“What’s happening?” Zane asked, his eyes wide, lit by the yellow glow beyond.
James shook his head weakly, stunned and deeply afraid. He broke his paralysis and bolted to the door, wrenching it open with a screech of bent metal.
Something clanged against the wheelhouse just to the right of his head. He barely registered it before the object clattered to the deck. He glanced down at it. It was a spear with a rough-hewn stone point, green as jade. Further down the ship, more clangs and thunks indicated an ongoing attack.
All around, the lake was suddenly full of splashing figures. They were unrecognizable in the dark, mere muscular shapes surfacing with arms raised, hurling their weapons with frightening accuracy at the already wounded Gertrude. Their war cries were piercingly shrill, screeching like rusty gears.
“The Merpeople!” Rose cried, stumbling as she ran from the hold. “They’ve gone totally berserk!”
“Not that they’re ever exactly friendly,” Scorpius added crossly from behind, ducking as a spear spanged off the wheelhouse, leaving a deep dent.
James stumbled into Rose, nearly knocking her back into Scorpius, as the Gertrude suddenly surged forward, its bow rising against the waves.
“Hold on!” Zane called from inside the wheelhouse. “I don’t know much about driving boats, but I’m pretty sure red means fast!”
James clambered to hold onto the open door, even as Rose grabbed his arm for support. Inside the wheelhouse, Zane had one hand on a large brass throttle, ramming it to its maximum. His face was wide-eyed and hectic as he steered with his other hand, aiming for the fiery glow of the castle. The ship listed harder as it steamed ahead, pitching James, Rose, and Scorpius toward the outer railing and the rushing waves below. Cold mist began to spray into their faces as the barrage of spears fell behind.
Struggling to hold on, Rose called, “Where you taking us!?”
“Um,” Zane shrugged a little manically. “Away!?”
The castle hove nearer with unlikely speed as the Gertrude accelerated, rising onto the waves.
“Getting close to the docks, Walker,” Scorpius warned loudly.
“Yeah,” Zane nodded, scanning the console before him helplessly. “Only boats don’t come with brakes, as far as I can tell. You all might want to, you know, hold onto something.”
The bow of the Gertrude hove over the dock. James heard the crash and splinter as the wooden structure crumpled beneath the hull.
The ship obliterated it without slowing. The shore was barely twenty yards away, approaching with inevitable speed. Trees lined the rocky beach, dark against the starry sky—and yet even now, James saw that the sky wasn’t entirely clear. Just past the canopy of the Forest, low storm clouds boiled, flashing silent bursts of lightning. The Gertrude had beaten the storm to their destination, but it was raging relentlessly onward anyway, seeking its target.
The Gertrude struck the rising beach with a screech and grind of rocks under wood. The ship juddered upward, buckling James’ knees, while momentum continued to carry it forward, even as the bow thrust into the fringe of Forest, bashing between tree trunks and tearing away limbs. The ship’s sideways list grew precipitous as it began to keel over, causing James, Rose, and Scorpius to hang on desperately, lest they fall and be crushed under the rolling hull. Finally, with a devastating crunch, the Gertrude beached itself completely, crashing to rest against some unseen impediment in the trees.
Zane half climbed, half fell out of the wheelhouse, clambering to the railing where it now leaned low over the rocky shore. “Home sweet home,” he announced breathlessly.
Much closer now, the noise of shouting voices and angry grunts seemed to fill the forest.
“What’s happening here?” Rose nearly demanded, fear making her voice strident. James couldn’t help thinking that she suddenly sounded a lot like her mother.
“If I had to guess,” Scorpius said, climbing over the broken railing and dropping to the beach below. “I’d say that the Centaurs have made good on their promise. Friday’s magical quake was likely the last straw, and now they are invading. Only things aren’t going as planned.
They haven’t breached the castle yet.”
“What about the Merpeople?” James asked, clambering after Scorpius and helping Rose down behind him. “They aren’t partnering with the Centaurs. Why are they attacking?”
