James glanced up at the big man, frowning. “Lucky? How in the world is being invaded by Centaurs lucky?”
“Two reasons. First, because Centaurs measure time in years, not minutes. It may be that they will attack tomorrow, or in a decades’ time. Likely, there is ample time to prepare. And second, because they might indeed have chosen to invade Muggle governments first. With the earth balanced as precariously as it is, that surely would have tipped the scales of fate into irreversible collapse. As it is, there is a shred of hope.”
“I daresay I fail to see it,” McGonagall breathed, and shook her head.
Merlin glanced aside at her, and then at James. Something glinted in his eye, a grim, puckish twinkle, cracking his façade of stony calm. Quietly, he said, “That is because you fail to remember the single most important difference between the non-magical world and our own.
Unlike our Muggle friends, when faced with a magical enemy, we are able to fight back.”
There was no point in James telling Rose, Ralph, Scorpius, or anyone else about the Centaur summit, since the entire school had been watching breathlessly from the open front doors and every surrounding window. Merlin made an announcement within mere minutes of his meeting with the Merpeople, broadcasting his voice throughout the school as everyone trickled to their common rooms, hushed and abuzz with worrisome chatter.
“Attention students and faculty of Hogwarts,” his voice echoed from every wall, resonated from each flat surface, as if the entire school had been converted into a magical sounding board, which it probably had. “As you are now aware, the Merpeople have been mollified, while our Centaur friends of the Forbidden Forest have expressed their deep concern about the welfare of the human world, both its magical and Muggle counterparts. You may have heard that they believe it will soon be their responsibility to govern us all, and that they will come in force to impose that governing, starting here, with this school. You did not misunderstand. But I assure you: diplomacy will rule the day first.
Centaurs are eminently thoughtful creatures, unruled by emotion.
Ministry ambassadors will surely be dispatched this very night to negotiate with the Centaurs, and those negotiations shall surely, partly by design, and partly by their very nature, take a very long time. The day may indeed come when diplomacy fails and the centaurs invade Hogwarts. But I expect two things when and if that day comes: you will no longer be here, and we will be equipped to resist them. Fear not, students. Attend to your studies. The fate of the world may not rest on you completing your homework, but the fate of your future does. Let that be your primary focus.”
His voice died away as the students, frozen in place with wide eyes and alert, listening expressions, all began to move again, turning to each other, resuming their whispered, nervous conversations, albeit with a new note of relief in the air. Merlin was the most powerful wizard (and the only living sorcerer) in the entire magical world. If he was not concerned, then perhaps the world was not, in fact, about to fall apart around everyone’s ears.
But as James made his own way up the crowded stairs to the Gryffindor common room, shouldering past slower moving knots of urgently chattering students, watched by the unsettled gazes of dozens of paintings, he thought of Merlin’s comment back during James’ first year.
The last tenth of magic, he had said, was pure and unadulterated bluster.
Merlin couldn’t know how long the centaurs might take to mount their forces against the school. He couldn’t know if they would even engage in diplomacy with any Ministry ambassadors. Based on what James had just heard in the courtyard, he thought it extremely unlikely, in fact. Diplomacy had stopped the moment that Jakhar and his advisors had turned tail and stalked away, leading their troops back to the Forest, leaving their warning and promise ringing in the air behind them.
And of course, James was one of the few people to know that while Merlin may indeed be the only living sorcerer in the world, there was a living sorceress out there as well. And who knew what she might do in the wake of this news. Or even if it was somehow a part of her plan.
The next day was Tuesday, and both of James’ first two classes, Potions and Muggle Studies, were canceled, replaced with study periods in the suddenly very crowded library. The rasp of whispers and shuffle of gossiping students from table to table was nominally overseen by the librarian and, inexplicably, Professor Revalvier.
“The rest of the teachers are in a sort of war-room meeting, I hear,” Rose whispered to James, peering low over an open textbook.
“The Ministry is in a complete uproar ever since the news last night.
