“I’ve heard of this place,” Harry Potter said, placing a hand on his son’s shoulder, “but I never imagined it would be like this.”
“Are the other six cities of Atlantis like this too?” Ralph asked in an awed voice.
Merlin sighed somberly. “Alas, the Aquapolis is the lone survivor of the great Republic. The others have long since settled to their watery graves, having exhausted their magic as their populations dwindled, drawn to the fixed lands. Such is the course of history. All great things, even the most wondrous, must meet their ends.”
“Did you see it?” Albus cried suddenly, grabbing James’ shoulder and shaking him enthusiastically. “Did you see it come up out of the water?”
“It was pretty hard to miss, Al,” James laughed, turning. “Where were you?”
“The first mate took me up to the pilothouse to watch!” Albus exclaimed, beside himself with excitement. “Me and Petra and Izzy. Mum and Lil too! It was bloody awesome!”
“Don’t say that word,” Ginny said mildly, following Albus across the deck with the others at her side. “But it was, really. I had no idea.”
“Well,” Harry announced grandly, turning to face the travelers, “all ashore who’s going ashore!”
James grinned and turned to look back at the great island again. Its countless windows sparkled gently as the sun lowered, painting the city bronze and gold. A crew of men in neat red tunics was piloting a ferry toward the Gwyndemere, apparently prepared to transport everyone aboard to their home for the night.
“It’s gorgeous, isn’t it?” Ginny said, sighing. “Almost makes the whole trip worthwhile.”
James smiled up at his mother. For the moment, not knowing yet what was still to come, he agreed with her completely.
James lay in his bed and stared up at the low ceiling, unable to sleep. The Aquapolis’ lodgings were clean, ornate, and well-maintained, but very, very old. The entire city, spectacular as it was, smelled vaguely damp, which was, of course, perfectly understandable. Uncle Percy, who apparently suffered from mold allergies, had had a rather difficult time of it, especially as evening had set and the city had once again sank into its watery habitat. Eventually, Aunt Audrey had asked one of their Atlantean hosts, a pretty, plump young woman with thick black hair and olive skin, if Percy might be offered a particular brand of medicinal tea. The woman, whose name was Mila, had taken one look at Percy’s red nose and eyes, and returned minutes later with an empty cup and a small steaming pot. Upon drinking the pot’s contents, Percy no longer sneezed or sniffled, but had nevertheless remained in a rather irritable mood throughout the evening.
Merlin, as was usually the case, was treated with great fanfare upon his arrival in the city, even as he disembarked from the ferry with James and Ralph at his side. Men in long white robes and curiously carved staffs met them on the steps of the city’s reception hall, which was hewn directly out of the stone of the mountain. While the city’s leaders and Merlin exchanged formal greetings, Lucy and Albus had caught up to James and Ralph, and all four of them had stood looking about with undisguised wonder. Water still ran over the intricately patterned marble floor and dripped from the high vaulted ceilings, and James understood that the reception hall, grand as it was, was filled with seawater most of the time. A great stone column dominated the entryway to the space, topped with a monumental statue of a bearded wizard in flowing toga-like robes, a staff in his left hand and his right hand raised, pressed to the base of one of the ceiling’s vaulted supports, as if he was holding it up.
“Soterios,” Lucy had said, reading the inscription that wrapped around the base of the statue’s column. “The Hero of Atlantis. He was the one that unified the wizarding populous of Atlantis and created the network of magic that kept the cities intact, even as their foundations eroded away. I read about him in the wizard library at home. ‘Poios Idryma sozo para magica dia magikos’.”
“What’s it mean?” Albus had asked, walking around the column to read the inscription.
Izzy, Lily, and Petra had gotten off the ferry by then and joined the others near the base of the statue. Petra had peered at the ancient carved words. “It means, ‘who saved the foundations of magic, by magic’.”
“So,” Ralph had said slowly, “this whole place is held together by, what…?”
Petra had shrugged. “The collective magical will of the witches and wizards who live here.”
“Makes sense, really,” Lucy had commented. “After all, the Greeks did invent the concept of democracy, which is really just the idea of the city being supported by the people who live in it. Granted, this takes it to a rather new level.”
