James Potter and the Crimson Thread

by G. Norman Lippert

  A little worriedly, he asked, “What? What are you looking for?”

  “Ah-ha!” James suddenly cried, leaning back and brandishing something in his upraised hand.

  Ralph peered at it, still frowning. “What is it? Looks like an old Winkle.”

  James didn’t answer. Scooting back and pushing aside a pile of miss-matched socks and old arithmancy notes, he put the tiny parcel of paper down onto the floor. Sitting back up, he scrambled to produce his wand, then pointed it at the parchment and uttered a short, breathless spell.

  With a brief flash, the parcel of paper sprang open like an origami flower, blossoming into a sheaf of creased old parchments, covered in masses of scrawled handwriting.

  Scorpius slid from his bed and moved to join Ralph and James, who leaned over the parchment, frowning with concentration.

  James shook his head and squinted at the parchments. Wand still in hand, he raised it and said, “Lumos!” The wand lit, illuminating the old parchment with unearthly clarity. As always, Petra’s handwriting covered the pages, but now it was so hectic and dense, so scratched out and scribbled over, that it was a virtual ink-blot of chaos.

  In a low, awed voice, Ralph asked again, “What is it?”

  “It’s Petra’s dream story,” James answered, distracted. He reached and flipped over the top parchment. The backside was also covered with scrawled words and sentences, built up to a nonsensical strew, as was the page beneath. Almost nothing was legible.

  “Her… what?” Ralph quavered.

  James blinked and remembered that he had never shown anyone Petra’s dream story before. He had told them about it, but for some reason he’d never shown them. It had been his and Petra’s shared secret.

  Through it, she had sent him private messages on occasion, usually when he most needed to hear from her. At other times, the pages had offered a glimpse into the sometimes complicated and feverish world of her thoughts.

  But it had never looked like this before. This was like a love letter to insanity. The scribbled words seemed to crawl over each other, pulsing with their own insectile life.

  Without answering Ralph, James reached and scooped the parchments together again, shuffling them back into a stack and folding them over, quickly hiding their scribbled contents. The parchment crackled like dry leaves, suddenly icy cold. James could feel it on the pages themselves, turning the edges brittle and chilling his fingers.

  “Potter,” Scorpius said, raising his chin.

  “I don’t want to hear it,” James said quickly, folding the dream story again, roughly, so that the old pages crinkled and tore. “It’s nothing. There’s nothing to see. I thought… maybe…”

  “Potter,” Scorpius said again, and then pointed to the floor where the dream story had rested moments earlier. “Is that also yours?”

  James looked aside at Scorpius, blinking rapidly and hugging the sheaf of Petra’s old parchments to his chest, feeling the cold of them seeping through his shirt. For a moment he didn’t register what the boy had asked him, but then he followed the direction of Scorpius’ pointing finger.

  On the floor before James’ knees, between an old puking pastille and a dried out inkpot, was another piece of parchment. This one was even older than the dream story, torn from a larger sheet, frayed and creased from its long sojourn in the bowels of James’ trunk. Three words were written on the parchment, scrawled in James’ own hand.

  He didn’t remember the note at first. And then, in a blink of memory, it flooded back to him. It had been during his second year that he had had the dream—a nightmare, in fact. Shreds of it flickered before his mind’s eye: Albus with a young woman, standing in a graveyard, his grandparents’ graves leaning nearby; the Dark Mark exploding into the sky overhead, shot from Albus’ wand in the young woman’s hand, lighting the cemetery with its eerie green glow; James himself appearing out of thin air, apparating with alarm in his suddenly older voice, warning Albus and his companion that it didn’t have to be like this, that others were coming, and that they wouldn’t waste time with words…

  Only now, thinking back on the dream five years later, James fully understood: the young woman in the graveyard was Petra. Of course she was. He just hadn’t known it then, because he hadn’t yet discovered that Petra was the Bloodline. Or the Crimson Thread.

  He looked down at the old note.

