JAMES POTTER AND THE VAULT OF DESTINIES

she's going to be allowed to come along on this little jaunt of yours, Potter.'

       'What's that mean?' James asked, watching Ted dig something out of his robes. 'She's of age now. They can't stop her if she wants to go on a trip.'

       'Can't they now?' Damien mused, leaning back and steepling his fingers. 'I mean, there's detention, and then there's detention, if you know what I mean. There's some tricky legal questions, after all, what with both of her grandparents ending up dead. The Muggle police don't know much of anything, thanks to Merlin, but that hardly means everything's all sunshine and rainbows. The stuff we saw at that farm, well, let's just say it makes Professor Longbottom's Snapping Thornroot look like daffodil salad. Our Petra is one complicated little witch, if you ask me.'

       'That doesn't mean she's guilty of anything horrible,' James said, sitting up. 'She and her sister are lucky to be shut of the lot of them. Sounds to me like they were pretty rotten to both of them.'

       'They've been staying with you and your parents since the day they got out of there, right?' Rose asked, raising her eyebrows. 'Did they tell you what happened that day?'

       James sat back again, looking out over the common room. 'Well, not really. She said that her grandfather had denied his wizard powers for the sake of his Muggle wife, some awful woman named Phyllis, who was just beastly. And she said that Phyllis tried to send Petra's sister Izabella off to some work farm place for people who are soft in the head. Petra told me that they did what they had to do to get out of there together.'

       'I guess that's close enough to the truth,' Damien nodded. 'Although it isn't all of it. That's for sure.'

'What do you know about it?' James asked, meeting Damien's eyes.

       'Not a whole lot more than you do, but I'm just saying—there was magic going on there the likes of which I've never seen. Merlin made us swear secrecy about it, which is fine by me. You probably wouldn't believe it anyway. All I know is that if Petra was doing it, then that wasn't the Petra I thought I knew.'

       ''Morgan',' Sabrina corrected again, holding up her neatly folded auger. 'What do you say, Lupin? You ready to go six circles with the reigning champion?'

       'Not now, not now,' Ted answered distractedly, producing a rather surprising amount of miscellany from his pockets and dumping it all onto the table. 'There's Gremlinery afoot. Where are they, then…'

James, Lucy, and Rose leaned over the table as Ted rooted quickly through the pile of odds and ends. A dog- eared origami frog leapt out of the detritus, limping crookedly. Every Flavor Beans and loose Knuts rolled every which way. 'Aha!' Ted announced triumphantly, sitting back and producing a velvet bag tied with a silver cord. 'Gather 'round, comrades. This could be interesting.'

       Sabrina put down the auger and frowned studiously as Ted undid the bag. 'Extendable Ears?' she said, peering at its contents. 'How are those going to work? You said Morgan and the Headmaster were meeting in his office. That's all the way across the castle.'

       'Ah, ah, ah,' Ted corrected, smiling mischievously. 'These are the new Extendable Ears Mark II, with a Remote Sensing Hex built right in. Just mark the object you want to serve as the receiver—in this case, an innocent peppermint that I slipped into the Headmaster's pocket on the way back to the castle, and voila—' Here, Ted Metamorphed his face into a caricature of George Weasley, proceeding with George's infectious enthusiasm, 'Instant illicit audio illumination for all your eavesdropping endeavors.' He changed his face back to himself and pulled a handful of pinkish shapes out of the bag. 'Strictly experimental at this point, but working at the Three 'W's does have its perks.'

       James took one of the pink shapes as Ted handed it to him. It was made out of foam rubber and shaped like a large ear. 'What do I do with it?'

       'Well,' Damien said, examining his critically, 'I don't guess that you eat it.' Experimentally, he stuck the foam ear up to his own ear and listened. His eyes widened. 'It's working!' he whispered raspily. 'I can hear them!'

       As one, the Gremlins and Lucy clapped the ears to the sides of their heads. James discovered that the shape was fashioned to fit neatly over his own ear so that it could be worn hands-free. He jammed it on and then leaned back, frowning slightly at the distant, echoing voices he was hearing.

'Is it them?' Sabrina asked, squinting quizzically. 'They're hard to make out.'

Ted nodded distractedly. 'It's them, they're just far away. Shut it and listen.'

       James strained his ears to hear over the noise of the common room. Dimly, he perceived the rumbling baritone of the Headmaster, and then the tremulous tenor of Petra's response. Slowly, faintly, the voices became clear.

       'Unfortunate as it was, I am less concerned about the way in which you chose to exercise your powers,' the Headmaster was saying, 'than I am about your more recent dreams. I have come to believe that such things often have implications we do not immediately comprehend.'

       'It's just a dream,' Petra answered, her voice tiny and distant. 'It's a lot like some others that I've had, only the other way around. I used to dream of decisions I thought I wanted to change. Now, I'm dreaming of disasters I barely avoided. I'm a little glad of them, really. They remind me.'

Merlin's voice came again, calm and measured. 'What do they remind you of?'

       'Of the power of choices. And the fact that the simplest actions can have enormous consequences.'

       Merlin's voice lowered meaningfully. 'And you know now how very true this is for you, in particular, don't you, Ms. Morganstern? Or would you prefer me to call you by your other name?'

There was a long pause. James had begun to wonder if the Extendable Ear had stopped working when the Headmaster's voice became audible again.

       'Grundlewort ganache popovers,' he said slowly, as if tasting the words. James looked up, his brow furrowed. Lucy met his gaze, frowned, and shook her head slightly. The voice of Merlinus went on, low and quiet, so that James had to strain his ears to hear. He leaned over the table, hunching his shoulders in concentration.

       'Use only powdered grundlewort, dried and well-sifted, to avoid an overly pungent aroma. Mix with two parts huiverte extract and a pinch of tea blossom petal. Add rum three drops at a time until damp enough to knead…'

       James looked aside and saw Ted staring furiously at the table in front of him, the oversized foam ear jutting from the side of his head. He noticed James' look and shrugged.

       'Sounds like a recipe,' Damien whispered. 'Why's he teaching Petra how to make popovers?'

       'Because,' Merlin's voice boomed, so loud that James exclaimed in surprise and clambered at his Extendable Ear, 'popover preparation is a valuable life skill that all witches and wizards should aim to perfect.'

       James succeeded in clawing the foam shape off his ear, turned, and recoiled at the sight of the Headmaster standing right next to him, a very large cookbook open in his hands. Merlin was smiling, but it was not the sort of smile one felt instinctively comfortable sitting beneath.

       'After all,' the Headmaster said, eyeing the foam ears scattered around the table, 'one never knows when the need might arise for an unexpected treat. Which reminds me…' He retrieved something from the depths of his robes and held it out over the table. 'I believe this belongs to you, Mr. Lupin. I'll just, er, add it to the pile.' He dropped the charmed peppermint onto the mess of Ted's pocket contents.

       'And a good evening to you, Headmaster,' Damien said, recovering and smiling hugely. 'Did you enjoy the wedding, sir?'

       'Save your efforts, Mr. Damascus,' Merlin replied, snapping the cookbook shut in his hand. 'I have every suspicion that you will require them later in the term. Good evening, students, Mr. Lupin.'

       He turned to go, passing Petra as she entered through the portrait hole. Merlin nodded at her meaningfully, and she returned the gesture, somewhat reluctantly.