They had just gotten off the Big Dipper roller coaster: Giselle, Bea, Deidre, Felix (who kept reminding them that he was Dee's date), Herman and Heloise (who did not stop holding hands even during the wildest part of the ride), Harry with his new Firebolt, and Ron (pretending to have a great time, while glancing around for a glimpse of Hermione and Krum, which, whenever he saw them, made it that much harder to pretend).
"The muggles are SO lucky," remarked Bea, "getting to go on these carnival rides all the time."
They were passing along the game booths, subconsciously trailing after Lori, Justin, Roscoe, and Cass, who were heading straight for the Tunnel of Love.
"What's that pinging noise?" wondered Heloise.
"The shooting gallery," Harry said.
"What's that? Are they popping corn?"
"Air rifles. They're shooting pellets at cardboard ducks."
The crowds were making a hubbub with all the talking and laughing, but Heloise did hear the gallery proprietor (a tall goblin) say to Luna, "No, Missy, it's THIS end here, with the little round hole, that is aimed at the ducks. (PING!) Watch it! I ain't a frickin duck!"
"Shall we try that huge wheel thing with the hanging seats on it?" Giselle suggested.
"It's called a Ferris Wheel," said Deidre. "Look! There's that Tunnel of, uh, tunnel thing. It says here--" she waved her Fair brochure-- "that it operates four times during the day and twice at night."
Bea said, "Why don't they leave it open all the time? I want some of that pink sticky stuff." She pointed to a glass-topped cart next to the Bearded Lady exhibit. "Little kids are eating it, so it must be good."
"Cotton candy," said Harry, trying to distract Ron from the sight of Krum presenting Hermione with a frosty mug of butterbeer.
"The reason," said Deidre, reading the brochure to Bea, "is to alert the patrons that when the 'red hot' firework goes off, the adult women and girls who wish to go on the ride are to form two lines on the lake-side of the Tunnel of, um, you know, and the adult men and boys form two lines on the field-side of it. You see, we're not supposed to know who is sitting next to us during the ride, which is quite dark. We don't find out who it is until near the end. Then we scream and run away."
Although no one had explicitly said they wanted to go on the Tunnel of Love ride, they all turned toward it with the precision of a marching band when the firework went off with a smoky bang.
Giselle read the sign as they passed under it:
BLIND DATE Tunnel of Love.
Adults 1 sickle. Children 3 knuts.
"Are we children?" said Bea, shashaying like a model on a fashion runway.
"Doesn't matter," Felix said, "Hogwarts students get a discount."
As they approached the start of the long winding red-canvas tunnel, they saw another sign.
STUDENTS MUST BE 17 YEARS OLD TO GET IN THE ADULT LINE.
"Well that's just dicky," Deidre said. "I'll probably get stuck with a five year-old boy."
"Surely a boy THAT young won't be interested in tunnels of love," Herman said.
Bea laughed. "You don't know my little cousin Roddy. He's already chasing hens."
On this field side male adults and teens were forming lines, cat-calling to the females going around to the lake side.
"Well, darling," Felix said to a smirking Deidre, "here's where we part company. Don't get fresh with the bloke sitting next to you unless it's me."
"Oh you won't be able to pry me off him with a crow bar."
Giselle, asking herself why she was going along with this frightful idea, went with Bea and Lori around to the ticket booth on the lake side. They paid their 4 knuts and got self-consciously in line.
Deidre soon joined them. Then came a number of Hogwarts girls, not least of all Hermione and Katie Bell, followed by some younger girls from Hogsmeade whose parents were saying things to them like, "Use your proto-wands if you have to!"
Giselle was quite amazed. Was love such a trivial thing? All during her wait she thought how nice it would be if Charlie could be sitting next to her on the ride. But when it came time for her to climb into a ride car, in the pitch dark, thoughts of Roger flooded her mind.
Then something inside her warned her off. Stepping back out, she said to a grinning Deidre, "You go ahead of me. I'm in no hurry."
"Oh you chicken!"
Deidre climbed in, vanishing in the dark. Just as the rattling sound of her car moving down the tunnel reached the girls in line, Giselle heard Deidre laugh out a "Hi there, Dracula!"
Who had she got? No it wouldn't be Roger. No it wouldn't be. Giselle hadn't seen him anywhere on the fairgrounds.
"Next up!' shouted the ride attendant, a squat goblin wearing a beanie hat and suspenders. "Watch yer step. Stay in the car. No magic unless yer life depends on it."
Giselle gulped. Climbing into the car was one of the hardest things she had ever done in her life.
She sat as far over from the other side of the car as she could get, pressing herself against the metal and fingering the wand in her jeans pocket. It was now totally dark. She heard the attendant on the boys side say gruffly, "I know my business, young man. Get in."
Giselle felt the car shake a bit as the boy got in beside her. The car at once began to move forward, rattling over the tracks. She could only smell the axel grease and the moldy canvas. Nothing else. There was a cool draft in her face, and with it came faint voices from somewhere up ahead in the pitch blackness. Deidre and her 'blind date.'
After half a minute she heard the car behind them start up. That would be Hermione or perhaps Katie.
Giselle was breathing so heavily that she was glad of the noise. It wasn't so embarrassing not talking to the mystery boy with the car rattling and the tracks making frequent sharp turns to her left. This did tend to throw her a little toward the boy. Twice she bumped him rather hard. Her whispered "Sorry!" was lost in the noise.
Was he talking to her and she just couldn't hear him? Was he?
"Hullo!" she said above the rattling, just to see if he could hear her.