Ralph had shaken his head and looked around at the massive, dark ceilings. “I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m a little iffy about the idea of willpower as structural bedrock.”
“That’s because you’re thinking of your willpower,” Lucy had sniffed.
“It’s held up for centuries, Ralph,” Albus had said, shrugging. “What could happen?”
Ralph had glanced back at Albus, then at Merlin, who was still chatting with the Aquapolis elders some distance away. “I don’t know,” he’d replied. “Why don’t you ask the other six cities of Atlantis?”
Later, as the sun had set on the horizon amidst a flaming cauldron of colourful clouds, an Atlantean elder named Atropos had taken the travelers on a tour of the city, leading them along broad, sweeping staircases and bridges, through enormous colonnades, past ornate oceanic gardens, statues and arches. Many of the city’s myriad, enormous windows had been cranked open, letting in the cool, ocean breeze.
“The city has remained virtually unchanged since its descent into the depths,” Atropos had explained. “When the waters began to rise, our ancestors had enough forewarning to design and construct a system of watertight crystal valves, which you see all around us. They are virtually unbreakable, and are reinforced by a unique alchemy that makes them less brittle.” To illustrate, Atropos had approached one of the tall copper-framed windows that fitted between a set of herculean columns. He leaned on the crystal with one hand, and then gently applied his weight. Instead of breaking, the crystal bent slowly around his hand, almost like a very large, very thick soap bubble. Finally, Atropos’ hand had pushed entirely through. He’d wiggled his fingers in the dying sunlight on the other side of the crystal, smiling thinly back at his attendees. Merlin had nodded slowly, impressed.
“Remarkable,” Denniston Dolohov had enthused. “Tell me, is this proprietary magic? Or would the Atlanteans be willing to share it? I can think of dozens of security applications for such a thing.”
“Doesn’t he ever go off duty?” Aunt Audrey had muttered to her husband, who shushed her.
“That’s why he’s here, dearest,” he’d replied quietly. “His new post at the Ministry places him in charge of a whole new department of anti-Muggle defensive magic and technomancy. These are uncertain times, as you well know. And growing more uncertain every day.”
At that point, Percy had shared a meaningful glance with Neville Longbottom and James’ dad. Harry had shrugged slightly, raising his eyebrows and nodding toward Atropos, as if to say not now.
After a lavish dinner of strange, deep-sea fish and crustaceans, some of which were as large as hippogriffs and more bizarre than James was prepared to taste, the Aquapolis had sunk again. James, Ralph, and Lucy had watched from the broad crystal portals of a Parthenon-like structure built atop one of the island’s curving peninsulas. The sun had finally dipped beneath the rim of the horizon, leaving only a faint pinkish glow at the edge of the star-strewn sky. For a while, the Gwyndemere had been visible in the bay far below, rocking gently on its own reflection. Presently, the marble floor had begun to rumble beneath the observers’ feet and the bay had begun to rise, pushing up and out, slowly overtaking the Aquapolis’ lower reaches. Silently, water had poured into the reception hall, far below and halfway around the bowl of the great city. James had glimpsed the statue of Soter
ios, tiny with distance, as the ocean rushed around it, swallowing it up. As the island sank away, the Gwyndemere had risen higher and higher, until it was nearly eyelevel with James, Ralph, and Lucy where they watched, breathlessly. The pink light of the dying sun had painted the ship on one side while the faint blue glow of the new moon lit the other. And then, so suddenly that it had made all three students jump back in alarm, water had rushed up over the crystal window before them, swallowing it with a dull, thunderous roar. After that, there was only the dim, featureless blue of the depths, punctuated, faintly, by pinpricks of light that glowed from the submerged city.
It had been wondrous, in a grave, solemn sort of way.
Now, as night enveloped the city and everyone, including James’ parents and sister in the next room, had gone to bed, James lay awake, alert and restless. Lantern light seeped beneath the door from the corridor beyond. James’ eyes had grown used to it so that he could easily see the ancient, cracked fresco painted onto the ceiling. In it, a man in a short tunic and a sort of leafy crown was wrestling a giant octopus, clutching four of its tentacles beneath his muscled arm and stunning it with the staff in his other hand. To James, it didn’t look like a fair fight. He found himself rooting for the octopus.
