Текст книги "James Potter and the Hall of the Elders' Crossing"

Автор книги: G. Norman Lippert

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        "Leaving us with one last order of business," the Headmistress finally said, to the accompaniment of a few brave cheers. "Some of you may have noticed that there is one empty chair amidst your teachers here on the dais. Rest assured that you shall have a Defense Against the Dark Arts professor and that he is indeed a uniquely qualified and gifted expert on the subject. He will be arriving tomorrow afternoon, along with a full complement of fellow teachers, students, and associates, as part of a year-long international magical summit between his school and ours. I will expect you all to turn out tomorrow afternoon in the main courtyard for the arrival of the representatives from Alma Aleron and the United States Department of Magical Administration."

        Sounds of mingled excitement and derision erupted in the hall as the students instantly turned to discuss this rather remarkable turn of events with their fellows. James heard Ted say, "What is some old Yank gonna be able to tell us about the Dark Arts? What channel to watch them on?" There was a chorus of laughter. James turned around, looking for Zane. He found him, caught his eye, and pointed at him, shrugging. Your people are coming here, he mouthed. Zane clapped his hand over his heart and saluted with the other.

        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.

        "The passage only works one way," Sabrina explained to James and Zane as the group ran lightly across the Quidditch pitch toward the hills beyond. "If you go into it without having come through St. Lokimagus' tunnel first you just find yourself in the equipment shed. Pretty convenient, since it means that even if we get caught, nobody else can chase us back through the tunnel."

        "Have you gotten caught yet?" James asked, puffing along next to her.

        "No, but this is the first time we've tried to use it. We only discovered it at the end of last year." She shrugged as if to say we'll see how this turns out, won't we?

        Zane's voice came out of the darkness behind James, conversationally. "What if St. Magic Buns gets done with the loo before we all come back through his hole?" James shuddered at Zane's turn of phrase, but admired his logic. It seemed like a question worth asking.

        "That's definitely a question for a Ravenclaw," Noah called back as quietly as he could, but nobody answered.

After ten minutes of skirting the border of a scraggly, moonlit wood, the group clambered over a wire fence into a field. Ted pulled his wand from his back pocket as he approached a patch of rambling bushes and weeds. James followed and saw that there was a low barn hidden among the growth. It was ramshackle, bowed and buried in vines.

        "Alohomora," Ted said, pointing his wand at the large rusted padlock hanging on the door. There was a flash of yellow light. It bloomed out of the lock, and then resolved into the shape of a glowing, ghostly arm that snaked from the padlock's keyhole. The arm ended in a fist with the index finger pointed in the air. It waggled the finger back and forth reprovingly for a few seconds, and then vanished.

        "Protective charm's still in place, then," Ted announced happily. He turned to Petra, who came forward, pulling something out of her jeans pocket. James saw it was a rusted skeleton key.

        "That was Gennifer's idea," Horace, the second Ravenclaw, said proudly. "Although I had wanted it to be a different gesture."

        "Would've been a nice touch," Zane agreed.

        "We figured any magical types that tried to break in here wouldn't think to try anything as boring as a key," Noah explained. "We put up Disillusionment Charms to keep the Muggles away, but they don't come out here anyway. It's abandoned."

        Petra turned the key and pulled away the padlock. The doors of the old barn swung open with surprising silence. "Creaky doors are for novices," Damien said smugly, tapping the side of his pug nose.

        James peered inside. There was something large in the shadows, its bulk blotting out the rear of the barn. He could just barely make out the shape of it. More than anything, it looked like somebody's very antiquated idea of a flying saucer.

        "Cool!" Zane cried happily, understanding dawning on him. "Raise the Wocket! You're right, James. There was nothing like this in The Wizard of Oz."

        "The Wizard of what?" Ted said to James out of the corner of his mouth.

       "It's a Muggle thing," James replied. "We wouldn't understand."

