'The passage only works one way,' Sabrina explained to James and Zane as the group ran lightly across the Quidditch pitch toward the hills beyond. 'If you go into it without having come through St. Lokimagus' tunnel first you just find yourself in the equipment shed. Pretty convenient, since it means that even if we get caught, nobody else can chase us back through the tunnel.'
'Have you gotten caught yet?' James asked, puffing along next to her.
'No, but this is the first time we've tried to use it. We only discovered it at the end of last year.' She shrugged as if to say we'll see how this turns out, won't we?
Zane's voice came out of the darkness behind James, conversationally. 'What if St. Magic Buns gets done with the loo before we all come back through his hole?' James shuddered at Zane's turn of phrase, but admired his logic. It seemed like a question worth asking.
'That's definitely a question for a Ravenclaw,' Noah called back as quietly as he could, but nobody answered.
After ten minutes of skirting the border of a scraggly, moonlit wood, the group clambered over a wire fence into a field. Ted pulled his wand from his back pocket as he approached a patch of rambling bushes and weeds. James followed and saw that there was a low barn hidden among the growth. It was ramshackle, bowed and buried in vines.
'Alohomora,' Ted said, pointing his wand at the large rusted padlock hanging on the door. There was a flash of yellow light. It bloomed out of the lock, and then resolved into the shape of a glowing, ghostly arm that snaked from the padlock's keyhole. The arm ended in a fist with the index finger pointed in the air. It waggled the finger back and forth reprovingly for a few seconds, and then vanished.
'Protective charm's still in place, then,' Ted announced happily. He turned to Petra, who came forward, pulling something out of her jeans pocket. James saw it was a rusted skeleton key.
'That was Gennifer's idea,' Horace, the second Ravenclaw, said proudly. 'Although I had wanted it to be a different gesture.'
'Would've been a nice touch,' Zane agreed.
'We figured any magical types that tried to break in here wouldn't think to try anything as boring as a key,' Noah explained. 'We put up Disillusionment Charms to keep the Muggles away, but they don't come out here anyway. It's abandoned.'
Petra turned the key and pulled away the padlock. The doors of the old barn swung open with surprising silence. 'Creaky doors are for novices,' Damien said smugly, tapping the side of his pug nose.
James peered inside. There was something large in the shadows, its bulk blotting out the rear of the barn. He could just barely make out the shape of it. More than anything, it looked like somebody's very antiquated idea of a flying saucer.
'Cool!' Zane cried happily, understanding dawning on him. 'Raise the Wocket! You're right, James. There was nothing like this in The Wizard of Oz.'
'The Wizard of what?' Ted said to James out of the corner of his mouth.
'It's a Muggle thing,' James replied. 'We wouldn't understand.'
Frank Tottington awoke suddenly, sure he'd heard something out in the garden. He was instantly alert and angry, throwing off his covers and swinging his legs out of bed as if he'd fully expected such an annoyance.
'Hmwah?' his wife mumbled, raising her head sleepily.
'It's those dratted Grindle kids out in our garden,' Frank announced gruffly, jamming his feet into his tartan slippers. 'Didn't I tell you they were sneaking in at night, trampling my begonias and stealing my tomatoes? Kids!' he spat. He shrugged into a threadbare robe. It flapped about his shins as he clumped down the stairs and grabbed his shotgun off the hook by the back door.
The screen door squeaked open and clapped against the outside wall as Frank barreled out. 'All right, you hooligans! Drop those tomatoes and step out here into the light where I can see you!' He raised the shotgun in one hand, pointing it warningly at the star-strewn sky.
A light popped on over his head, illuminating him in a blinding white beam that seemed to hum faintly. Frank froze, his shotgun still held barrel up, pointing up into the beam of light. Slowly, Frank raised his head, squinting, his stubbly chin casting a long shadow down the front of his robe. There was something hovering over him. It was hard to tell the size of it. It was simply a round black shape, with dim lights dotting the edge. It was turning slowly and appeared to be lowering.
Frank gasped, stumbled and nearly dropped his gun. He recovered and backed quickly away, not taking his eyes from the gently humming object. It lowered slowly, as if cushioned by the beam of light, and as it came to rest, its hum deepened, throbbing.
Frank boggled at it, his knobby knees bent in a sort of alert crouch. He chewed on his dentures fretfully.
Then, with a burst of steam and a hiss, the shape of a door appeared in the side of the object. It was outlined in light, and the light brightened as the door unfolded, forming a short ramp. A figure was standing framed in the light. Frank gasped and raised his shotgun, socking it to his shoulder. There was a blast of red light and Frank jumped. He made to pull the trigger, but nothing happened. The trigger had changed, become a small button instead of the comforting loop of metal. He glanced down at the shotgun, and then held it out in front of him in shock. It wasn't his shotgun at all. It was a small, ratty umbrella with a fake wooden handle. He'd never seen it before. Recognizing he was in the presence of something truly otherworldly, Frank dropped the umbrella and sank to his knees.
The figure in the doorway was small and thin. Its skin was a purplish green, its large head was nearly featureless, with the suggestion of large, almond-shaped eyes barely visible in the glare of light from the open hatchway. It began to walk down the ramp toward Frank, and its footsteps seemed unusually careful, almost awkward. It ducked slightly to clear the doorway, then, suddenly the figure tripped on the lip of the hatch. It stumbled forward, pinwheeling its arms, and seemed about to throw itself upon Frank. He scrambled backwards desperately, terrified. The small figure toppled forward, its disproportionately large head zooming towards Frank, filling his vision.
In the moment before Frank blacked out, he was distracted only by the rather strange fact that the figure seemed to be wearing, if nothing else, a fairly ordinary dark green backpack slung over its shoulders. Frank fainted with a look of rather worried confusion on his face.
James awoke blearily the next morning. He pried his eyes open, taking in the unfamiliar shapes of his surroundings. He was in a four-poster bed in a large, round room with a low ceiling. Sunlight beamed cheerily in, lighting more beds, most of which were disheveled and empty. Slowly, like owls coming in to roost, he remembered the previous night: the Sorting Hat, standing before the portrait of the Fat Lady and not knowing the Gryffindor password, meeting Ted, and then the rest of the Gremlins.
He sat up in bed quickly, reaching for his face. He patted his cheeks, his brow, the shape of his eyes, and then sighed with relief. Everything appeared to be back to normal. Something flopped onto his bed next to him, a newspaper James didn't recognize. It was turned to an article with the headline: 'Local Man Insists Martian Rockets Steal His Tomatoes'. James glanced up. Noah Metzker was standing at the foot of his bed, a wry look on his face.
'They misspelled 'Wocket' again,' he said.
