JAMES POTTER AND THE VAULT OF DESTINIES jp-1

by G. Norman Lippert

  When James tried to speak, his voice came out in a dry croak. “What witness?”

  Keynes pressed his lips together thoughtfully, and James assumed he wouldn’t answer, but then Keynes met his gaze again. “A witch,” he replied very quietly. “You couldn’t possibly know her. She lived in the area at the time, and was given to morning walks around the lake in question. She is a lover of nature, you see, and water in particular. She strove to remain hidden during her morning strolls out of fear of being arrested for trespassing since the lake was a part of Morganstern Farm. Still, her conscience bade her to tell me what she witnessed. She sought me out, in fact. Had it not been for her, and for the veracity of her story, Ms. Morganstern might well have gotten away with the murder she committed that morning. And as you can imagine, this charge only further convinced me of the truth of Mr. Henredon’s allegations about what happened in the Hall of Archives. Why, without this woman’s noble testimony, Ms. Morganstern might have gone scot-free.”

  James felt rooted to the floor, cold and solid as a statue. “Who was she?” he asked, again not expecting an answer, and yet fearing that he knew the answer nonetheless. Of course he did. He could picture her even now in his memory; long red hair, mostly hidden beneath a dark hood, glittering green eyes, unnaturally perfect, pale skin. People tend not to notice me, she had said on the night James first met her in the halls of the Aquapolis. Unless they want to. Or unless I make them.

  “You do not know her,” Keynes said, smiling condescendingly at James. “She is rather a secretive woman, perhaps even reclusive, although quite fetching, in her own way.”

  “She didn’t even give you her name, did she?” James whispered, shaking his head. “She was that ‘secretive’, wasn’t she? She was lying to you. She had to be.”

  “She was not lying,” Keynes stated coldly, his eyes narrowing. “And she most certainly did give me her name, Mr. Potter. Not that it should matter to you. Her name…” He stopped, apparently considering whether he should go on. Finally he lowered his voice to a near mutter and went on. “Her first name is Judith. That’s all you need to know. Now begone. Quickly, before I grow impatient.”

  James stood on the spot, however, his eyes wide, his brow knitted in consternation. Judith. He’d heard that name before. But where? His thoughts races as he tried to place it.

  “Go!” Keynes commanded, flicking his wand again. James stumbled backwards as a mild force shoved him, buffeting him like a hot wind. He turned, ignoring Keynes’ earlier instructions, and scooped up his wand from the floor. A moment later, he burst out into the warm air of the summer evening. Zane, Ralph and Lucy were waiting for him, wideeyed and worried. James shook his head at them and headed across the campus, making his way to Apollo Mansion.

  “What happened?” Zane demanded, trotting to catch up. “Did you see her?”

  “No,” James answered, walking fast, his mind spinning. “You lot go on up to the library. I… er, need to grab a few more books. I’ll meet you there in a few minutes. We can talk about it then.”

  Ralph, Zane and Lucy agreed, albeit reluctantly.

  James didn’t really need any of his books, however. What he really needed was a few minutes to think. It was awfully difficult. Keynes words clanged like lead weights in James’ memory, blotting out his own thoughts. Was any of it true? Did it change anything? Was it too late to help Petra now? Did Petra truly deserve his help? There were so many questions, and so few answers. James stalked along in a sort of numb fugue, barely seeing the campus as it unrolled around him. He was on the footpath that led up to Apollo Mansion when he finally, unexpectedly, remembered where he’d heard the name Judith before. He stopped, his brow furrowed, perplexed.

  Judith had been the name of Merlin’s betrothed love, back in the distant past, a thousand years earlier. James remembered Rose telling him all about it last year. Merlin had never married Judith, of course, due to a series of tragic events that had ended, finally, with her death at Merlin’s own unknowing hand. Could there be some sort of connection?