        Frank Tottington awoke suddenly, sure he'd heard something out in the garden. He was instantly alert and angry, throwing off his covers and swinging his legs out of bed as if he'd fully expected such an annoyance.

        "Hmwah?" his wife mumbled, raising her head sleepily.

        "It's those dratted Grindle kids out in our garden," Frank announced gruffly, jamming his feet into his tartan slippers. "Didn't I tell you they were sneaking in at night, trampling my begonias and stealing my tomatoes? Kids!" he spat. He shrugged into a threadbare robe. It flapped about his shins as he clumped down the stairs and grabbed his shotgun off the hook by the back door.

        The screen door squeaked open and clapped against the outside wall as Frank barreled out. "All right, you hooligans! Drop those tomatoes and step out here into the light where I can see you!" He raised the shotgun in one hand, pointing it warningly at the star-strewn sky.

        A light popped on over his head, illuminating him in a blinding white beam that seemed to hum faintly. Frank froze, his shotgun still held barrel up, pointing up into the beam of light. Slowly, Frank raised his head, squinting, his stubbly chin casting a long shadow down the front of his robe. There was something hovering over him. It was hard to tell the size of it. It was simply a round black shape, with dim lights dotting the edge. It was turning slowly and appeared to be lowering.

        Frank gasped, stumbled and nearly dropped his gun. He recovered and backed quickly away, not taking his eyes from the gently humming object. It lowered slowly, as if cushioned by the beam of light, and as it came to rest, its hum deepened, throbbing.

        Frank boggled at it, his knobby knees bent in a sort of alert crouch. He chewed on his dentures fretfully.

        Then, with a burst of steam and a hiss, the shape of a door appeared in the side of the object. It was outlined in light, and the light brightened as the door unfolded, forming a short ramp. A figure was standing framed in the light. Frank gasped and raised his shotgun, socking it to his shoulder. There was a blast of red light and Frank jumped. He made to pull the trigger, but nothing happened. The trigger had changed, become a small button instead of the comforting loop of metal. He glanced down at the shotgun, and then held it out in front of him in shock. It wasn't his shotgun at all. It was a small, ratty umbrella with a fake wooden handle. He'd never seen it before. Recognizing he was in the presence of something truly otherworldly, Frank dropped the umbrella and sank to his knees.

The figure in the doorway was small and thin. Its skin was a purplish green, its large head was nearly featureless, with the suggestion of large, almond-shaped eyes barely visible in the glare of light from the open hatchway. It began to walk down the ramp toward Frank, and its footsteps seemed unusually careful, almost awkward. It ducked slightly to clear the doorway, then, suddenly the figure tripped on the lip of the hatch. It stumbled forward, pinwheeling its arms, and seemed about to throw itself upon Frank. He scrambled backwards desperately, terrified. The small figure toppled forward, its disproportionately large head zooming towards Frank, filling his vision.

        In the moment before Frank blacked out, he was distracted only by the rather strange fact that the figure seemed to be wearing, if nothing else, a fairly ordinary dark green backpack slung over its shoulders. Frank fainted with a look of rather worried confusion on his face.

        James awoke blearily the next morning. He pried his eyes open, taking in the unfamiliar shapes of his surroundings. He was in a four-poster bed in a large, round room with a low ceiling. Sunlight beamed cheerily in, lighting more beds, most of which were disheveled and empty. Slowly, like owls coming in to roost, he remembered the previous night: the Sorting Hat, standing before the portrait of the Fat Lady and not knowing the Gryffindor password, meeting Ted, and then the rest of the Gremlins.

        He sat up in bed quickly, reaching for his face. He patted his cheeks, his brow, the shape of his eyes, and then sighed with relief. Everything appeared to be back to normal. Something flopped onto his bed next to him, a newspaper James didn't recognize. It was turned to an article with the headline: 'Local Man Insists Martian Rockets Steal His Tomatoes'. James glanced up. Noah Metzker was standing at the foot of his bed, a wry look on his face.

       "They misspelled 'Wocket' again," he said.