  When he had awoken from the dream, he had gotten up from his bed and, compelled by a sense of phantom, inexplicable resolve, penned those three words on a scrap of spare parchment. He didn’t know why, not then and not now. He had only known that the dream had demanded it somehow. He had only believed that someday, somehow, the words would mean something.

  He looked up at Scorpius again. Scorpius wasn’t looking at the note, but at James, his eyes narrowed.

  “I’ve always wondered,” the blond boy said, as if musing aloud.

  “Were you sleepwalking when you wrote that? Or would you remember it again when you came across it?”

  James felt suddenly exhausted, almost as if he had been hollowed out of all emotion. He merely shook his head at Scorpius, who had clearly observed him writing the note years earlier. “Both, maybe. I didn’t remember writing it until now. I don’t even know why I did. It doesn’t mean anything. It’s just a line from the play.”

  Ralph leaned over the note and read it. “The play? You mean The Triumvirate?”

  James shrugged. “We were putting it on that year. For Muggle Studies. I was playing Treus, remember? It’s just one of my lines.”

  Ralph picked up the old note and examined it critically. On it, the ink had dried to a brackish brown, the color of congealed blood.

  James looked at it in Ralph’s hand and then read the words again, this time aloud.

  “Beware… foul Donovan.”

  Ralph looked up at him, his brow knitted. He balled the note in his hands and shrugged impatiently. “It’s nothing. Just an old script cheat-sheet, right? What was that other thing?” He nodded meaningfully at the dream story where James still held it folded against his chest.

  James shook himself, then reached and stuffed the scribbled parchments back into his trunk. “Also nothing,” he sighed harshly. “I thought it might give us some news, but it doesn’t. It’s useless, just like everything else.”

  Ralph pushed himself up from his knees, clearly preparing to protest, but at that moment a sound of running feet echoed up the nearby stairwell. Graham Warton appeared there, leaning in through the door and looking slightly put-out.

  “Rose Weasley says you lot need to come right now,” he announced. “She says he’s come back, and he needs your help.

  Whatever the bloody hell that means.”

  James jumped anxiously to his feet, slamming his trunk as he went, and joined Scorpius and Ralph as they clambered past Graham, leaving him staring after them in annoyed confusion.

  “And you can tell Weasley that I’m not your bleedin’ secretary!” he called after them.

  A moment later, shaking his head, Graham tromped back down after them.

  Unseen in the now empty dormitory, a ribbon of white vapor snaked from beneath the lid of James’ trunk. Inside, the dream story steamed with cold, sizzling faintly as it chilled to absolute zero, freezing the socks and jeans all around it, cracking the glass in James’ spare spectacles. Then, with a final, brittle hiss, the pages disintegrated into films of icy ash and fell apart, sifting into bone-white dust.

  And far, far away, under the darkness of a cloudy night sky, a cold wind at her back, buffeting her dark hair, Petra relaxed her fists and opened her eyes. She sighed in mingled resolve and worry.

  “James,” she whispered. “Please, James… stay away. ”

  Odin-Vann, Rose informed them as they hurried through the corridors, was in the subterranean moonpool, watching the door and waiting for them. He had somehow managed to send word to her via her Protean duck, even though he didn’t have a duck of his own. James, Scorpius, Rose, and Ralph sl
owed to a breathless stop as they joined the young professor, clambering through the door into the cool darkness of the underground lake. He closed the door immediately behind them, and then stood back and pointed at it with his wand. Without speaking a word, his wand spat an arc of electric pink at the lock, which clacked and latched firmly, presumably until he cast the unlocking charm.

  James had a moment to muse once again about the professor’s sudden prodigious skill with his wand, after his earlier (and apparently infamous) magical impotence under stress. Now, he handled his wand with utmost confidence, and, perhaps even more impressively, with mostly nonverbal spells.

  When Odin-Vann turned back from the door, however, James’ eyes widened. Dirt and blood stained the professor’s face like a mask.

  His eyes were haunted, sunken and wild in their sockets. His clothing was torn, partially burned, and grey with gritty dust. He paused, noting the students’ shocked expressions, then made a conscious effort to calm his features. He raised his left hand, took a step toward them, and nearly collapsed before Rose and James caught him, one under each arm.