  James thought of the woman he had met in the corridors of the Aquapolis, and then later seen on the Zephyr, and then, later still, witnessed coming out of the Hall of Archives on the night of the attack, apparently in the company of Petra. Could she really be the same woman that had sought out Keynes and told him the terrible tale of what had happened at Morganstern Farm? Why would she do such a thing? How could she have known? Worse, was her testimony true? Had Petra truly killed her stepmother? And finally, somehow most nagging of all, was there some strange connection between this mysterious woman and the Judith of Merlin’s tragic past?

  It was impossible, of course. And yet James couldn’t shake the suspicion. It buzzed around his head like a cloud of gnats, persistent and teasing. After all, it wasn’t a particularly common name, Judith.

  And then, out of nowhere, James remembered one more thing that Rose had told him: like the Morgansterns, Merlin’s Judith had had a lake on her farm. In fact, it had formed the source of her nickname amongst the local villagers.

  “Judith,” James whispered to himself, musing. “The Lady of the Lake.”

  At the sound of his own words, a shiver coursed down James’ back. Despite the evening’s early summer warmth, it shook him all the way to his toes.

  The final days of the school year began to run past quickly, draining away like grains of sand in a giant hourglass. Older students were most often seen buried in their books or studying in tense knots all over the campus. Final exams filled the last week’s schedule, looming like vultures. James was amazed that the year had gone by so quickly. As he walked to classes, he occasionally glanced back at the Warping Willow, positioned near the southwest corner of the mall in the shadow of the guest house, and reminded himself that he would soon be using it to go back home for good. He was glad of this, and yet it all seemed so far away and remote—the Potter family home in Marble Arch, Kreacher, even Hogwarts, although he had seen the Gryffindor common room many times throughout the school year via the Shard.

  Sometimes it seemed to James that it had only been a few days since his arrival at Alma Aleron. He remembered his first nights on campus, sleeping in the common dorm with its creepy clockwork monkey bellhop. He recalled (with a pang of embarrassment) the debacle of the Great Flag Switch escapade, which had destroyed his and Ralph’s chances of joining Zombie House. Patches the cat had warned them about pledging at Zombie House, and he had apparently been right. The cat had suggested that they rush for Igor House. In retrospect, maybe he’d been onto something. James was fairly good at Technomancy despite his hesitance to admit it. Kneazle or not, Patches apparently knew stuff.

  As the final week’s exams wore on, a hard summer heat wave descended over the school, raising heat shimmers from the footpaths and making the new leaves hang limp from their branches, as if exhausted. Students loosened their ties and carried their blazers disconsolately under their arms or over their shoulders. Old-fashioned magical fans were placed in many of the buildings’ entryways, their fat blades humming loudly, pushing the hot air around the halls and rustling the papers tacked to the bulletin boards. Students clustered in front of these fans, holding lackluster conversations or studying sheets of last-minute notes, furiously cramming for their impending exams.

  Despite James’ distractions, he felt confident that he was doing fairly well with his end-ofterm exams. Through the Shard, Rose had offered, albeit tiredly, to help him, Ralph, and Zane to study since the Hogwarts school term lasted a bit longer than Alma Aleron’s.

  “I would ask you to return the favor in the next few weeks,” she’d said, rolling her eyes. “But I expect that’d be a bit like asking for blood from a rock.”

  “Is that likely to be on the exam?” Ralph had asked suddenly, looking up from his bed, where he’d been poring over his Advanced Elemental Transmutation textbook. “We did butterflies from stones already. I don’t remember blood from a rock.” He flipped some pages while Rose sighed helples
sly.

  After studying late Thursday afternoon, James explained everything to Rose. Scorpius was not present, thankfully, otherwise he might not have.

  “So what are you going to do?” Rose asked seriously, now standing next to the mantel in the Gryffindor common room so they could all keep their voices low. “I mean, if she’s guilty, she’s guilty. You can’t stand in the way of justice.”

  James sighed deeply. He asked his cousin, “Do you really believe she’s guilty?”

