"Grotty blighter!" quacked the muffled voices again.
"That crazy loon!" Ralph rasped, jumping up and grabbing his bag. "What's he doing?"
"Come on!" James said, lunging toward the door. "If he's still up there, we can't help him."
They both ran out into the hallway and threaded their way around several random corridors before finally stopping. Panting and hearts pounding, they dug their rubber ducks out of their bags, each examining his own even though they were identical. Two words were scrawled on the bottom of the ducks in black ink: Laundry room!
"That crazy loon!" Ralph said again, but he was almost laughing with relief. "Figgle just took him down to the cellars with the rest of the dirty sheets! I say we leave him there."
James grinned. "No, let's go get him before they try to stick him in the wringer. He probably deserves it, but first, I want to know what he might have found out."
The two boys ran to find the washrooms in the cellars. James stopped only once to ask directions from an annoyingly observant servant in a painting of a gaggle of dining knights.
"I hardly had two minutes to look around before Figgle came up the stairs like a cannonball," Zane told James and Ralph when they found him in the washrooms. "She threw a handful of pink dust at me, and then pow! I'm down here."
Ralph was looking around in awe at the enormous copper vats and the clanking machinery of the washers. Elves bustled around them, ignoring the three boys completely as they moved through the hive of their basement work space. Two elves on a catwalk above the vats were dumping wheelbarrows of powdered soap into the frothing water. White flakes filled the air and stuck like snow in the boys' hair.
"Trust me, this all gets a lot less interesting after two minutes or so," Zane said tersely. "Especially when the Lollipop Guild here won't let you leave." Three elves were clustered around Zane, looking at him with obvious hostility.
"Figgle brings a human down to the washrooms, we keeps him until someone explains why," the oldest and grumpiest elf said in a gravelly voice. "S'policy. Humans interfering with elf work is against Hogwarts Code of Conduct and Practices, section thirty, paragraph six. So, then, who be you two?"
James and Ralph exchanged blank looks. Ralph said, "We're his… well, we're his friends, aren't we? We came to bring him back upstairs."
"Did you, then?" the elf said with a penetrating glare. "Figgle tells a story about this human trying to do her work, she does. Says he was going on about elf welfare and such bilge. She was fair upset. Can't 'ave that sort of thing, you know. We gots a coalition agreement with the school."
"He won't do it again," James soothed. "He meant well, but he's a bit dim about such things, isn't he? I'm sorry. He got out of our hands for a minute. Won't happen again."
Zane acted offended, but stayed wisely silent. The head elf scowled thoughtfully at James. James was used to elves being subservient and meek or at least politely surly. Here, in their working realm, the rules appeared to be quite different. The elves had a coalition agreement with the school, the head elf had said. It almost sounded like they'd unionized, and that an essential rule of the elf union was that only elves did elf work. Perhaps they viewed it as job security. James wasn't sure if Aunt Hermione would view this as an improvement or a setback.
Finally, the head elf grumbled, "I'm going against my better judgments, you know. The three of yous are on probation. Anymore interference with elfish protocol and I'll 'ave you before the Headmistress. We gots a coalition agreement, you know."
"So I hear," Zane muttered, rolling his eyes.
"But you don't even know our names," Ralph pointed out. "How are we on probation if you don't know who we are?" James elbowed him in the ribs.
The head elf grinned at his fellows, who smiled back a bit disconcertingly. "We're elves," he said simply. "Now off with yous, and let's hope we don't see you again."
The corridors leading out of the washrooms were, not surprisingly, small and short, with half-sized steps that forced James, Zane, and Ralph to mince carefully as they climbed them.
"I don't know whether to congratulate you or kick you," Ralph said to Zane. "You almost got us caught by Corsica and Goyle."
"But I did get into the Slytherin girls' sleeping quarters," Zane pointed out with a grin. "How many people can say that?"
"Or would want to?" James added.
"Be nice or I won't tell you what I found."
"It better be good," said Ralph.
"It's not," Zane sighed. "The girls' quarters have big wooden wardrobes alongside each bed. Only one of them was open, but I got a peek inside. Let's just say I'm not wondering where Tabitha keeps her broom anymore."
They reached a larger door at the end of a flight of miniscule stairs. James pushed it open, thankful to be out of the heat and noise of the washrooms. "What do you mean?"
"Well, they're magical wardrobes, of course, although they don't lead to any fairy wonderlands. The one I looked into looked like a combination vanity and walk-in closet. Seemed like a boutique had exploded in there, to tell you the truth. One of those really froofy ones, but with a gothic-vampire flair to it. There was a bottle of vanishing cream on the vanity, and from the looks of it, I don't think the vanishing part was a metaphor."
"All the girls have a wardrobe like that?" Ralph asked.
"Sure looked like it."
James frowned. "Our chances of getting into the Slytherin girls' quarters again are pretty much zero. And even if we could, how would we even know which wardrobe was Corsica's, much less even get it open?"
"I told you this was going to be right impossible," Ralph reminded James.
"Smelled like my grandma's dresser in there, too," Zane said.
"Will you let off with the details?" James exclaimed. "This is serious. We still don't know where the Hall of Elder's Crossing is or when Jackson and Delacroix are planning to bring the elements together. For all we know, it could be tonight."
"So?" Ralph said. "Like you said, they can't do anything without all the relics."
Zane sighed, turning sober. "Yeah, but if they try it and nothing works, then they'll hide the rest of the relics and we'll never get to them."
Ralph threw up his hands. "Well? There's got to be another way, then. I mean, she has to take the broom out of her wardrobe sometimes, right? We saw her with it today. What if we nick it somehow during a Quidditch match or something?"
Zane grinned. "I like that. Especially if we can do it when she's a hundred feet or so in the air."