Zane stumbled as he jumped to the beach. “Everything’s happening at once. It’s not coincidence. It’s just the end.”
James shuddered at the idea, but it felt eerily apt. It did indeed feel like the end.
“What now?” Scorpius said, turning back from the fiery glow beyond the woods. “If the centaurs are being held back somehow, that means we are as well.”
“Ah,” Zane said, brightening. “But the centaurs aren’t gremlins, like us.” He glanced aside at Rose, who nodded fearfully.
“We know all the secret passages in,” she agreed. “The Quidditch shed is probably the closest. Come on!”
Without looking back, she turned and dashed up the beach, skirting the broken hull of the Gertrude, and into the trees.
As he ran to follow, James called, “But I thought the equipment shed passage only worked if that was how you came out of the school to begin with?”
“We fixed that in my third year,” Rose answered back, ducking through bushes and leaping over knotted roots. “Scorpius and I spent a whole Saturday leaving the school through the shed passage about a hundred times in a row, coming back in through the main entrance every time. We built up a cache of returns for whenever we needed them.”
James frowned at this as he ran. “How come I didn’t know about this?”
“You were at Alma Aleron that year,” Zane called from behind.
“Not that we would have invited you anyway,” Scorpius suggested, crashing along in the rear.
Twin spears of light suddenly intersected the students’ path, bobbing wildly and accompanied by a throttling roar. Rose skidded to a halt, braking herself against a tree, just as a large vehicle bounded over the path, its headlamps glaring through the trees. It was some sort of off-road vehicle with huge knobby tyres and gunmetal-grey sides. Voices called from within, and James had a sense of pointing hands and excited direction.
“There, see?” a man’s voice could be heard from an open rear window. “There’s not supposed to be anything here but miles of Forest!
But look yourself! It’s a huge bleedin’ castle! Just like the village that popped up when we was hiking last week!”
The engine whined and strained over the uneven Forest floor.
The vehicle surged forward, crashing over brush, squirreling through the huge, ancient trees.
Two more followed in its wake, moving faster and more confidently. From his place behind a nearby tree, James thought he recognized weapons in the passengers’ hands. Then, with sinking dismay, he recognized the objects they were brandishing. They weren’t weapons, but cameras.
“Not this again,” Zane said, rolling his eyes.
“Come on,” Rose called again, leaping ahead as the vehicles crashed onward through the wood, crawling in the general direction of the castle and the flicker of fire.
As the four neared the castle themselves and began to bypass it, running along the edge of the Forest, they caught glimpses of a huge rabble gathered against the seamless wall of fire. Centaurs moved in galloping groups, orderly and ranked, their weapons raised.
“Merlin’s erected a defence,” James realized aloud. “That’s no normal fire. It’s a fiendfyre boundary!”
“It won’t last,” Scorpius said, and then pointed as he ran. “And what’s that?”
James saw it as well. “That’s no centaur,” he agreed with sinking realization.
Gathered in their own knot, facing the centaurs against the wall of magical flames, was a gaggle of the huge lumbering shapes that James had glimpsed from the ship. They advanced haltingly toward the ranks of centaurs, hunkering their massive
shoulders around their tiny heads.
They were giants, dozens of them, in all different monstrous sizes.
“Grawp and Prechka!” Rose cried shrilly. “They came here on their own, even though Hagrid warned them to stay away! And they brought their whole tribe!”
Even in silhouette, James recognized the hulking figure of Prechka. She shied away from the centaurs as they galloped toward her, then around her feet, their weapons raised threateningly. Her potato-like head bobbed and swiveled as she tried to see them all, tried to avoid their stamping, teeming hooves. And then, horribly, she attacked. She was compelled more by terror than anger. James could see it in the clumsy way that she moved, the panicked lurch of her shoulders. She kicked, and one centaur flew through the air, flailing all six of its appendages. Then, spastically, Prechka hunkered, grabbed two more centaurs, one in each hand, and jerked them up to shoulder height.