They’re sending new watchmen, including a few retired Harriers and Aurors. The teachers hate it, but they’re worried, too. All of them are in a mandatory emergency response training class with Headmaster Merlinus today.”
Ralph glanced back over his shoulder toward the reference desk.
“So if it’s mandatory, why’s Professor Revalvier sitting it out?”
Rose lowered her voice further. “She’s a pacifist, they say.
Won’t raise a wand against another person or creature if it’s in the name of war. She may lose her post over it, but she says it’s worth it to set an example to the students.”
James shook his head in dismay, and then turned back to Rose.
“How do you know all of this stuff?”
“I ask the right people,” Rose shrugged. “It pays off being teacher’s pet to half a dozen professors. I magic the blackboards clean and shelve their books and they talk to me. It’s like being a barkeeper.”
By the end of the week, with the Centaurs still biding their time mysteriously in the Forest, life had returned to what currently passed for normal. The watchtower had been rebuilt a safe distance from the lake and the expanded watch now patrolled two at a time throughout all hours of the day and night. The final Hogsmeade weekend came and went as spring finally broke its clammy hold over the grounds, granting the first truly sunny days and leaving flowers and lush grass across the grounds. Study sessions in the library resumed as N.E.W.T. examinations grew imminent. The first occurred early, as Mr. Twycross, the Ministry disapparation expert, concluded his class and prepared to disembark. When James’ examination time came, he successfully apparated across the classroom, leaving not even the faintest trace of magical exhaust.
“Excellent form, Mr. Potter,” Twycross nodded curtly, clearly impressed. “One might well think you had been apparating for years.”
James grinned a little guiltily, thinking of his midnight experience in Diagon Alley weeks earlier. That night, necessity had been a very good teacher. By comparison, zapping across the classroom felt about as difficult as hovering on a broom.
Night Quidditch picked up as the weather improved, with Gryffindor just barely leading in the standings against team Hufflepuff, led by the irrepressible Julien Jackson. Jackson, who had initially been reluctant to allow game magic into the matches, was now equal to James in her ability to cast gravity wells and bonefuse hexes. Further, she had taken to studying obscure Clutchcudgel magazines from the United States in order to learn all new spells, including a nasty version of the Knuckler that caused a person’s fingers to flex backwards (making it impossible to hold the clutch or a beater bat) and a ghosting hex that created random duplicates of the player who cast it, with no way to tell which was the original. She taught the spells to her teammates, but guarded them vigilantly from being discovered by any other teams.
James was annoyed at her devotion, mostly because he felt too distracted to make such efforts himself.
For his own part, Ralph continued to chafe at the existence of Night Quidditch, vowing that if he ever found out when a match was going to occur, it would be his duty “as Head Boy and a magical citizen” to shut it down. James rolled his eyes at these proclamations, choosing to believe that Ralph made them mostly out of duty, not determination.
Indeed, with the watch patrolling the premises twenty-four hours a day, the night
Quidditch teams had been forced to resort to their own guards, warning of incoming patrols so that the teams could rush away to hiding places in the grandstands every half hour or so, peering over railings as the watchmen passed obliviously below.
James thought often of his recent meeting with Merlin, during which he had almost told the headmaster everything he knew—had only been prevented from telling, in fact, by the incredible intrusion of both the Merpeople and the Centaurs. The timing of those events, James mused, seemed simply too coincidental to be random. And yet he couldn’t imagine how they could be anything else. No one else knew what he and the headmaster had been discussing, and even if they had, who could have orchestrated such a conspiracy with two societies as independent and irascible as the Merpeople and the Centaurs?
Still, he wondered if it had been a blessing or a curse that he had been interrupted before telling Merlin the secret of Albus’ and Odin-Vann’s involvement with Petra—the Ransom and the Architect, according to him. Sometimes he considered seeking the headmaster out and telling him after all. Other times, he tried to stay as inconspicuous as possible, hoping that Merlin would forget about the whole thing.