2.Arrival of the Alma Alerons

        By the time James had dressed and made his way down to the Great Hall for breakfast, it was nearly ten o'clock. Less than a dozen students could be seen moving disconsolately among the detritus of the morning's earlier rush. At the far corner of the Slytherin table, Zane sat hunched and squinting under a beam of sunlight. Across from him was Ralph, who saw James enter and waved him over.

         As James made his way across the Hall, four or five house-elves, each wearing large linen napkins with the Hogwarts crest embroidered on them, circled the tables, meandering in what at first appeared to be random paths. Occasionally, one of them would duck beneath the surface of a table and then reappear a moment later, tossing a stray fork or half a biscuit casually onto the mess of the table. As James passed one of the elves, it straightened, raised its spindly arms, and then brought them swiftly down. The contents on the table in front of him swirled together as if caught in a miniature cyclone. With a great clattering of dishes and silverware, the corners of the tablecloth shot upwards and twisted around the pile of breakfast debris, creating a huge clanking bag floating improbably over the polished wood table. The house-elf leaped from floor to bench to tabletop, and then jumped, turning in midair and landing lightly on top of the bag. It grasped the twisted top of the bag, using the knot as if it were a set of reins, and turned the bag, driving it bobbingly toward the gigantic service doors in the side of the Hall. James ducked as the bag swooped over his head.

"Phew," Zane muttered as James plopped down next to him and reached for the last piece of toast. "These little waiters of yours may be weird-lookin' buggers, but they know how to make a good cup of coffee."

        "They're not waiters, they're house-elves. I read about them yesterday," Ralph said, happily munching half a sausage. The other half was speared on the end of his fork, which he used like a pointer, indicating the elves. "They work downstairs. They're like the elves in that kids' story. The ones that came at night and did all the work for the cobbler."

        "The what?" Zane asked over his coffee mug.

        "The guy that makes shoes. He had all these shoes half finished and just lying around, and he was about to fall over from all the work. You know that story, don't you? So he falls asleep, and in the middle of the night, all these little elves show up and whip out their hammers and go to town, fixing up all the shoes for him. He wakes up and bammo, everything's cool." Ralph bit the rest of the sausage off his fork and munched it, looking around. "I never pictured them wearing napkins, though."

        "Hey, alien-boy, I see your face is back to normal," Zane said, examining James critically.

        "What passes for it, I suppose," James replied.

        "Did it hurt at all when Sabrina zapped you?"

        "No," James said. "It felt weird. Really weird. But it didn't hurt. It just went back to normal overnight."

        "She must be an artist. You looked great. Webbed feet and all."

        "What are you two talking about?" Ralph asked, looking back and forth between them. They told him all about the previous night, about raising the Wocket, and the farmer who'd fainted when James, the little alien, had stumbled and fallen on top of him.

        "I was hiding in the corner of the yard, near the shed, and I about gave myself a hernia trying not to laugh when you tackled him. Attack of the Martian Klutzes!" He dissolved into laughter and after a moment, James joined him.

        "Where'd they get the spaceship?" Ralph asked, bypassing the humor.

        "It's just a bunch of chicken wire and papier-mâché," Zane said, downing the last of his coffee and clapping the mug onto the table. He raised his arm and snapped his fingers twice. "Sabrina and Horace made it last year as part of a float for a Christmas parade down in Hogsmeade. It used to be a giant cauldron. Now, with the help of some paint and something Gennifer called a 'Visum-ineptio charm', it's the R.M.S. Wocket."

        A very small house-elf approached Zane, frowning. "You, er, snapped, young master?" The elf's voice was gratingly deep despite his size.

"Here you go, buddy," Zane said, handing the elf the empty coffee mug. "Nice work. Keep it up. This is for you."

        The elf looked down at the piece of paper Zane had just handed him. He raised his eyes again. "Thank you, young master. Will there, er, be anything else?"

       Zane flapped his hand dismissively. "No, thanks. Go get some sleep or something. You look tired."

