James Potter And The Morrigan Web (32 page)

“Regarding the students here at Yorke, those in your classes know who and what you are, and have already met many of you at your own school. A few others are aware, including some teachers, though not all of them by any means. Thus, you will go nowhere without me. You will not interact with any other students outside of my presence. And you will
never
come here outside of class time. Is that understood?”

There was a general murmur of sullen assent.

“Very well,” Corsica said curtly. “I see by the way most of you are dressed that you do not have any concept of the term ‘physical education’. Not to worry, you will know soon enough. Suffice it to say, it will behoove you to attire yourselves in these.”

She swung the laundry bag forward and allowed it to flop to the floor. The drawstring loosened, revealing a mass of dingy grey tee shirts and navy shorts.

“What are these,” Fiona Fourcompass frowned. “You can’t seriously…”

Murdoch pulled one of the tee shirts out of the bag and held it up. Blue letters on the front of the shirt formed the words ST. BRUTUS SECURE CENTRE. “What kind of place is this? Is this where we’re supposed to be from?”

“Tut-tut,” Corsica chided, raising her chin. “You can’t very well just show up at Yorke Academy with no back story. As far as most of the students here are concerned, you represent a rehabilitation programme wherein… er…
troubled
youths are reintroduced to law-abiding society. Now do change your clothing with haste. Girls will take the changing room on the left, boys on the right. Quickly, students. Your new classmates await.”

It seemed there was nothing for it but to change into the horrible gym clothing. Disconsolately, James joined the rest as they dug through the sack, searching for a tee shirt and shorts that would fit. The clothing was all rather hopelessly rumpled and had a disconcerting dampness to it, as if it had spent the past few decades in a mouldy basement closet.

Ten minutes later, the students reconvened in the main locker room, barely recognizing each other in their new uniforms.

“This is ridiculous,” Ralph seethed under his breath. James looked him over.

“So your shorts are a little snug,” he commented, trying to downplay the ridiculous shortness of the big boy’s blue trunks. “It’s not that bad, really. At least your shirt doesn’t hang down nearly to your knees. Nobody can even tell that I’m
wearing
shorts”

“Single file line, please,” Corsica announced loudly as the students gathered. “Your masters have informed me that you do not, in fact, partake in physical education at your own school. Thus, they have given me permission to arrange a particularly rigorous regimen for you. There will be no complaints. If you cannot keep up with the Yorke football squad-- seven times champions though they may be-- then perhaps you should not have considered signing up for this class to begin with. Comport yourselves well, and perhaps you may earn the respect of your new classmates, and in time the goodwill of the entire non-magical world. Understood?”

There was even less enthusiasm this time. Corsica interrupted the muttered response with a raised finger. “The proper answer is a cheerful,‘
yes
, Miss Corsica.’ Now,
am I understood
?”

A scattering of voices repeated the phrase discordantly. Corsica seemed content with this. In fact, to James’ eye, she seemed almost to be enjoying the discomfort of her new charges.

“Very well,” Corsica nodded. “I will lead the way to the gymnasium. First, however, you will form a tidy line in the hallway outside this door. No talking, please, as classes have reconvened. If by some chance, however, you believed you would be permitted to bring your magical wands into the school proper, I fear you were mistaken. As you pass, you will deposit any wands in this.” She nudged a large plastic pail with her foot.

There were groans throughout the room. James himself had slipped his wand into his sock. He glanced at Ralph, frowning thinly. Together with much of the rest of the class, they retrieved their wands and began to pass, one by one, through the door. The pail clattered repeatedly as wands were dropped into it.

James was the last to leave the locker room. As he passed Corsica, she said his name in a low voice.

Surprised, James turned, looking back at the stern-faced teacher. She was offering him a small, tight smile.

“So, how’s Albus doing, then?” she asked in a low voice. “And little Lily? She didn’t perchance end up in Slytherin as well, did she? I would find that a bit… unexpected.”