For his own part, Merlin seemed busier than he ever had been before. He was constantly in meetings, or bustling from place to place with members of the watch in tow, or traveling far and wide consulting with magical administrations and security forces all over Europe. And yet, somehow, the old sorcerer seemed more engaged and animated than James had ever known him. It had been a thousand years since Merlin had been part of a magical war. Perhaps, as dismaying as it might seem, he had sort of missed it. He was a tactician at heart, after all, a man of action with deep battle instincts. He may not welcome the coming confrontations, whenever or however they happened, but he would know how to handle them. Until then, content with his duties and the competence of his skills, he was preparing.
Odin-Vann went missing for a solid week. James didn’t know about it until the young professor’s classes were cancelled one day, and then led the following few days by Professor Votary as substitute.
“Sick, I am told,” Votary sniffed with a note of disapproval.
“And contagious as well, quarantined in his quarters with no visitors allowed. Myself, I expect the young man suffers from mere seasonal scumblewort allergies. Tis the season. But far be it from me to judge another professor’s ability to function while impaired.” He plunked his carpetbag onto the desk for emphasis.
Graham leaned aside and whispered, “I hear he’s got dragon pox.
Sneezing his guts out through his ears and every other orifice.”
“You’re disgusting,” Kendra Corner rolled her eyes.
Later that evening, James and Rose stole through the corridors to Odin-Vann’s door. Sure enough, they could hear the unmistakable sound of gut-wrenching sneezes from within, the force of them visibly shaking the old door. Tentatively, Rose knocked.
“Can we get you anything, Professor?”
They waited, but Odin-Vann didn’t respond. A few moments later, another gusting sneeze rocked the door in its frame. Rose looked up at James, her face etched with suspicion.
James understood, and a feeling of deep dismay chilled him.
Something was indeed sneezing in Odin-Vann’s quarters, but it wasn’t the professor. Perhaps it was a recording of some kind, or even an Augurey trained to repeat the same violent noise randomly. Either way, the professor was not there. And James had a terrible feeling that he knew where he was.
Odin-Vann was in America, with Petra. They were finally completing her task, breaking into the Alma Aleron Hall of Archives and descending to the Vault of Destinies, where the halted Loom waited for them. They would restore the symbolic crimson thread, using whatever complicated magic was necessary for the task, and reset the Loom. Then Petra, the living, breathing Crimson Thread, would be torn from the world and sent to whatever darker dimension Morgan, the other Petra, had come from.
“Perhaps it’s already happened?” Rose asked in a whisper.
James shook his head. “We would have sensed it. Wouldn’t we?
The whole point is for this ruddy destiny to be undone and replaced with our original history. But nothing’s changed. Or, would we even know if it had?”
Rose merely shrugged. Like him, she was worried. But James was also conflicted. He wanted to be the one helping Petra during her final moments in this world, not Odin-Vann. He wanted to look her in the eyes when she departed her home dimension, and him, forever. He wanted, more than anything, simply to say goodbye.
But that was not meant to happen, it seemed. When Odin-Vann returned, one way or another, the deed would be done.
As they hurried back through the darkening corridors, Rose asked, “But what about Albus? He’s supposed to have some task to perform as well, isn’t he? Only he’s still here. We saw him an hour ago at dinner, moping at the end of the Slytherin table, just as tragic and morose as ever.”
James shook his head and shrugged. “Maybe he was just a failsafe. Maybe she didn’t really need him. Or maybe he can play his part from here. Who knows?”
James wanted desperately to ask his brother directly, but Albus’ mood had indeed spiraled darker and more reclusive since his breakup with Chance Jackson. When he did show up at mealtimes, he sat alone, his brow lowered, his eyes staring sullenly into space. When James approached him, Albus stalked away, either angry or elusive. Perhaps he knew what James meant to ask, and had no intention of answering.
James could have pursued his brother, of course, demanding to speak to him. And yet some buried part of him, quiet but persistent, held him back, whispering that the longer he didn’t know, the longer the inevitable could be delayed.
