'I just forgot. Can't blame me for being thorough, can you?'
Morgan tittered, obviously thrilled that James had wasted so much time. James packed up a few minutes later and moved to the Gryffindor common room, annoyed but simultaneously relieved. At least his essay was finished. In fact, since he'd already written about twenty-three spynuswort uses, he probably stood to get loads of extra credit. Just as long as Neville didn't figure out that the thoroughness of James' report simply meant James hadn't been paying much attention in class.
Twice, James saw Professor Delacroix in the corridors and had the haunting sensation that she was watching him. He never actually saw her eyes on him, but since she was blind, that hardly mattered anyway. James remembered the way Delacroix had maneuvered the tureen of gumbo with her ugly graperoot wand at the Alma Aleron dinner, never spilling a drop. He had a suspicion that Delacroix had ways of seeing that didn't rely at all upon her useless eyes. In fact, that could explain how she might have noticed that Jackson's briefcase was different. The Visum-ineptio charm only worked on what people saw with their eyes, didn't it? Still, she never said anything or even so much as paused in her stride when she passed him. James decided that he was simply being paranoid. Besides, as Zane pointed out, what difference did it make? She might be the one trying to trick Ralph and James into taking the relic robe out to the Grotto Keep, or it might be some other force entirely. Either way, they had to be on guard never to be alone, and in the end, the source of the threat didn't really matter anyway.
James had begun to realize just how hard it was to never be alone. He would've thought, in a school the size of Hogwarts, it would've been quite rare, anyway. Now that he was paying attention, he realized he'd been on his own on the grounds or in the halls several times each day, whether crossing the grounds to get to Neville Longbottom's Herbology class after Transfiguration or just going to the bathroom in the middle of the night. Arranging to never be alone even in these circumstances was an annoying chore, but Zane, to James' surprise, was consistently adamant about it.
'Even if we did capture that robe by a string of completely freakish lucky breaks, I'm not gonna let it slip out of our hands because we got careless,' he told James one day, walking him to the Herbology greenhouses. 'It's the Merlin conspirators' carelessness that's been working for us. I'm not gonna do them any favors like that.'
One day, James introduced Ralph and Zane to the Protean Charm as a means of communicating if ever an emergency chaperone was needed. James had ordered three novelty rubber ducks from Weasley's Wizard Wheezes, giving one each to Zane and Ralph.
'The Protean Charm means that if I squeeze my duck, both of yours will sound as well,' James explained, giving his duck a tweak.
'Sod off!' all three ducks quacked in unison.
'Excellent,' Zane said, giving his own duck a firm squeeze, resulting in a chorus of happy insults. 'So if either of you find yourselves alone or need me to take you to the bathroom, you just honk on this and I come running, eh?'
'Ugh,' Ralph said, staring at his duck with distaste. 'I hate this. It's like being three years old again.'
'Hey, if you want to go getting zapped off to meet with some unhappy tree spirit again…,' Zane said, shrugging.
'I didn't say I wouldn't do it,' Ralph replied, annoyed. 'I just hate it, is all.'
Zane turned back to James. 'So how will I know which one of you quacked for me?'
James produced a black marker and drew a small J on the bottom of his duck. 'Take a look at yours, now. Anything we do to a single duck will show up on all of them. When you hear the quack, just check the bottom of the duck and see whose initial shows up.'
'Very tight,' Zane said approvingly. He raised his duck and tweaked it as if he was saluting with it.
'Eat doxie poo!' the ducks quacked gaily.
'All right,' James said, putting his own duck in his backpack. 'This'll only work if we only use them in an emergency. Got it?'
'Why don't they just squeak?' Ralph asked as he pocketed his.
'Ask a Weasley,' James answered dismissively.
At first, having to have Zane or somebody else around at all times was as annoying to James as it was to Ralph, but eventually, James got used to it and even began to like it. Zane would sit on a chair in the corner of the bathroom while James bathed, quizzing him on defensive spell pronunciations or Transfiguration terminology and restrictions. James learned that many of his Herbology classmates, including Morgan Patonia, had Charms class before Herbology. Knowing this, James was able to hurry from his Transfiguration class to the Charms classroom and then accompany Patonia and her friends to the greenhouses, thus avoiding the solitary trek across the grounds. Constantly being near people became an easy habit for James, and eventually, he nearly forgot he was doing it. In this fashion, the weeks melted past. The rawness of winter began to thaw into the fragile warmth of spring. Still, neither James, Ralph, nor Zane had come up with a plan to get Tabitha Corsica's broomstick. Eventually, they determined, albeit reluctantly, that some group reconnaissance was required.
'I'm not liking this,' Ralph said as he led the other two to the door of the Slytherin common room. 'I haven't seen anyone other than Slytherins in here for months.'
'Don't worry about it, Ralph,' Zane said, but his voice was less confident than usual. 'We've got James' magic map here. We can check it again, but according to it, most of your buddies are out watching the Slytherins practice for the tournament. Right, James?'
James had the Marauder's Map unfolded in his hands. He studied it as he walked. 'As far as I can tell, there's only a couple of people in the Slytherin dorms, and none of them are people we need to worry about.'
'Are you sure you're reading that thing right?' Ralph asked, plugging his ring into the eye socket of the snake sculpture on the gigantic wooden door. 'Last I heard, you said you couldn't even remember how to get it to work.'
'Well, it's working, isn't it?' James replied testily. In truth, he was worried about the accuracy of the map. He had remembered the phrase to get the map to open and display the grounds, but as his dad had feared, the castle had changed rather a lot since the map had been created by Moony, Prongs, Padfoot, and Wormtail. Irregular chunks of the map were completely blank, and each blank section was marked with a notation that read redrawing required, please see Messrs. Prongs and Padfoot for assistance. James could only guess that his grandfather and Sirius Black had been the chief artists who'd plotted the map, but since both were long since dead, there would apparently be no redrawing of the map to fill in the rebuilt areas. The tiny names that marked the locations of everyone on campus could still be seen moving here and there, but as they entered one of the blank areas, their marker and name would flicker out. Fortunately, the Slytherin quarters were under the lake, and therefore had been very little damaged in the Battle of Hogwarts (Ralph had learned that only the main entry had been destroyed in the siege). James could see the entire warren of Slytherin rooms and halls on the Marauder's Map.
The snake sculpture asked its questions. Ralph announced himself and explained who James and Zane were, and that they were friends. The glowing green snake eye examined Zane and James for a long moment, and then unlocked the complicated system of bolts and bars that secured the door.
The three boys couldn't help skulking as they moved through the apparently deserted Slytherin common room. The brackish green sunlight, filtered by the lake water above the stained-glass ceilings, filled the room with murky shadows. The fire was a dull red glow in the gigantic fireplace, which was sculpted in marble to resemble an open snake's mouth.