        The elf looked at Ralph, then James, who shrugged and tried to smile. With a barely perceptible roll of the eyes, the elf tucked the five dollar bill into his napkin and disappeared under the table.

       Zane looked thoughtful. "I could get used to this."

        "I don't think you're supposed to tip the house-elves," Ralph said uncertainly.

        "I don't see why not," Zane said airily, stretching. "My dad tips everybody when he's travelling. He says it's part of the local economy. And it fosters good service."

        "And you can't just tell a house-elf to go get some sleep," James said, suddenly realizing what had just happened.

        "Why the heck not?"

        "Because that's exactly what he'll have to go and do!" James said in exasperation. He was thinking of the Potter family house-elf, a sad little pug of an elf whose moroseness was only offset by his sheer bloodyminded determination to do exactly what was asked of him. It wasn't that James didn't like Kreacher. It was just that you had to learn precisely how to ask things of Kreacher. "House-elves have to do what is asked of them by their masters. It's just the kind of beings they are. He's probably heading back to his cupboard, or shelf, or wherever it is he sleeps even now and trying to work out how he's going to sleep in the middle of the morning." James shook his head, and then realized it struck him funny. He tried not to smile, which only made it worse. Zane saw it and pointed at him.

        "Ha ha! You think it's funny, too!" he chortled.

        "I can't imagine that they have to do everything we ask of them," Ralph said, his brow furrowed. "We're just students. We don't own the place or anything. And we're just first years."

        "You remembered the name of the spell Sabrina used to make the Wocket look like a rocket?" James asked, turning to Zane, impressed.

        "Visum-ineptio," Zane said, relishing the sound of it. "It means something like 'eye-fooling'. If you work through the Latin, you can sort of figure it out. Horace says it just helps people see what they think they are going to see."

James frowned. "So when that beam of light came out of the sky onto that farmer, he, sort of, expected to see an alien spaceship?"

        "Sure. Everybody knows that a beam of light, at night, in the middle of nowhere means the little green guys are coming."

        "You're a strange guy, Zane," Ralph said, not unappreciatively.

        Just then, James sensed someone standing behind him. All three of them turned, looking up. It was the Slytherin girl from the previous night, the one who'd led the applause for James before his Sorting. She was looking down at him with a pleasant, vaguely indulgent expression. She was flanked by two other Slytherins, a boy with handsome, rather sharp features whose smile showed an awful load of teeth, and another girl, who wasn't smiling. Heat rushed to James' cheeks as he remembered he was sitting at the Slytherin table. Before he could think, he scrambled to get up, a chunk of toast still sticking out of his mouth.

        "No, no!" the pretty Slytherin girl said, raising her hand toward him, palm out, stopping him in his tracks almost as if she'd used magic. "Don't stand. I'm happy to see you feel comfortable enough to sit at the Slytherin table with us. These are quite different times than those of your father. But I assume too much. Mr. Deedle, would you be so kind as to introduce me to your friend?"

        Ralph coughed, clearing his throat in embarrassment. "Uh, this is my friend, James Potter. And this is Zane. I forget his last name. Sorry." He said the last to Zane, who shrugged, grinned at Ralph, then jumped to his feet and reached across the table to shake the Slytherin girl's hand.

        "Walker. Zane Walker. It is a distinct and heartfelt pleasure to make your acquaintance, Ms…"

       The girl's smile broadened a tiny bit and she tilted her head, still looking at Ralph.

        "Oh!" Ralph said, jumping a bit. "Yes. This is, um, Tabitha Corsica. She's a prefect in Slytherin House, a sixth year, I think. Captain of the Slytherin Quidditch Team. And the debate team. And, um… she has a really cool broom." Having exhausted himself of everything he could think of to say about her, Ralph slumped as if exhausted.

