town, where it began to cruise the streets in a seemingly random, meandering path.
This went on for some time.
James pressed higher as he flew over apartment complexes, churches, office buildings, and parking garages. Snow gathered in his hair and eyelashes. He grew cold, and then began to shiver so hard that his hands shook on the broom handle. And still, far below, the sleek blue car drove on. It never really arrived anywhere, although it slowed often, pausing longer than necessary at stop signs and intersections, random corners and parks. Several times it pulled off to the side of the road and stopped entirely. And yet, as James watched, Millie and Blake never got out to approach any of the establishments they parked near.
The car doors never even opened. Minutes would creep by as James shivered violently far overhead, chilled and crusted with snow, and then, invariably, the car would pull forward again, merge onto the street, and continue placidly on.
James tried very hard not to imagine what Millie and Blake were doing in the car during those parked minutes. In his mind, he heard Scorpius Malfoy sneering at him: “You really aren’t that thick, are you, Potter?”
Finally, after what felt like hours, numb with cold and miserable with sick jealousy, James realized he was following the blue car back into the shoreline neighborhood overlooking the sea. He followed more closely now, caring less if he was seen, wanting only to be back indoors, to shake the crusted snow from his hair, and wallow in the stew of confused, indignant anger that now filled him from head to toe.
The car’s headlights illuminated the cul-de-sac guardrail, but only for a moment. With a silent shimmy, the guardrail shot upwards and transformed into the wrought-iron gate of Blackbrier Quoit. The blue car surged through, and James swooped to follow.
He considered whether he should confront them right then and there, as they emerged in front of the mansion. It would be perversely satisfying, he knew, but it would also mean admitting that he had jealously followed them, and been miserably frozen and humiliated in the act. He decided, with some reluctance, to hang back, to swoop up toward the interlaced dome of bare branches high overhead, watching down silently as the car angled onto the curving drive, glinting in the glow of the mansion’s entry.
Some tiny, timid part of him suggested that he should be grateful for this night. He had already decided to break up with Millie once the holiday was over, hadn’t he? He had only to come up with a good reason. This made things all the simpler, didn’t it?
And yet this voice was drowned out by the boiling, affronted rage in his chest, almost but not quite concealing the ocean of wounded pride beneath.