It had been a very strange summer. The surprise arrival of Petra and Izzy had, of course, caused quite a stir. It had happened mere weeks after the last day of school, and James had only just begun to get comfortable with the fact that Petra had graduated and would not be showing up in the Gryffindor common room next term. It was a shame, he told himself, because he had finally admitted to himself that he did, in fact, feel something stronger for Petra than mere friendship. Apparently, everyone else had seen it before he had, including his own mum, who had made some fairly embarrassing comments about it in the wake of the school play. Despite the fact that the event had ended in a disastrous uproar, James had spent more than a few wistful moments remembering the fact that the play, The Triumvirate, had required he and Petra to play the parts of doomed lovers. He was still young enough to think that that pairing had been ripe with cosmic significance, and had secretly (so secretly that he himself had barely even known it) hoped that Petra would recognize it as well.
She had not, of course.
At first, James had believed that this was because Petra was still in love with her former beau, Ted Lupin. Later, however, he’d realized that Petra had been under the influence of a secret, awful curse. Due to a series of very wicked schemes, set in motion by none other than the long dead Dark Lord himself, Petra Morganstern was the living carrier of that villain’s last, ghostly shred of soul. It had been imparted to her while she was still in her mother’s womb, transmitted via a special, nearly unheard-of bit of cruel, dark magic: a special kind of Horcrux, in the shape of an ugly silver dagger.
James’ dad had done some research on it, with the help of Aunt Hermione, and had discovered that such a thing was called a ‘transcendent Horcrux’. They’d only found one reference to it, in a book so dark and treacherous that James’ dad and Uncle Ron had had to bolt it to the table with silver stakes to keep it from snapping their hands off. According to their awed, whispered conversations (which James and Albus had surreptitiously listened in on), a transcendent Horcrux was purely theoretical; no one, at the time of the book’s writing, had ever succeeded in actually creating one. Unlike other Horcruxes, a transcendent Horcrux could never be used to restore the bit of soul it contained to its original host. If such a thing were attempted, it would act as a kind of poison, killing every other bit of the soul it had been sheared from, regardless of how many normal Horcruxes were in use. The shred of preserved soul in a transcendent Horcrux had to be passed on to another host, accepted willingly, there to spread its influence and live on, leech-like.
Petra’s mother had been tricked into transmuting the curse of Voldemort’s soul into her unborn baby, but that didn’t make James hate her any less. As far as he was concerned, the woman had to have been either stupid, gullible, or blind. Miraculously, however, Petra herself loved her long dead mother, loved her and missed her enough to have nearly doomed all of mankind in the hopes of somehow bringing her back to life. In the end, fortunately, Petra herself had been stronger and smarter than her mother had been, and she had made the right choice—the hard choice. She had rejected the deal offered to her by the otherworldly beast called the Gatekeeper, even though it had meant the loss of the one thing she’d most wanted in all the world: the return of her dead parents.
Not very surprisingly, the realization of all of these things had not in the least diminished James’ fascination with the young witch. If anything, it had increased it. James himself had confronted the Gatekeeper, and knew the awful stresses Petra had to have endured in rejecting its tantalizing offer. Furthermore, there was just something about Petra, something about the reality of her internal struggles and her painful, personal losses, that made James want to be brave for her.
In his most secret heart, she awoke a deep, pervasive sense of manly nobility. He wanted to defend her, to slay her dragons, to be her knightly savior. Of course, he told no one about these feelings. He was sheepish about admitting them even to himself. In the light of day, his infatuation with her seemed silly, childish, quaintly preposterous. She was of age, for one thing, graduated and free, a young woman moving out into a grownup’s world, while he was still a month shy of fourteen. Still, the feelings clung to him, as did his affection for her. Without even trying, she had smitten him. Fortunately, as the summer had progressed, absence and distance had helped James begin to forget the girl who had occupied so much of his attention during the previous school year. Such, he thought (rather wisely for his age), was the nature of young love.