With a massive lunge, she bashed them together like a pair of meaty cymbals. Even over the roar of the fire and the bellowing voices, James heard the horrible crunch of bones.
“No!” Rose called, stumbling to a halt and raising her hands to her face, unable to tear her eyes away. “No, Prechka!”
“Leave her be!” Scorpius called, his voice suddenly commanding.
“The time for civility is past! It’s her skin or theirs! And soon it might be ours! Keep running!”
“Holy hinkypunks,” Zane breathed in a high, scared voice.
“That was… brutal!”
Lights sprayed over the increasing melee and the vehicle from the Forest burst into view, bouncing over the hillocks. It ground to a halt, its brakes screeching, its body leaning on its springs. The passenger door burst open and a man scrambled out in sudden panic, his eyes bulging up at the giants. He scrambled backwards in terror, tripped and fell at the feet of a stamping centaur. He glanced up at it and screamed, covering his head with his arms.
The other two vehicles bounded forward in pursuit. The middle vehicle crashed into the suddenly halted lead vehicle, nearly running down the panicked passenger. Glass tinkled and voices shouted.
“This is beyond us!” Scorpius called urgently. “Go!”
Distracted and numb with terror, the group ran on again, even as the giants fell fully to battle against the centaurs and the vehicle doors sprang open, disgorging terrified Muggles and their clattering, forgotten cameras.
The fiendfyre raged along the Quidditch pitch, barely missing it but engulfing the Slytherin grandstand, which was already reduced to a mere blackened skeleton, roaring with flame. Running hard beneath the seething light, Rose led the troupe toward the equipment shed, which sizzled and smoked from its own proximity to the fire. Furnace heat swarmed across the pitch, turning the air into writhing shimmers and baking the sweat on James’ brow.
In the near distance, James noticed a flailing, writhing mass, boiling with fiendfyre. His stomach fell as he realized that it was the Whomping Willow. Sparks arose in swirling rafters as it heaved its flaming limbs, its leaves glowing like coals as they burned away, transformed to swarming cinders.
He tore his eyes away, grimly deciding not to point out the terrible sight to the others.
Rose reached for the equipment shed’s door handle, and then jerked her hand back in pain.
“Hot!” she gasped, cradling her burnt fingers.
Scorpius raised his arm, his wand already jutting from his fist.
“Convulsis!” he shouted, and the blast of light struck the door, bashing it open. The inside was dark, much deeper than the tiny shed itself. Cool air wafted blissfully out of it, rising from a rank of stone steps.
Scorpius led the way, running down into the subterranean corridor below.
James gulped as he followed. Everything felt out of control. He didn’t know what he intended to do. He didn’t know where Petra was, or even if she was still alive. Chaos seemed to have fallen over the entire world, throwing every imaginable obstacle and distraction in his way to stop him.
His side ached as he ran into the cool, eerily quiet darkness. And then light bloomed ahead as Scorpius reached the passage exit. The four clambered out, pushing around the statue of Lokimagus the Perpetually Productive, and into the glow of torchlight and a perfectly prosaic Hogwarts corridor. No one was in sight, and yet voices could be heard echoing distantly, shouting with alarm and urgency.
The school had not been vacated, it seemed. That’s why Merlin was protecting it. But even he could not hold off the centaurs much longer.
As if on command, a huge boom shook the castle, raining grit from the ceiling and shattering a nearby window. The centaurs were attacking through the fiendfyre, though James couldn’t guess how.
“It’s all a distraction,” he said, turning to Zane, Rose, and Scorpius. “I don’t know how or why, but we still have just one job, and that’s to find Petra and warn her! If Odin-Vann and Judith get to her first…!”
“But how!?” Rose cried, stamping her foot in frustration. “We don’t even know where she is!”
James drew a resolute breath and glanced at Scorpius. “We have to find Merlin,” he said firmly. “He has Petra’s father’s brooch. Petra still thinks she’s leaving our world forever, and she won’t go anywhere without it. If we find Merlin, we’ll find Petra.”
“If we’re not too late already,” Zane shrugged and nodded.