  “Professor!” Rose cried, “What happened!? Are you OK?

  Should we go for Madame Curio?”

  “No!” Odin-Vann barked, gasping in pain as his knees buckled.

  “No, I’m all right. It looks worse than it is, I promise. And there are far more important matters at hand than my wellbeing. I need your help.

  Or, rather, Petra does. Now more than ever.”

  Ralph’s voice was stoic, almost cold, as he crossed his arms and cocked his head. “What happened?” he demanded firmly. “What did you do? Tell us before we agree to any more help.”

  “Ralph!” Rose scolded him loudly. “What’s wrong with you!?

  He’s hurt, can’t you see?”

  “He’s bleeding and dirty, I’ll give you that,” Ralph countered.

  “But he somehow survived the destruction of Alma Aleron’s Archive, and the Loom in the Vault of Destinies. He’s responsible for what happened. I, for one, am feeling far more inclined to turn him over to Merlin and the Watch than to help him. What’s he going to destroy next, eh? What’s his newest brilliant idea?”

  “Ralph!” James said, sudden anger burning his cheeks, but Scorpius overrode him, his drawling voice sounding almost bored.

  “Deedle is right,” he commented, and then caught himself and turned to Ralph. “Sorry. Dolohov, is right.”

  “Thank you,” Ralph sighed. He hadn’t drawn his wand, but James could see that his hands were itching to do so.

  Odin-Vann seemed to regain his footing and his strength. He straightened his robes and nodded at Ralph. “You’re right. I’m sorry for rushing you. It’s been…” He laughed drily. It was a short, somewhat mad sound. “It’s been a strange few days for me. But I can’t blame you for being extremely suspicious. I would be as well. I shall tell you everything you wish to know, if I can. And yet I cannot emphasize enough, I fear, that time is very much now our enemy.”

  Ralph nodded to himself and firmed his jaw. “Fine,” he said, exhaling harshly. “Start by telling us exactly what happened on Friday afternoon.”

  Odin-Vann looked up at Ralph, meeting his eyes with impatience and desperation etched onto his face, but then, with a force of apparently Herculean effort, he calmed himself again. “Very well.

  But let us go to the ship. It is our destination, at any rate. If you hear my short tale and decide to help, then we shall embark immediately. If not…” He shrugged and shook his head, “Then you are free to return to whatever remains of our lives.”

  “Hey guys!” a voice called from the vicinity of Hagrid’s ship where it bobbed on the dark waves. James turned to look back, surprised. He recognized the voice and, even in his distress, couldn’t help smiling. The figure of Zane Walker stood on the deck of the Gertrude, his hands cupped to his mouth as he called, “You all gonna stand there kibitzing all night? I’m starting to feel a little left out.”

  “Petra asked for him as well,” Odin-Vann sighed, turning back from the ship. “And she brought him here. The same way that she brought me back. By opening space like a door. She can do that now.

  She can do… well, just about anything.”

  “Except return the crimson thread,” James commented pointedly as the crew began to hurry down to the waiting gangplank.

  “No,” Odin-Vann agreed, limping as he walked. “Opening a path to the right dimension is beyond even her powers. For that… she will need all of us.”

  The group’s footsteps clumped and clanked up the gangplank to the deck of the Gertrude, where Zane greeted everyone with his irrepressible grin and a hearty handshake, as if he was a cruise director welcoming a gaggle of tourists. Above them all, the inverted mirror of the Black Lake hung precipitously, clapping its own waves and dropping cool mist.

  “Let us sit,” Odin-Vann said, and James could hear the exhaustion in his voice. “Just here, on the deck. I don’t have it in me to go below. This won’t take long, I hope.”

  James hunkered down along the outside railing and felt the gentle roll and dip of the ship beneath him. Odin-Vann sank to an awkward sitting position against the wheelhouse, while the others formed a rough circle.

  “Petra found me in my dormitory,” Zane admitted quietly to James. “Didn’t knock or anything. Just stepped right out of a black hole and onto my fake yeti-skin rug. I about peed my pants, and that’s saying something. We Zombies pride ourselves in expecting the unexpected.”