James frowned at her in surprise. “How do you…?”

Corsica shrugged languidly and reached to touch her overlarge glasses. “Life is a funny thing, James. Considering my youth, Azkaban was out of the question, thankfully, thus I was sentenced to a year at the Ministry’s field office in Australia, doomed to spend my penance cataloguing poisonous water beetles. Hard to imagine the point, really. Absolutely
everything
in Australia seems to be poisonous. Then, happily, this post came up, and a certain unnamed benefactor convinced the Wizengamot that it might teach me a certain necessary… humility.”

Corsica removed her glasses as she spoke. When she did so, her entire face changed-- indeed, every aspect of her appearance shifted out of focus, then resolved again differently, as if the spectacles had been the keystone of a sort of projected, magical disguise. Suddenly, Tabitha Corsica stood before him, her long black hair hanging like an ebony curtain down her back, her pretty, piercingly black eyes twinkling at him.

“It’s you…” James muttered in disbelief.

“It’s me,” she agreed, cocking her head coyly. “The Ministry felt that my youth and, er, physical charm might be a detriment to my acceptance here at Yorke, thus…” she sneered with distaste at the chunky black glasses in her hand, “This.” Her expression cleared again and she smiled at James. “It
is
nice to see you again, James. Our last meeting was under such… unfortunate circumstances. I just want you to know that I don’t blame you for anything. You probably cannot help being an insufferable, meddling, destroyer of other people’s hopes and dreams. I’m sure it just comes… naturally.”

“Tabitha,” James said, shaking his head. “I didn’t… that’s not how it…”

“Tut-tut,” she interrupted, waving her glasses dismissively. “It’s all in the past. I am content to let bygones be bygones. We have a whole term ahead of us, James.” She paused consideringly, and then put her glasses back on again. Her appearance changed back to her older, grey-haired persona. She leaned closer, as if she meant to share a dark secret. “I promise to make it
challenging
, James.” Her smile widened, thinning her lips and crinkling the corners of her now-grey eyes. “We both know how much you like… a good…
challenge
.”

James saw no reason to keep Corsica’s identity a secret. He told Ralph, Rose and Scorpius about it that evening as they gathered around a table in the corner of the library.

“She did look sort of familiar,” Ralph nodded thoughtfully. “It’s not so much a disguise as it is just an older version of herself. Maybe the glasses are charmed to age her by twenty years or so.”

“Well they sure don’t make her any more likeable,” James groused. “She’s going to be a right nightmare. I’m going to be sore for days from all that running she made us do.”

Ralph moaned in agreement. “And what about that rope-climbing bit in the gymnasium? I have it on good authority that that’s not even physically possible.”

Rose pursed her lips. “I hear that the Muggle students did all right.”

“Some of them, yeah,” James admitted. “But they’re, like, actual athletes. Champion footballers, apparently, and twice the size of most of us.”

Ralph brightened a bit. “At least Comstock couldn’t do it. Smarmy little git just dangled there like a chunk of fat bait on a fishing line.”

Rose frowned in distaste. “I thought the whole point of this programme was to create a bridge between the Muggle and magical worlds.”

“That’s what Corsica says,” James nodded dourly.

“
What’s
what Corsica says?” another voice asked, accompanied by a pile of books plunking to the table. James leaned back in his chair as Albus plopped down next to him. “You’re not talking about Tabby, are you?”

“Ugh,” James groaned. “I feel the sick rising in my throat every time you call her that.”

“She turned up at Yorke today,” Ralph explained. “Turns out she’s been sent there by the Ministry to oversee a sort of getting-to-know-you programme with the Muggles, just in case the Vow of Secrecy completely falls apart.”

Albus considered this for a moment. “Makes sense to me.

“Yeah, well it seems totally
dodgy
to
me
,” James countered, sitting up in his seat. “The Ministry is supposed to be trying to fix the Vow of Secrecy, not getting ready to give it up entirely.”