        Tabitha finally accepted Zane's hand, holding it lightly, then releasing it. "I'm glad to have officially made your acquaintances. Mr. Potter, or may I call you James?" she said, turning to him. Her voice was like silver bells and velvet, lower than James' own, but rather beautiful. He realized she'd asked him a question, shook himself, and answered.

        "Yeah. Sure. James."

"And I'd be delighted if you'd call me Tabitha," she said, smiling as if this gesture of familiarity pleased her immensely. "I'd just like to say, on behalf of Slytherin House, that we are glad you are among us, and we hope sincerely that any remaining," she glanced upwards with her eyes, considering, "prejudices will be left in the past, where they forever belong." She turned left and right, encompassing the two Slytherins with her. "We all have nothing but the highest respect and, yes, regard for you and your father. Can we, I hope, expect to all be friends?"

        The boy on Tabitha's right continued to smile down at James. The girl on her left studied a spot on the table somewhere between them, her face expressionless.

        "S-sure. Friends. Of course," James stammered. The silence of the rest of the hall seemed a huge thing. It swallowed his voice, made it tiny.

        Tabitha's smile warmed even further. Her green eyes twinkled. "I'm pleased that you agree. And now we will leave you to finish your, er, breakfasts. Tom? Philia?"

The three turned on the spot and swept away down the aisle.

        "What did you just agree to?" Ralph asked as they stood and followed the Slytherins at a careful distance.

        "I think James here has either just made a gorgeous friend or a sultry enemy," Zane said, watching the swoop and drape of Tabitha's robes as she turned the corner. "I can't say for sure which I am rooting for."

        James was thinking hard. Things certainly had changed a lot since Dad's and Mum's day. He just couldn't quite tell if they were, in fact, better.

        The three of them spent the rest of the morning exploring the school grounds. They visited the Quidditch pitch, which looked to Zane and James remarkably different in the bright, hazy sunlight than it had in the dark. Zane's mouth fell open when he saw a group of older students playing a scratch three-onthree Quidditch match. The players swooped in and out of formations, barely missing each other, calling out plays and occasional swear words.

        "Brutal!" Zane proclaimed happily as one of the players walloped a Bludger at an opposing player's head, knocking him into a barrel roll around his broomstick. "And I've been to a rugby match."

They passed Hagrid's cottage, which looked empty and dark, with no smoke in the chimney and the door shut tight. Shortly after, they ran into Ted Lupin and Noah Metzker, who led them to the edge of the Forbidden Forest. A gigantic, ancient-looking willow tree dominated the edge of the clearing. Ted held out his arm, stopping Ralph as he moved toward it.

        "Close enough, mate," he said. "Watch this."

        Ted loosened the mouth of a large laundry bag he'd been dragging behind him. Out of it, he produced an object shaped roughly like a four-legged animal with wings and a beak. It was covered in multicolored scraps of paper whose colors shifted and swam in the light breeze.

        "No! It's a piñata!" Zane exclaimed. "In the shape of a… a… don't tell me! A… sphinxoraptor!"

        "It's a hippogriff," James said, laughing.

        "I like his name better," Ralph said.

        "Me too!" Noah added.

        "Silence!" said Ted, raising his hand. He lifted the piñata in his other hand, hefted it, and then threw it as hard as he could into the curtain of branches hanging from the willow. It vanished into the dense foliage, and for a moment, nothing else happened. Then there was a rustle among the whiplike branches. They writhed, as if something large was moving beneath them. Suddenly, the tree exploded into a violent flurry of motion. Its branches flailed wildly, slapping, groaning, and creaking. The noise it made was like a very localized windstorm. After a few seconds, the piñata was caught up visibly in the branches. The tree embraced it in dozens of coiling, angry whips, and then all of the branches pulled at once. It was as if the piñata had been dropped into a blender. Shreds of multicolored paper and wizard candy exploded as the ballistics charm core of the piñata triggered. Confetti and candies peppered the tree and the surrounding clearing. The tree thrashed in apparent annoyance at the sudden colorful mess in its branches, then seemed to give up. It settled into its original shape.