The truth came home to James on a Friday, as he hurried along the corridor toward Divination, his final class of the day. Something small and hard bounced off the back of his head, startling him so that he nearly dropped the crystal ball in his hand. He stopped and turned, clapping his free hand to the back of his head.
On the floor behind him, a small badge lay glinting in the sun.
It was shaped like a shield and engraved with the letters J.W. As he watched, the badge skittered on the floor, spun around, then shot backwards into the air. It socked into the waiting hand of Edgar Edgecombe, who stood along the far wall, his wand in his hand. The boy grinned at James, his eyes squinting meanly. To his right, Polly Heathrow sniggered into the back of her hand. Quincy Ogden scowled at James from Edgecombe’s left, his chin raised challengingly.
“You little—” James began, his face heating with rage. “What is your problem!?” The words came out much more loudly and forcefully than he intended, causing students nearby to stop in their tracks, eyes suddenly keen.
“We didn’t do a thing,” Heathrow said, her nasal voice high and smug. “You’ve got nargles in the brain, that’s all. They was knocking to get out.”
Laughing, Edgecombe pinned his badge back onto his robes.
“Walk on, Potter. Before we get annoyed and report the whole lot of your stupid night Quidditch league to the authorities. See if we don’t.”
James knew the boy was trying to pique him, and knew equally well that he shouldn’t let him. But he was angry, and fed up, and already feeling helpless about so many other things. He felt the weight of his wand in his robes and longed to pull it out, to brandish it at the horrible little git and his two bratty friends.
“What’s night Quidditch mean to him?” Ogden sneered. “He’s used to making other people pay for his stupid ideas. Sometimes he even lets other people die for them.”
James felt a rod of ice jam down his spine at Ogden’s words. He stood stock still for a moment as every watching eye turned to him. He opened his mouth to respond, but Heathrow spoke first, raising her shrill voice in a parody of woe.
“Oh, boo- hoo, my cousin’s dead,” she cried nastily, cocking her head and drawing a hand up to her thin chest. “Everybody feel sorry for me because I got my co
usin killed off meddling in stuff I had no right to!
I’m a tragic hero, don’t you know! Who else wants to die to prove it?”
James’ hands moved of their own accord. He heard the brittle crack of the crystal ball as it dropped to the floor and shattered, saw the lunge of his own wand as he pointed it at Heathrow, then Edgecombe as the boy burst into braying laughter, blind to James’ furious approach.
Only Ogden saw and responded, whipping his own wand forward and pointing it at James’ face.
They both fired at the same time—James, a blasting curse; Ogden, a total body bind—and both spells spat across the space between them, lighting the walls and faces of the surprised observers with brilliant red and electric purple.
And at that exact moment, a quake shook the floor, sharp and sudden. The windows rattled in their frames. The grasses beyond shuddered, undulating across the grounds. Leaves shivered from the trees in the Forbidden Forest and birds startled in clouds from their nests.
And neither boy’s spells struck their marks.
As James watched, the curses ground to a halt in mid-air, hovering and crackling with energy, as if suddenly suspended in jelly.
There was perfect silence apart from the throbbing hum of the frozen spells. No one had ever seen or felt such a thing before. James had a moment to wonder if Merlin was involved. He even glanced around, looking to see if the sorcerer was standing nearby, his staff in his hand, exerting some sort of deadening force over the boys’ rash curses, causing the dreadful tremor that had just shaken the world.
The headmaster was nowhere in sight.
Cautiously, gingerly, Sanjey Yadev shouldered through the crowd of stunned observers, approaching the crackling spells where they hung in space. He raised his wand to them, less like a magical instrument, and more like a tree branch with which to poke a spider to see if it’s dead. As the tip of his wand neared James’ thrumming Confringo spell, it collapsed upon itself, disintegrating into glowing dust and falling uselessly away.
James Potter and the Crimson Thread Page 51