  “What did she say?” James asked.

  “She said that time was short and you lot would need me to do what needed to be done,” he answered with a shrug. “And that’s pretty much word-for-word. She was in a major hurry.”

  “So what needs to be done?” Ralph asked, turning back to Odin-Vann.

  The young professor shook his head wearily. “With the Loom destroyed, there’s only one more chance to set everything right,” he answered. “One last way to replace Morgan with Petra and reset the balance. But it will take all of us. Petra plays the most important part, and it will cost her everything, a higher price than I am willing to admit, in fact. But without us—without you lot—there’s no hope whatsoever.”

  Ralph asked again, his eyes narrowed, “What did you do?”

  “Someone sabotaged us,” Odin-Vann answered flatly, meeting Ralph’s accusing stare. “I had prepared so carefully, so thoroughly. I was ready for anything that might go wrong with actually restarting the Loom and replacing the thread. The spellwork was perfect. But we never even got a chance to try it. The moment we approached, we triggered something. A boundary hex of some kind, attuned either to Petra, or the thread itself, or both. The Vault contracted like a fist. It didn’t crush the Loom—that device was far too magical to be destroyed by brute strength. But it compressed its power, condensed it with titanic force, until it simply combusted. The Loom consumed itself with the blinding singularity of its own compressed energy, and the Vault exploded. The repercussions demolished the Archive and ruptured the magical fabric of the entire world. But worst of all, it halted the inertia of our dying destiny entirely. There is nothing supporting us anymore.

  No fate. No purpose. No providence, or luck, or fortune. We are untethered from any intelligible directing force whatsoever. If we don’t succeed with this last, final chance… there may be no world for us to come back to.”

  “But…” Rose said, her voice low with awed worry, “What can Petra do? Where can she go now to accomplish her task?”

  “There is only one place,” Odin-Vann acknowledged, dropping his eyes to the deck between them. “One place where decisions still matter, where destiny can play its part.”

  Scorpius seemed dubious. “And where is that?”

  “The past,” Odin-Vann said firmly, and looked up at Scorpius without raising his head.

  Ralph frowned. “The past? What do you mean? Are you talking about… Time Turners?”

  Rose shook her head. “Time Turners
can’t change history,” she said tiredly, glancing from Ralph to Odin-Vann. “At least, not major history. That’s their fatal flaw. The past has a sort of inertia. The bigger the event, and the longer ago it happened, the more it will find a way to keep happening, no matter what you do in the past to try to change it. Besides, a Time Turner is a personal device. Go back in time and walk a mile in any direction, you’ll stumble right out of its influence and back into the present. Right, Professor?”

  “Time Turners are for reliving short moments in the recent past, by one or two people, in a small vicinity,” Odin-Vann agreed unhappily.

  “Changes can be made in that past, but only if their effects haven’t yet had major repercussions in the present. Rose is right. Once history has been made, trying to change it in the past is like trying to steer this ship with a teaspoon. It would have to be something that almost happened right anyway, but didn’t for some reason. And it would take monumental, immeasurable power.”

  Scorpius said, “So if history can’t be changed, how can going back to the past help us?”

  Odin-Vann shook his head, growing animated, “I don’t mean traveling back in time,” he said, lowering his voice with urgency. “I mean going someplace that Petra has already been before, someplace with deep, elemental meaning to her, someplace that defines her. We need an object, a talisman that will connect Petra with Morgan on a quantum level. That way, when we open the rift between dimensions, it will connect with the proper place and time, taking Petra back to Morgan’s original world!”

  “But,” James said, “I thought there was no way to open a rift directly into another dimension? You have to go through the World Between the Worlds, and there’s no way to find one specific dimension from inside there. It would be like finding a single star in a billion galaxies.”

  Odin-Vann was shaking his head again, his eyes bright with fervor. “No. It is possible to go straight into another dimension. But no one has ever tried it because it’s only a one-way trip. And the cost is…terrible. But it is only possible if we can find the right talisman, the right key to Morgan’s original world!”