Ralph shrugged. “Maybe they’re just trying to be prepared. You know, just in case.”

“It does seem a bit more like planning than preparing,” Rose admitted. “But either way, it’s out of our hands. We’ve got enough to worry about, what with this Collector person going all native in New Amsterdam and planning some magical coupe or something.” She met James’ eyes as he glanced at her. “Which I am still researching, James, and no leads yet. Although I am
sure
I’ve heard of it somewhere.”

Albus knitted his brow. “Heard of what? And who the bloody hell is the Collector?”

“Don’t say that word,” Lily chided blandly as she squeezed in across from him, letting her knapsack thump to the floor next to her chair. “If mum was here, she’d leather you with a hex.”

James sighed impatiently. “The Collector is some vicious wizard who’s taken up hiding in New Amsterdam, enslaving a bunch of people who stayed around after the evacuation. He’s planning some mega-magical attack or something. The Morrigan Web.”

“What word am I not supposed to say?” Albus frowned, turning back to Lily. “Bloody hell? What are you, Mum’s deputy or something?”

“Maybe I am.” Lily replied primly, raising her eyebrows and opening one of Albus’ books. “This isn’t even a textbook. It’s one of those Dragonheart Twins Adventure stories. Where did you even get this? They don’t stock drivel like this in the library.”

“They don’t stock those horrible Persephone Remora vampire books either but that doesn’t stop
you
from soaking up every last bloody one of them like it was bloody ambrosia.”

“That’s it,” Lily firmed her jaw. “I’m totally telling mum on you.”

Albus dismissed her with a wave of his hand. “Wait a minute, are you lot saying that that daft story about James getting lost in New Amsterdam and chased by zombies is more than an excuse for his shirking out of Quidditch try-outs?”

Rose grimaced at the word “zombies”. James threw up his hands in exasperation, but it was Scorpius who spoke up. “It was all true, even if it did provide a handy excuse for your brother.”

Lily glanced from Scorpius to James. “So you really did travel to New Amsterdam with Zane Walker and meet some wicked wizard and get chased by zombies?”

Rose’s patience snapped. “They
weren’t
zombies
,” she declared. “They were
Wendigoes
. Very creepy old magic, of ancient native American origin--”

“And why didn’t you take me?” Lily demanded, her eyes blazing at James.

“Lil, don’t be a berk. You aren’t even enrolled in any classes at Alma Aleron. Besides, it was extremely dangerous. Dad made me promise to keep you safe. The last thing I’m going to do is drag you along on one of Zane’s dodgy adventures.”

“You felt perfectly fine dragging
me
along,” Ralph grumped.

Albus grinned. “Without you, Ralph, who’d break all of James’ falls?”

James rolled his eyes. “And can we maybe not discuss all of this with the entire school?”

“I didn’t realize I counted as the entire school,” Lily sniffed.

“Discuss what?” Scorpius sighed in boredom. “All we have is one daft wizard with delusions of grandeur pretending to create some sort of magical super-weapon, a slippery American witch-Pixie with a perhaps overdeveloped sense of self-preservation, and a batty former Slytherin whose doing time as a babysitter of Muggle high-schoolers.”

“Sounds like more than enough for me,” James muttered. “And you forgot about Dumbledore’s evil twin at Durmstrang.”

“I didn’t forget him,” Scorpius replied, returning to his books. “I purposely left him out. Even among witches and wizards, some things are too crazy to be considered.”

James dropped his chin onto his folded arms. There was also the mystery of Petra’s dream story with the words
The Morrigan Web
scrawled across it in Petra’s handwriting, not to mention the mysterious voice (Petra?) that had assailed him in the halls on first night. James couldn’t help feeling that somehow, some way, it was all connected. But how? As obnoxious as Scorpius had been of late, he was probably right: some things were probably not worth bringing up. At least not yet.

Lily pushed Albus’ book back at him and then leaned across the table toward James. “Did Dad really ask you to look after me?”