"Hullo," he answered back.
Her heart sank. It wasn't Roger's voice. The car jerked hard to her right. The boy's weight pushed against her. "Sorry," she said for him.
"Are you all right?" he asked. His voice was a monotone. There was no emotion in it.
"I'm okay."
"What's your name? Mine's Krimson Johan. Slytherin, seventh year."
"Giselle. Hufflepuff. Um..."
Giselle's thoughts whirled like a roll of index cards. Johan. Slytherin. Seventh year. There was a nagging familiarity to the name, but she couldn't place him. There was no significance to him aside from the fact that he was sitting very close to her on a Tunnel of Love ride, which was now speeding up and swerving to left and right every few seconds, throwing them against each other with increasing force.
"McGonagall?" Krimson asked.
"Yes?"
They were bouncing back and forth, colliding shoulders and hips.
"Rough ride. So you're Giselle McGonagall. You know Roger Roundhouse."
It was a statement of fact. Giselle was unnerved by it. If she could only get off this ride!
And then the car slowed. It was getting lighter. Up ahead Giselle could see Deidre's car. She couldn't tell who the boy was.
She looked up, to her right, and just then a glow of sunlight through holes in the canvas wall showed Krimson Johan in all his stoic indifference to her, his pale hazel eyes observing her as if she were an insect pinned to a nature board.
"Roger asked me about you, not fifteen minutes ago," he said, and as he said it Giselle remembered seeing him in the corridors and library with Elenore.
"Roger was off for the fortune teller's, this Madame Moonbeam person. You should check it out. Well, I guess this is over with," he observed as the car rattled to a halt outside.
Giselle was in a daze. Superimposed over her mental image of Roger peering into a crystal ball was the sight of Deidre getting out of her car with Felix. With Felix. How strange. Had Felix somehow inspired Giselle to step back and let Deidre go ahead of her?
Coming out of her daze, Giselle clambered out of the car and walked over to where Deidre and Felix were waiting for the others. It dawned on her then that the Slytherin seventh year who had brewed the lust potion for Elenore was this Krimson fellow.
So! Had HE been the one to inspire her to balk at getting in before Deidre? And what for? To tell her that Roger had asked about her? Why should Krimson want to bother with it? Why, because... because the antidote hadn't really worked?
When Minnex left the caravan house wagon to meet with Hooch, Caprice fondled the dagger as an idea began to evolve in her heated mind.
Yes, it would work. It was perhaps the only solution.
She put the blade to her lips and inhaled deeply.
Krimson had watched Minnex crossing the field to the Quidditch stadium. He gradually realized that the 'pulling' feeling was happening again. But this time he knew without doubt who was doing it.
He had always suspected who it was, thanks to Pansy Parkinson. Her family was in good with the Third Faction, the self-styled negotiators between the Loyalist Death Eaters and the supporters of Lucius Malfoy, that slippery snake who was so careful to hide his true intentions so that he could find refuge in whichever side gained the upper hand.
Krimson smiled tautly. The pull was getting stronger. It was getting very strong. He let it guide him to the caravan wagon of Madame Moonbeam.
"Get in," said Caprice, pulling at the sleeve of his denim jacket. He stepped into the dim stuffy room. She shut the door and said to him urgently, "I've no time to go into details. We can chat later. Now you are to stand there and brace yourself. You will feel a heavy weight on you, but you're a strong boy and you can handle the weight."
She went to the rear area, into the candlelight and shadows.
Krimson was pleasantly surprised. Caprice Eff was trusting him. She was in good, too, with the Stalwart Group, and here she was trusting him to help her in something important. Despite his trouble at school over the lust potion, she was putting her faith in him.
Well, he thought in a flash of inspiration, hadn't he been doing her will all along? Hadn't the pull sensation occurred just before each of his little schemes since his fifth year, when he uncovered the truth about the Marvolo Curse?
Suddenly his knees buckled. He nearly fell. It took a mighty effort to regain his equilibrium, to lift the heavy weight that had come invisibly upon him.
"I'm proud of you, Johan," Caprice said, coming up to him. "Follow me out to the edge of the forest. I'll be casting a Misdirection spell around us. We won't be noticed by any but the most accomplished wizards or witches, and there aren't many of those at a goblin fair. Come!"
They were in fact noticed by an accomplished witch. Professor Charity Burbage had come out from the Handicrafts wagon with a new tote bag. She was curious to see the gypsy fortune teller walking alongside Krimson Johan toward the forest where it encroached upon the north shore of the lake.
No one else paid them any attention. A group of students had gone right past them, on their way to the Tunnel of Love, it looked like, with Bea Swiddle getting some cotton candy stuck in her hair, and Minerva's niece trying to dissolve it with her wand.
Burbage watched the gypsy and the student going off into the shade of the forest, the boy walking awkwardly; stumbling a little, and then they were gone.
Burbage made a mental note to pass this along to Albus.
"This is far enough," said Caprice.
Krimson almost tripped into the fresh grave in the pine-needled ground at his feet. As he lurched back a step, the weight fell off him. He heard a thud in the hole.
"What is--" he began, then squinted at the body that was being covered slowly by a trickle of dirt and stones. "Who is this?"
"An enemy spy! But she won't be doing any spying anymore. My little smoke ring did its job."
Krimson stared at Caprice questioningly. She patted his shoulder.
"I will put in a good word for you to Hardmore Womblatt," she said.
For Krimson Johan, the dark forest became a garden with singing birds and dancing sunlight.
"Thanks," he said. And he meant it.
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