  Rose shrugged, as if the question was too big to answer. “I don’t know,” she replied somberly. “Scorpius thinks she did it. So do Damien and Sabrina. I mean, we all like Petra and all, but it doesn’t look very good, does it? That Arbiter bloke spoke to them, you know, and Ted too. Via Floo. He found out that they were all there when everything, er, came down at Petra’s grandparents’ farm. They told him to go hex himself, in so many words, but he already seemed to know everything. I hid behind the couch during the interview. He was one smug beast, I’ll tell you.”

  “You got that one right,” Zane commented from James’ bed, where he lounged amidst a pile of books and notes. “Nobody should enjoy ‘justice’ as much as he does. He’s just a bully with a badge if you ask me.”

  “So what do they plan to do with Petra?” Rose asked in a hushed voice.

  Zane shrugged briskly. “She’s still in the Medical College detention wing, only a few doors down from old Madame Delacroix, I hear. Lucy volunteers there sometimes, so she’s been keeping us in the loop. Hardly anybody is allowed within fifty feet of Petra’s door. They have guards posted all over the place, even though Petra’s been unconscious the whole time. They gave her the poison apple treatment.”

  “Poison apple?” Rose blinked, frowning. “Is that a joke?”

  “Nope,” Zane said seriously. “Mother Newt makes ‘em. One bite and you’re out for good, or at least until someone says the magic word to wake you up. They had to give it to Petra by hand since she was already out cold when they brought her in. Until they know how to move her and lock her up, that’s where she’ll stay, sleeping under its spell. She may be powerful, but nobody wakes up from the poison apple on their own.”

  “What about Izzy?” Rose pressed. “Can’t Uncle Harry and Aunt Ginny just adopt her? Why’s the court say she has to be Obliviated?”

  “It’s the law,” James said darkly. “Izzy’s a Muggle, remember? As long as she had a free and living magical relative, she’d have been allowed to live in the wizarding world. But now Petra’s been convicted of a crime, so Izzy is on her own. If she was of age it would be a different story, but since she’s not, the law says that she has to be sent back to the Muggle world.”

  “That’s horrible,” Rose said, hugging herself. Then, in a different voice, she asked, “Do you still plan to go through with your plans regarding the World Between the Worlds?”

  James nodded. “Yes,” he said stubbornly. “If we can win the tournament next Monday. And if we really can open the Nexus Curtain, once Apollo Mansion moves to Victory Hill and the cornerstones come together.”

  Rose shook her head slowly, watching her cousin’s face through the glass of the Shard. “Are you really sure that’s such a good idea? What if you do find your way into this place—this World Between the Worlds—only to find out that Petra really did do it?”

  James’ face hardened slightly. “If it really was Petra, then she was being tricked or used somehow. We’ll prove it.”

  Rose was persistent. “But how can you know that?” she asked earnestly, almost whispering.

  “Because of the silver thread,” he answered, meeting her eyes. After a moment, he glanced around at Zane and Ralph. “You remember what I told you lot about that? From when Petra went over the back of the Gwyndemere and nearly fell into the ocean?”

  Ralph nodded, remembering. “Yeah, you said that this magical silver thread appeared and connected the two of you. It’s what saved her.”

  “Yeah,” James concurred gravely. “Well, my dad talked to me about it afterwards. I don’t remember everything he said, but I do remember this: he said that what happened between me and Petra was sort of like what happened between him and his mum, when she was willing to die for him. It created some really deep kind of magic, protecting him, but also connecting him to Voldemort. When Petra fell off the ship…” He paused, searching for the words. After a moment, he drew a deep breath. “I was… willing to do whatever I had to do to save her. I was even willing to go over in her place although I was barely thinking about it at the time. It all happened too fast to think. Dad says that because I was willing to trade fates with Petra, it made that deep magic happen, just like it did between his mum and him. Only… different.”

  “Because you didn’t die,” Rose said, nodding slightly. “And yet, you saved her anyway. Somehow.”

  “That changes the deal, though, doesn’t it?” Ralph suggested. “I mean, it’s a little like cheating, er, isn’t it?”

