He dropped his eyes and flung the WoodSprite down the steps.
It clattered nonsensically, and James noticed, with a moment of distraction, that while Blake’s car was disillusioned to invisibility, it still puttered a dancing puff of visible smoke from its idling tailpipe. “GO!”
James cried again, raising his voice and throwing an arm over his eyes in a burst of hysterical inspiration. “Go to your sister. I will await you.
And when the time comes—indeed, if it ever comes—that you are ready to love me as I love you…”
His motivation faltered. He glanced aside with one eye toward Millie, who was staring at him with undisguised, gape-jawed amazement. He glared at her meaningfully, and then flicked his eyes toward the open doorway and the suspiciously watching Mathilda. GO, he mouthed.
Millie blinked rapidly, and then seemed to recover herself. Her experience with the Hufflepuppet Pals took over, and she replied, “Yes, I must leave you, James. It’s too soon for me. But… but…”
“But I will await your word,” James encouraged, nodding, urging her away with his eyes. “And your love! Never fear! Never doubt!”
Millie backed up the steps slowly, somewhat awkwardly, toward the waiting shape of Mathilda, who watched the scene with narrowed eyes and thin lips. When Millie reached her sister, moved into the warmth of the open door, she spun on her heel and threw her arms around the taller woman.
“Oh, Mattie,” she cried, her voice muffled against her sister’s thin breast.
Mathilda looked down at Millie in surprise, her eyes still narrowed, her brows high on her forehead. Then, tentatively, she put her arms around her. It was an awkward gesture, like a stork attempting a card trick, but apparently genuine enough. She patted Millie’s shoulder and the back of her head, and then raised her gaze to James, her lips pursed.
“You Potters,” she said with a curt shake of her head. “Much too brash for polite society. It seems that you’ve bruised poor Millicent’s sensitivities. I do hope you’ve learned an important lesson.”
James still couldn’t tell if the older woman was being quite serious or if she was, perhaps, goading him. He didn’t really care. He simply nodded in dejection and dropped his eyes, hoping that Mathilda wouldn’t hear the gentle putter of the idling car, or notice its phantom exhaust, or wonder, for that matter, why James had been holding one of the servants’ castoff, antique brooms.
A moment later, thankfully, the women’s footsteps retreated back inside the house and the door swung slowly closed, cutting off the band of golden light from inside.
Without raising his head, James flicked his eyes up in time to see the door snick shut. He listened for the bolt to shunt into place. When it didn’t, he assumed that he was still allowed inside, nominally.
“Now that,” Blake sighed calmly, emerging from his hiding place, “is what I call a royal cock-up.”
“Shut up,” James muttered blandly. He retreated partway down the steps, retrieved the old broom from the shadows, brushed off the snow, and climbed dejectedly back up toward the front door.
Blake spoke again, this time in a voice both taut and smug, freezing James in his tracks. “I would have won her anyway, you know.
Even if you hadn’t proved yourself to be a jealous, clumsy little berk.
Just so you know. I didn’t need your help.” He was smiling as he spoke.
James didn’t look back at the older man, but his mind whirled, clouded with impotent rage, choked with jealousy. He could think of nothing to say. No comeback came to mind, no retort or pithy, withering insult. He considered using his wand to curse the arrogant Muggle git, or, failing that, to hurl himself down the steps and knock the bastard down. But even this impulse was overcome by numbing weariness and cold.
Instead, he simply pocketed his wand and said the only thing that came to mind.
“Good luck driving home in your invisible car.”
And he opened the mansion’s door, felt the push of warm air against his cheeks, stepped inside, and shot the bolt behind him.
Through the window beside the door, he briefly saw Blake at the bottom of the steps, the grin gone from his face, groping blindly, clumsily for his precious car.
The women had already gone upstairs to their bedrooms. James was quite glad.
The train ride back to Hogsmeade was awkward. James found that he missed seeing his family over the break, and took some minor, jealous solace in Albus’ and Rose’s retelling of the holiday back home and at the Burrow. He avoided Millie, who rode in a different compartment some way up the train, but knew that he had to talk to her eventually. They had hardly spoken since leaving Blackbrier Quoit in the back of the family’s limousine, and when they did it was for mere practical necessity. They both seemed to know that it was over between them. All that remained was the actual breaking up, which James sensed (with no small foreboding) was his responsibility. He didn’t want to do it. He wished it could merely be over without any of the messy, awkward, official stuff. But she seemed to be in prim waiting mode, knowing it was coming, expecting it, even reveling in a sort of perverse anticipation.
Rose had no patience for James’ predicament. “You’re just a typical boy. All eager as beavers when it comes to the snogging, but thick as paving stones when it comes to talking about feelings like actual human beings. Next thing, you’ll be blaming her just for having feelings, like it’s some sort of female curse or something, while you act all high and mighty about being an emotionally constipated, coddled, stuck up little mummy’s boy!”
“Things not going so well between you and Scorpius again, eh?”
James nodded wisely.
“Shut up.”
“I thought you two were back together again after he bought you that necklace for Christmas?”
Rose’s lips tightened and her eyes narrowed. “His mum bought it and gave it to him to give to me. She even wrapped it and signed his name to the card. He says Christmas gifts are ‘the woman’s responsibility’.” She glared aside at James accusingly, her eyes nearly sparking.
“Don’t look at me,” James said, raising both hands. “I didn’t even buy Millie any Christmas gift.” He realized, a moment too late, that this didn’t really make his case.
Rose crossed her arms like a shield and nodded once, firmly.
“No wonder Millie’s had it with you. You go find her right now and set her free of you. There are probably dozens of better boyfriends on the train right this very moment. Hundreds!”
James stood up and backed away, afraid to say another word.
He found Ralph in the corridor before he found Millie’s compartment.
“What are you up and about for?” the bigger boy asked, clearly disgruntled.
James didn’t have it in him to be annoyed at Ralph’s tone. He slumped and leaned against a window. “Looking for Millie. It’s over between us. I just need to pound the final nail in the coffin.”