And then, to his mingled dismay and delight, Petra and Izzy had arrived at the Potter family home, escorted by Ted Lupin, Damien Damascus, and Sabrina Hildegard. There had been much curiosity about what had brought them there, but very few questions, at least at first. It was apparent that something awful had happened, something that had resulted in the deaths of both Petra’s grandfather and his horrible wife, Phyllis, Izzy’s mother. Ted, Damien, and Sabrina had kept quiet about whatever they had seen at Morganstern Farm, apparently believing it was Petra’s tale to tell (and later because Merlin had apparently sworn them to secrecy). Ted had, however, taken James’ dad and mum aside and asked if it would be all right if Petra and Izzy stayed at the Potter home until things settled down. This had been agreed to quickly and with very little fuss, so that by that very evening, James had found himself going to bed only one wall removed from the girl who, completely and inexplicably, commanded his every affection.
He’d lain awake that night and listened to the soft footsteps and murmured voices in the next room, wondering what it all meant, if anything; wondering if there was something he could do, some way to salvage the bravery he’d felt only days before, when he’d told himself that if Petra had been coming back to Hogwarts the next term, he would have told her exactly how he felt about her, and done whatever was necessary to inspire the same in her.
He lay awake now as he had then, staring up at the fresco of the Atlantean warrior wrestling the unfortunate octopus, and wondered much the same things. Petra had accompanied the Potters on their trip across the ocean, apparently intending to seek employment at the school James would be attending during their stay. Considering her intellect and her uncanny magical skills, James thought it very likely that she would get any job she applied for. In short, Petra’s life seemed, even now, to be mysteriously intertwined with his own. It was like the play, The Triumvirate, all over again, like their fleeting, staged kiss at the end, the one that should have ended so wonderfully, and had instead ended with chaos and near tragedy. The mingled hope and fear filled James with a queer, intense range of emotions.
And on the heels of that, James was reminded of the odd, creepy words that Professor Trelawney had uttered to him early that very morning. The professor was, of course, a few o
ctocards shy of a full deck. Hardly anyone believed her proclamations and visions. And yet, what James had heard and witnessed in the corridor with her that morning had been dramatically different than anything he’d ever seen in her class. It had seemed all too real, all too certain. But what had any of it meant? James didn’t know, but maybe Lucy would. She was smart about such things, remarkably pragmatic and clearheaded. He made a mental note to ask her about it during their voyage.
As James stared up at the fresco over his head, a soft noise caught his attention, coming from the corridor outside his room. A shadow obscured the ceiling fresco for a moment and James glanced down toward the bar of light beneath the heavy door of his room. The unmistakable silhouette of a pair of walking feet passed by. James frowned curiously.
“Hey Al,” he whispered. “You awake?”
“Mrmmm,” Albus declared from the other side of the narrow room, rolling over.
James considered waking his brother, even got out of his own bed and reached to shake him, but then he thought better of it. Holding his breath, he approached the door, thumbed the latch, and pulled it open as quietly as he could.
There didn’t seem to be anyone in the corridor. Lantern light flickered silently, reflecting on the tiled marble floors and white walls. Leaving the door slightly open, James padded along the corridor in the direction that the shadowy figure seemed to have gone. He reached the end of the corridor and entered a larger hallway lined with statuary and doorways on one side and tall crystal windows, interspersed with pillars, on the other.
Beyond the windows, the city seemed very dark in its watery bed. Only a few lights could be seen glimmering in the blue distance. Under a glass-enclosed bridge, a whale maneuvered deftly, its bulk black in the dimness, its tail waving ponderously. James saw his own reflection in the crystal; saw his tee shirt, pyjama bottoms, and bare feet. His hair, as usual, was stuck up in a wild strew. He frowned at himself, even though he liked what he saw. He was getting taller, was, in fact, nearly as tall as his mum now. “You could pass for a seventh-year,” she had told him recently, before they’d known they would be spending the year away from Hogwarts, in an entirely different country. “You’ve gone and turned into a man,” she’d said, smiling indulgently and a little mistily, “and I barely noticed it happening. Albus and Lily too, but especially you. You’re growing up. You’re becoming your own man.”
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