JAMES POTTER AND THE VAULT OF DESTINIES

importantly) deeply fierce. No matter what happened with her and that pipsqueak arbiter, Keynes, Albus had a feeling that Petra would manage to stay in charge of her own destiny. And Izzy's as well.

       'Hey Cornelius,' Altaire called as Albus returned to Ares Mansion one evening, interrupting him just as he began to tromp up the wide staircase. 'Your brother and his slab of a buddy toddled by to see you.'

       Albus stopped, surprised. He peered over the banister at Altaire, who lounged in the main parlor with some older Werewolf students pretending to study, nipping Firewhisky from a bottle they kept hidden behind the couch.

       'James came here? What'd he say?'

       Altaire shrugged indulgently. 'Who knows? He and his little Bigfoot pal shook in their capes when I met them at the door and told them you weren't here. I suggested they beat it before I taught them a little respect. Sorry if I ruined teatime or something.' He grinned maliciously and nudged the girl next to him. She smirked crookedly.

       Albus rolled his eyes and turned away, trudging up the rest of the stairs.

       He'd heard about James' errands around the campus that day. Lucy had corroborated the rumors at lunchtime. Apparently, James and Ralph Deedle were making the rounds to all the other societies, asking for a little help with the upcoming tournament match. He shook his head as he made his way to the second-floor landing and opened the door to the small sophomore dormitory room. It was just like James to traipse all over the campus with his hand out, begging for help, making his problem everyone else's problem. As irritating as the Werewolves could be, at least they understood the concept of self-respect. They'd either win or lose on their own two feet, and they'd do it with pride, no matter what.

       Of course, in Albus' experience, the Werewolves always won, so he couldn't be entirely sure how they'd react if they ever lost. He assumed that they'd accept it with the same stoic bitterness that they displayed in nearly every other case.

       Albus plopped his knapsack onto his bed and threw himself down next to it. He propped his chin in his hands and stared out the tall window.

The fact was that it rankled him a little bit that James hadn't tried any harder to ask him for help. Truthfully, Albus knew that he hadn't given James any indication that he, Albus, would be willing to offer any help, but still. They were brothers, weren't they?

       Deep down, despite all of his bravado and his apparent society loyalty, Albus sort of wanted to see the Bigfoots win the tournament. Not just because James was part of the team and not in the least because the Foots were the celebrated underdogs. Albus was not the sort of boy to be moved by the plight of the underdog. The fact was, Albus was uneasy about the apparently unstoppable nature of Team Werewolf.

       It had started a few months earlier, right before Christmas.

       Albus was bundling up to follow the team out to Pepperpock Down for a match against Igor House when Altaire had stopped him.

       'Whoa, whoa, whoa, where do you think you're running off to?' the bigger boy had demanded, placing a hand on the middle of Albus' chest and pushing him slightly back into the foyer.

       'I'm going to the match,' Albus replied, resisting—with some difficulty—the urge to produce his wand and give Altaire a shove of his own.

       Altaire shook his head impatiently. 'No you aren't,' he countered. 'You've got a job to do. Don't tell me you forgot already.'

       Albus frowned wearily. 'You're kidding? I have to do it now? But the match…!'

       'I expect we'll manage to play the first half just fine without you in the stands waving your little Werewolf flag,' Olivia Jones smirked, passing them as she strapped on her gauntlets.

       'Everybody has to do their part,' Altaire added condescendingly. 'Our part is to go kick Team Igor's scrawny butts. Yours is to polish the silver so that we have something nice to eat with when we get back. It may not seem very important to you, Cornelius, but we'll be hungry when we get back. We'll deserve some nice shiny silverware. Right? What would happen if you toddled off to the match and shirked your duties? Why, we'd get back here and find nothing but tarnished, spotty old silver! How awful would that be?'

       'Answer him, cadet,' the Werewolf Keeper, a brute of a senior named Dunckel, commanded as he passed, bumping Albus with his shoulder.

       'That would be pretty awful,' Albus muttered, trying not to sound too sarcastic.

       Altaire nodded. 'It sure would. Now get to it. If you double-time it you may still make it for the second half of the game. And if you get there any earlier than that, I'll know you cheated and used magic. No magic for house chores! You know the rules.'

       'Yeah,' Albus said darkly, stripping off his scarf and throwing it over the hook by the door. 'I know the rules.'

       Altaire had already dismissed Albus, however. He smacked himself on his padded shoulders, first his right and then his left, let out a hoarse bark of animal-like enthusiasm (which was answered by the rest of the team as they made their way through the huge front door), and trotted down the main steps into the cold afternoon.

       Unlike the rest of the houses, Team Werewolf lived close enough to Pepperpock Down that they got ready for their matches in their own house, ignoring the locker cellar beneath their platform until the end of the match. Albus watched grimly as the team ran single file down the steps and along the path, barking and yawping at the early yellow moon. As they passed the bronze statue of the crouched werewolf, they patted it on the muzzle, as if for good luck. It was a tradition that was very nearly a compulsion. Albus shook his head. He was not superstitious enough to believe in luck. He believed in making his own luck.

       Or not.

       Still frowning to himself, he turned back to the main hall of Ares Mansion and made his way to the dining room and the silver hutch therein.

       He used magic to clean the silver, of course, despite the Werewolf House rules. It took all of three minutes. The next few minutes he spent grubbing up some old rags with silver polish and leaving them on the table just for the look of it.

       There was a television in Ares Mansion. This had offended Albus a great deal at first—the idea of a telly at Hogwarts was utterly preposterous, of course—but Alma Aleron was not Hogwarts, and at times like this, he was secretly rather glad for the diversion. He used his wand to click on the set and plopped full length onto the couch.

       There were dedicated wizarding television channels in the States and Albus watched one of them disconsolately, biding his time until he felt he could head out to the match without raising any suspicions. The program was a sort of chat show. The host, a wizard in orange pinstripe robes, was interviewing some bloke from the Crystal Mountain about the persistently missing Muggle senator. The working theory, apparently, was that the senator, whose name was Filmore, was still alive, and was being held by the Wizard's United Liberation Front at a secret location. The man from the Crystal Mountain was impressively slick and cool, wearing a slate grey suit and a burgundy ascot. Former Werewolf House man, Albus thought with a mixture of pride and annoyance.

       'According to some experts, the new head of the W.U.L.F. is a woman,' the man said, his tone grave. 'She replaces the former leader, Edgar Tarrantus, who preferred to be a rather public figure despite his group's clandestine nature. This new leader, however, has maintained a remarkably low profile, and we know almost nothing about her. She simply seems to have appeared out of thin air, wresting control of the group away from its founders and taking it, some say, into dangerous new directions.'

       'And what does this bode for the Muggle senator Filmore,' the host asked meaningfully, leaning slightly