  James looked at his friend. “Maybe it is. I don’t know. The magic was so strong, so… unreal. But the thing is, where the deep magic connected my dad to Voldemort, back when he was a baby and his mum died for him, for me and Petra, it happened differently. It connected us, somehow. That silver thread, the one that appeared and saved her, connecting us so that I could pull her up… it’s still there. When I’m close to her… and sometimes even when I’m not… I can sense her on the other end of it. I can, sort of, feel echoes of her thoughts and dreams. It isn’t like I can read her mind or anything. But I can feel the shape of her thoughts. And probably vice versa too. One thing I know for sure is that regardless of what Keynes and the rest all say, Petra believes she is innocent. She is really and truly convinced that she didn’t break into the Hall of Archives or curse Mr. Henredon. In her mind, she’s totally innocent.” He paused, and frowned thoughtfully. “At least, she believes she’s innocent of that.”

  Rose looked very serious on the other side of the Shard. Her brow was low, knitted on her forehead. “James,” she said softly. “I’m afraid to say this, but… that’s a little crazy.”

  James blinked at her. “Well,” he countered defensively, “maybe. But it’s true!”

  “Silver thread or not,” Zane announced, climbing to his feet. “I just want to see how this whole dealio works out. We’ve put too much into this to stop now.”

  “That’s hardly a good reason,” Rose said, but Zane approached the Shard and patted it, as if he meant to pat her on the head.

  “Rose, love, you’re a girl. You wouldn’t understand. There’s a sort of inertia to these things. We got the magic horseshoe. We figured out the riddle of where the Nexus Curtain is. There’s no way we can stop now. The weight of our own curiosity would crush us. Is that what you want? For us to be crushed by our own curiosity?”

  “This is dangerous,” Rose insisted, her eyes hardening. “At least tell your father, James.”

  James shook his head. “Dad’s completely swamped,” he replied. “Ever since Petra’s arrest, he’s been buried in some major secret plan. Titus Hardcastle came over for it, and even Viktor Krum and the Harriers. Dad doesn’t trust the locals much, and they don’t trust him, so he thought it’d be best to bring his own blokes along for this last raid, whatever it is. There’s no way I’m going to throw this on him as well.”

  “Is it the W.U.L.F.?” Rose asked, interested in spite of herself. “Has Uncle Harry found them? And that missing Muggle politician?”

  James shook his head and shrugged. “All I know for sure is that it’s all going to go down in the next few days. Dad can’t even come to my Clutchcudgel tournament. He and Titus Hardcastle are going to be in New Amsterdam, ‘doing some last minute reconnaissance’ is what he told me. There’s going to be a big Muggle parade that night—it’s some American holiday or other.”

  “Memorial Day,” Zane piped up, nodding.

  “Yeah, that,” James agreed. “Dad says it’ll be the perfect time to make last-minute arran
gements since everybody will be distracted with the parade and all the festivities. Last time he tried to raid them, the bad guys caught wind of it somehow, and got away only hours before. Dad doesn’t want that to happen this time.”

  Rose sighed. “Well,” she admitted, “I do feel a bit better knowing that this could all be over soon. You’ll be coming home after this is all said and done? Assuming Uncle Harry’s raid goes well?”

  “Oh, it’ll be a smash,” Zane nodded confidently. “I mean, he’s Harry Potter, right? The Boy Who Lived! And he’s got his A-team with him! Hardcastle, Krum, everybody! Those W.U.L.F. loons and their crazy new lady leader will be breaking rocks in Fort Bedlam by this time next week. You wait and see.”

  Rose accepted this stolidly. “Well, then. Sorry your dad won’t be there to see you play in your tournament, James,” she said a little stiffly. “And I do wish you well, no matter what.”

  James shrugged, as if he didn’t really mind that his dad wouldn’t be there, which he did. “It’s all right,” he said. “Mum says that Viktor Krum might come along with her since Dad doesn’t really need him for his little lookie-loo around New Amsterdam that day. Besides, Lily will be there too along with Izzy, Uncle Percy and everybody else. That’ll be pretty cool. I mean, how many players get to have a former professional Quidditch player and Triwizard Tournament contestant supporting them from the stands?”