JAMES POTTER AND THE VAULT OF DESTINIES

him.

       A moment later, the team crossed the field and disappeared into the cellar locker room, where their skrims and Professor Wood awaited them.

       'This is it, team!' he called out, clapping his hands together eagerly. 'Get geared up and let's meet on the platform for practice laps in ten minutes!'

       Wood met James' eye as he turned to climb the steps. He winked and smiled crookedly, almost mischievously. James grinned at the professor and then began to strap on his new wrist gauntlets.

By the time the last of the team clumped up onto the platform, the sun had lowered to a huge bronze ball on the horizon, casting its last beams onto the waving flags and banners of the grandstands. The crowd was in extremely high spirits, producing a nearly constant roar of happy exhilaration. James blinked in the late afternoon glare and fingered his skrim.

       Only minutes earlier, while the team had still been congregated in the locker cellar, James had called them together in a quick huddle. There, he had announced one change to the evening's Clutch magic game.

       'No curses,' he'd said firmly, producing a chorus of objections from the gathered team members.

       'Why not?' Norrick had asked stridently. 'We'll need to use everything we've got against those Wolves!'

       'Not curses,' James had repeated. 'Leave the potion pouches down here in your lockers. They may be legal and they may not be, but that's not really the point, is it? The Foots play a clean game. Nothing dirty, right? We'll win this match, but we'll do it with our heads held high just like always! Understood?'

       'James is right,' Jazmine had added resolutely, removing the potion pouch from around her neck. 'We'll win this match straight up! We don't need to resort to Vampire curses. That sort of thing is for teams that don't play as well as the Bigfoots! Am I right?'

       To James' surprise and delight, the team had responded with a hearty cheer. All around, the Bigfoots players had removed the potion pouches from around their necks and piled them on the shelf next to their skrims.

       Now, standing in the sunset light and looking across the rings toward the Werewolves' platform, James felt a pang of doubt. The powdered curses might have been sneaky and a bit devilish, but all of a sudden James agreed with Norrick: they were going to need everything in their arsenal to beat the Wolves.

       With their backs to the sunset, Team Werewolf appeared to be fringed with molten gold. Clayton Altaire stood in the front, grinning malevolently, his skrim standing next to him, decorated with a snarling wolf's visage. Flanking him were Olivia Jones and Jeremiah Dunckel. All of them stared across the lofty open space of the field, smirking with seamless confidence.

       'Don't let them spook you,' Wood called, summoning the team into a huddle. 'Team Werewolf is a good team, an excellent team, but you lot are every bit as skilled as they are and then some. Their overconfidence will be their downfall! They expect to win this match easily with hardly any effort. They think that Victory Hill is their birthright. Are they right?'

       'No!' Team Bigfoot cried out in rowdy unison.

       'Will you lie down and let them win just because they're the Werewolves?'

       'No!' the team barked again, louder.

       Wood shouted over the crowd, 'Will you take the match to them and show them that their arrogance is their greatest weakness!?'

       This time, the team exploded in a shout so loud that the crowd all around could hear them. 'YES!'

       'Who are we?' Wood demanded.

       'The Bigfoots!'

       Wood asked again, 'WHO are we?'

       'THE BIGFOOTS!' This time, the shout dissolved into a deafening cheer as the gathered crowd took up the cry, turning it into a chant: 'BIG-FOOTS! BIG-FOOTS! BIG-FOOTS!' Fireworks popped from the grandstands all around and banners waved frantically against the purple sky.

       'Line up!' Wood shouted, smiling grimly. 'Practice laps! Team captain?'

       'Viper formation,' Jazmine barked, dropping her skrim and jumping onto it. 'Go Foots!'

       The rest of the team returned the cry and followed Jazmine out into the rings, slipping easily into formation. James was among the last to take off. For one instant, he felt a pang of mortal worry. This isn't going to work, he thought, panic washing over him like a tidal wave. We can't do this! They'll slaughter us! For a split second, he was convinced that he had forgotten everything—all the game magic they had practiced, all the formations and maneuvers, everything the other House teams had taught them, even how to fly a skrim. He stared down at the odd broom as it floated next to him, one of his feet planted on its middle, holding it steady. He felt frozen in place.

       A hand clapped him gently on the shoulder. When James looked up, it was Professor Wood.

       'Don't worry about it, James,' Wood suggested, nodding encouragingly. 'Just have fun, eh? This is what you were made for.'

       James looked at the professor, hoping he was right. He nodded, gulped, and then swung his other foot onto the beam of his skrim. A moment later, the platform was gone, replaced by open space.

       James remembered everything.

       Less than a minute later, Professor Sanuye blew his official's whistle. From that point on, there was no looking back.

       The match was a blur of wild motion, punctuated only by the whoosh of the rings, the buffet of passing players, and the occasional thump and cry as Bullies collided with Clippers. Spells sizzled through the air all around and James thought he had never experienced such intense, instantaneous ferocity. It was as if the Wolves were pulling out all the stops from the very moment the whistle blew, meaning to crush Team Bigfoot's spirit even before it had a chance to take root. As James passed through the center ring in pursuit of a Werewolf Clipper, he was walloped from overhead by what felt like a passing freight train. He spun off his skrim, grabbed onto it as he fell away, and then swung back up on the other side—a maneuver he had practiced so many times in the Gauntlet that it was nearly second nature. As he re-oriented himself, he glanced aside. Pentz, the boy who had tried to knock him off his skrim the very first time he, James, had attempted to fly one, was rocketing away, grinning back over his shoulder.

       James shook his head, fuming, and darted back into the rings, rejoining the flow of the match.

       It was difficult to keep track of the match as it was underway. James tried to be aware of what the rest of his team was doing, but the viciousness and speed of the Werewolves' tactics made it a challenge simply to stay on his skrim. James was sure that he had never flown so fast for so long, and yet he was barely keeping up. At one point during the first quarter, he saw Jazmine and Gobbins performing one of the two-man offensive spells that the Pixies had taught them with some apparent success. Later, he followed Wentworth in Clipper formation and saw the smaller boy activate one of the Igors' ingenious gizmos from the rear of his skrim. A small box popped open and a Boggart deployed from it, immediately taking the shape of a ghastly flying clown. Clayton Altaire, who had been gaining on Wentworth in Bully position, nearly fell off his skrim as the clown loomed over him. James flashed past and used the Riddikulus spell his father had taught him to turn the clown into a cloud of ping pong balls, which fell away into the darkness below.

       In general, the team seemed to be putting everything they knew to good use, and yet as the match neared