“And all of this is just the opening act for the apocalypse.”
Drawing his wand and holding it at the ready, James turned and ran down the corridor, heading in the direction of the main stairs and the headmaster’s office. As he turned at the nearest junction, he nearly bowled into George Muldoon, the Ravenclaw prefect. The tall boy caught James by the shoulder, a look of terror and alarm bulging in his eyes before he recognized him.
“Potter!” he exclaimed in consternation, “what are you doing down here! We’re in lockdown state! Everyone to their common rooms!
And you, Weasley and Malfoy! And…!” he boggled at Zane. “And just who the ruddy hell are you?”
“Zane Walker,” Zane said agreeably. “Normally I shake hands, but we’re in a pretty big hurry. Next time, maybe? If there is a next time?”
With that, the troupe ran on again, leaving Muldoon to turn and boggle after them, frantically calling their names.
They reached the stairs and turned to pelt up them, swinging around the ballustrade for support. Another boom shook the castle and the Heracles window cracked, disintegrated, and fell away in a rain of colorful shards.
“That’s not magic,” Scorpius gasped, boggling at the broken window. “Something is hitting us!”
“The giants,” Zane nodded. “They’re trying to get in any way they can. Not to attack, but to get away from the centaurs.”
“Go!” James pressed, turning past the landing and continuing up the stairs. “No time for anything else!”
They reached the third floor, James in the lead. He turned down Gargoyle corridor, aiming for the spiral staircase at the end.
Another boom sounded, this one from directly next to James, and a pillar keeled toward him, breaking into heavy chunks. James ducked and stumbled, barely avoiding the collapsing stonework. Dust blew past him as part of the ceiling came down with the pillar, choking the air and snuffing the nearest lantern.
James scrambled to his feet and looked back, squinting into the gritty dark. He was cut off from Scorpius, Rose, and Zane by the caved-in ceiling.
“She knew that you would come,” a man’s voice said from behind him. “I doubted her. But she knew.”
James wheeled back, so fast that he nearly lost his footing, and jerked his wand wildly upright.
“Expeliarmus!” he gasped, and a bolt of light shot from his wand. It was snuffed immediately, reduced to a swarm of dying sparks.
“Judith predicted that you would race the storm back. I was to wait for you here, and be ready when you came. I shouldn’t have doubted her. She’s rarely wrong.”
A dark figure step
ped forward out of the shadows, coming between James and the spiral stairs of the headmaster’s office. Even before his face was visible, James recognized the gaunt shape of Donofrio Odin-Vann, his wand held almost lazily, half-raised.
“Stupefy!” James cried, raising his wand up in his hand again.
The red spell flashed and snuffed itself barely a foot from his wand. Odin-Vann was laughing to himself, his upturned wand streaming a faint haze of purple.
“You know you cannot defeat me,” he chided. “Best not even to try.”
“Where’s Petra?” James demanded, staring down the length of his trembling wand. He gulped. “Is she still alive?”
“Petra isn’t your concern, James,” Odin-Vann answered, stepping forward slowly. “She never was. You like to think she feels something for you, don’t you? And yet it’s her that intended to leave you forever. That must gall you. Does it gall you, James?”
James lowered his wand slowly in defeat. And then jerked it up again and cried, “Expulso!”
The spell leapt across the distance between them, and exploded against the shimmering shield charm that sprang, unbidden, from Odin-Vann’s raised wand. He stepped forward again, closing the distance between them.
James backed up a step. His heel crunched on broken grit. “Are you planning to kill me?”
“I don’t need to kill you,” Odin-Vann answered with a light shrug. “The storm will kill you. It will follow you wherever you go.
And if somehow you manage to stay ahead of it, well…” he sighed and shook his head. “This world only has a few hours left anyway.”
“Why are you doing this?” James demanded, lowering his wand again, this time all the way. “I mean, I understand being bullied around and all. Revenge makes sense, even if you seem to have gone pretty mental with it. But why destroy the whole world?”
James Potter and the Crimson Thread Page 57