In the midst of the debate, dinner appeared on the long tables, and James, along with the rest of Hogwarts, dug in with fervor.
It was nearly midnight by the time James made his way to the portrait of the Fat Lady marking the entrance to the Gryffindor common room.
'Password,' she sang out. James stopped short, letting his green backpack slip off his shoulder and thump to the floor. No one had told him any passwords.
'I don't know the password yet. I'm a first year. I'm a Gryffindor,' he added lamely.
'Gryffindor you may be,' said the Fat Lady, looking him up and down with an air of polite patience, 'but no password, no entry.'
'Maybe you could give me a little hint this time?' James said, trying to smile winningly.
The Fat Lady stared at him levelly. 'You seem to have some unfortunate misunderstanding of the nature of the term 'password', my dear.'
There was a commotion on the moving staircase nearby. It swung into view and settled, lurching slightly, at the end of the landing. A group of older students clambered up, laughing and shushing each other conspicuously. Ted was among them.
'Ted,' James called in relief, 'I need the password. A little help?'
Ted saw James as he and the others approached. 'Genisolaris,' he said, and then added to one of the girls in the group, 'Hurry it up, Petra, and don't let Noah's brother see you.'
She nodded, brushing past James as the portrait of the Fat Lady swung open to reveal the fire-lit glow of the common room. James began to follow her in when Ted threw an arm around his shoulder, turning him around and bringing him back out onto the landing. 'My dear James, you can't imagine we're going to let you toddle off to bed at such an early hour, do you? There are Gryffindor traditions to think about, for Merlin's sake.'
'What?' James stammered. 'It's midnight. You know that, do you?'
'Commonly known in the Muggle world as 'The Witching Hour',' Ted said instructively. 'A misnomer, of course, but 'The Witching and Wizarding Pulling Tricks on Unsuspecting Muggle Country Folk Hour' is just a bit too long for anyone to remember. We like to call it, simply, 'Raising the Wocket'.'
Ted was leading James back toward the stairs, along with three other Gryffindors. 'The what?' James asked, trying to keep up.
'Boy doesn't know what the Wocket is,' Ted said mournfully to the rest of the group. 'And his dad's the owner of the famous Marauder's Map. Just think how much easier this would be if we could get our hands on that bit of skullduggery. James, let me introduce you to the rest of the Gremlins, a group you may indeed hope to join, depending on how things go tonight, of course.' Ted stopped, turned and threw his arm wide, indicating the three others skulking along with them. 'My number one, Noah Metzker, whose only flaw is his unwitting relationship to his fifth-year prefect brother.' Noah bowed curtly at the waist, grinning. 'Our treasurer,' Ted continued, 'if we ever manage to come across any coin, Sabrina Hildegard.' A pleasant faced girl with a spray of freckles and a quill stuck in her thick reddish hair nodded to James. 'Our scapegoat, should such services ever be required, young Damien Damascus,' Ted gripped the shoulder of a stout boy with heavy glasses and a pumpkin-like face who grimaced at him and growled. 'And finally, my alibi, my perfect foil, everyone's favorite teacher's favorite, Ms. Petra Morganstern.' Ted gestured affectionately to the girl who was just returning from the portrait hole, stuffing something small into her jeans pocket. James noticed that everyone but him had changed out of their robes and into jeans and dark sweatshirts. 'Is everything clear for takeoff?' Ted asked Petra as she met them.
'Affirmative. All systems go, Captain,' she replied, and there was a titter from Damien. They all turned and began to descend the staircase, Ted steering James along with them.
'Should I go change or something?' he asked, his voice shaking as he pounded down the stairs.
Ted gave him an appraising look. 'No, I don't think that'll be necessary in your case. Relax, mate. You're going to have a blast. So to speak. Jump just here, then. You don't want to step on that step, mind you.' James jumped, his backpack swinging from his shoulder, feeling himself pulled along partly by the group's enthusiasm, but mostly by Ted's grip on his elbow. He landed on the floor of a long, torch lit corridor and stumbled to keep up. At the end of the hall, the group met three more students, all standing in the shadow thrown by a statue of a gigantic, hunchbacked wizard wearing a very tall hat.
'Good evening, fellow Gremlins,' Ted whispered as they all clustered together in the shadow of the statue. 'Meet James, son of my godfather, some guy named Harry Potter.' James grinned sheepishly at the new faces, and then did a double take at the third face in the group. 'James, meet our Ravenclaw chapter, Horace, Gennifer, and young whatsisname.' He turned to Gennifer. 'What's his name?' he asked, gesturing at the boy on the end.
'Zane,' Gennifer said, throwing an arm around the smaller boy, who grinned and let himself be playfully shaken. 'Just met him tonight, but he's got a little something that says Gremlin to me. I'm thinking there might be some imp in his lineage somewhere.'
'We're gonna play Hunt the Wocket!' Zane said to James in a stage whisper that carried along the entire corridor. 'Sounds iffy to me, but if this'll make us cool, well, I figured we might as well get it out of the way straight off!' James couldn't tell if Zane was joking, and then he realized it didn't really matter.
'Raise the Wocket,' Noah corrected.
James decided it was time to impress himself upon the conversation. 'So where is this Wocket? And why are we all crammed into a corner behind a statue?'
'This isn't just any old statue,' Petra said as Ted shimmied as far between the statue and the wall as he could, apparently looking for something. 'This is St. Lokimagus the Perpetually Productive. We only learned his story last year and it led us to a rather amazing discovery.'
'Led you, you mean,' Ted said, his voice muffled.
Petra considered this and nodded. 'True enough,' she agreed matter-of-factly.
'Back in your father's day,' Noah said as Ted scratched around behind the statue, 'there were six secret passages in and out of Hogwarts. But that was before the Battle. After that, a lot of the castle was rebuilt, and all the old secret passages were permanently sealed off. Funny thing about a magical castle, though. It just seems to grow new secret passages. We've only found two, and those only because of Petra and our Ravenclaw friends here. St. Lokimagus the Perpetually Productive is one of them. It's all right there in his slogan.'
Noah pointed to the words engraved into the statue's base: Igitur Qui Moveo, Qui et Movea.
Ted made a grunt of triumph and there was a loud click. 'You'll never guess where it was this time,' he said, puffing from beneath the statue. With a grind of moving stone, the statue of St. Lokimagus straightened up as much as his humped back would allow, stepped carefully off his plinth, and then walked across the corridor with a slightly bowlegged gait. He disappeared into the door opposite, which James saw was a boys' bathroom.
'What's his slogan mean?' James asked as the Gremlins began to duck hurriedly into the low doorway on the back of St. Lokimagus' plinth. Noah grinned and shrugged. 'When you gotta go, you gotta go.'
The passage led to a short stairway with rounded stone steps. The Gremlins pounded noisily up the steps, and then shushed each other as they reached a doorway. Ted creaked the door open a fraction, peering through the crack. A moment later he pushed the door wide and motioned for the rest to follow him outside.
The door opened inexplicably out of a small shed near what James recognized as the Quidditch pitch. The tall grandstands rose into the moonlight, looking bleak and imposing in the silence.
