And while one would be hesitant to say that Nastasia Hendricks lives happily ever after, she does, at the very least, carry on as a rather troublesome and complicated student of Alma Aleron. You and she have become well acquainted, in fact. I believe the currently popular term for a relationship like yours is ‘frenemies’.”
James blew out a bemused, relieved sigh. “That sounds about right.” He sobered again. “But… if Petra never made it to Alma Aleron, that means the Archive was never broken into. So the Night of the Unveiling never happened?”
Merlin nodded and narrowed his eyes thoughtfully. “With Petra Morganstern deceased, her thread was no longer a part of the Loom’s weaving. Thus, Judith had no option for switching the Looms and stealing the crimson thread of Petra’s unfortunate doppelganger, Morgan. That story never occurred in this history, and quite thankfully so.
“Instead, on the occasion you know as the Night of the Unveiling, I battled Judith personally, having tracked her after her escape from the murder scene of Senator Filmore. She had fled once again into the nearby ocean waters, where her strength was greatest. I foolishly pursued her, battling her in force. When she threatened to reveal her water-gorgon form to the coast of the city, and to attack it in fury, I summoned what power I had left and obliterated her, undoing myself at the same time.
“Alas, while it took me one full year to return from the realm of the dead, it took her mere weeks to reassemble. She was not yet weakened enough by the death of her host. This was my error. But thankfully, her destruction was yet only a matter of time.”
“So you went missing during my fourth year, just like in the alternate timeline,” James said, amazed. The headmaster was right.
Fewer things had changed than he could have expected. History had indeed found a way to keep happening. And yet the outcome was magnificently different nonetheless. He looked at Merlin and prodded again, “What else?”
Merlin shrugged. “The Vow of Secrecy still erodes slightly, gradually each year. But this is only the result of plain entropy and time, not any devastating revelations.” He bobbed his head, raising his eyes in thought. “You and your friends did manage to unleash a dragon into Muggle London, your mission complicated by a particularly disgruntled house elf whose service had been recently supplanted by humans, albeit of the magical variety. The Elven uprising is a nasty business, spurred on by inevitable changes in culture as time marches on. But it is no global revolution, as it was in your alternate history.
“Reaching farther back, you and your Alma Aleron friends in Bigfoot house still won the Clutchcudgel tournament during your third, inspiring year. You, along with Misters Walker and Deedle, still travelled back into nineteenth century Philadelphia and observed the death of the villain, Ignatius Magnussen. You collected the relic unicorn’s horseshoe, just as you remember, and used it to tread the World Between the Worlds. The single difference is that you accomplished these tasks only to prove and locate the hiding place of the rogue Lady, who had indeed escaped into that mysterious realm to regain her strength after our battle, with her human host always in tow.”
James asked, “And it was Izzy alone that accompanied us into the World Between the Worlds?”
Merlin nodded meaningfully. “Your father, as you are likely now remembering, took Petra’s final request very seriously. He took Izzy into your home, considered her as a daughter, sister to you and Albus and Lily. There, she matured swiftly. Tragedy always has that affect upon those who survive. But Izzy’s growth was quite clearly augmented by her time with her stepsister Petra. Almost from the start, she showed razor-sharp insights bordering on the precognitive. She practiced strange, burgeoning powers. And she devoured books. Every book she could get her small hands on, reading, and absorbing, and memorizing, always adding to her powers with knowledge and wisdom.
And yet, unlike her sorceress sister, Izzy’s peculiar magic was somehow purified by her Muggle heritage. The mind that her hateful mother had called simple was, in fact, the mind perfectly suited to harbor and subordinate some of the most eerie powers imaginable. Evil will never have the slightest foothold in her. Nor vengeance. Nor selfish ambition.
“And she no longer lives with my family,” James said, as his memories slowly returned.
“She does, sometimes,” Merlin admitted. “Your family will always be her home. But she has other places. She is a young lady of many secrets. But unlike virtually every other person on the planet, one can be certain that Izzy’s secrets are kept not for her own questionable motives, but for the benevolent security of the world that she inhabits.”
“She and her dolls,” James remembered, his eyes widening slightly. “Beatrice. And Mr. Bobkins. And all the others. She takes them with her most of the time. Only, sometimes when she doesn’t, you get the strongest feeling that she left them behind on purpose, and they’re not just dolls. They aren’t scary, exactly. They’re even a little comforting to have around, because they’re hers, and they reflect her.
But they do seem to be thinking things. Watching the world for her, maybe.”
Merlin sat forward in his chair again, as if recognizing that the meeting was nearly concluded. There were classes to get to, James suddenly remembered. N.E.W.T. examinations were underway. He himself had several more to attend to.
The headmaster moved a few parchments on his desk. “I expect that as time passes, the history you once knew will again be supplanted by the history you now occupy. While most things remain in near perfect continuity, you will find a few unexpected details here and there.
Your Aunt Hermione, for example, is the Minister of Magic.”
James had been getting to his feet, but he dropped back again with those words, his eyes bulging so wide that they blurred slightly.
“You’re joking!”
Merlin shook his head soberly. “Decent men joke not about politics. She is indeed the Minister, replacing Mr. Loquacious Knapp nearly two years previous. Further such minor shocks shall occur in the coming days. It would be wise to be prepared for them, lest your friends worry for your mental health.”
Aunt Hermione being Minister of Magic did not strike James as an example of a ‘minor shock’, but he understood the headmaster’s point nonetheless. He made to get up from the chair once more, finding himself already reluctant to return to the old mundanity of classes and schoolwork, despite—or perhaps because of—his immense relief.
But a thought came to him then, and he settled back into the chair.
“A question, James?” the headmaster asked, arching an eyebrow, putting down his parchments.
James shook his head distantly, unsure how to even ask, not knowing what words to form the ideas with. Finally, groping, he said, “What was it that happened between Petra and I? The silver thread that connected us for those lost, undone years. The shared power between us. The payment that she apparently had to make in the end to save us all…” He sighed deeply, running out of words, and looked up at Merlin, a little helplessly.
Merlin leaned back again and steepled his fingers. “You are more aware than many others, I think, of what makes a Horcrux, and how it works. Am I correct, James?”
James frowned a little. “A Horcrux is a bargain with dark magic.
A dark witch or wizard can make one if they kill another person. The horrible power of that act lets them break off a part of their soul, and secure it in case their body gets killed.”
Merlin consented to this description, imprecise as it surely was.
“It has been said that evil cannot create. It can only pervert. And this is true in the case of the Horcrux. For that dark magic is only a shadow copy of a much greater and more powerful Deep Magic. The ancient ones called it the Lex Carita, and this is the pact that your grandmother made for her son, Harry Potter, and that you made on behalf of Petra when you were ready to die to save her.
“And yet the Horcrux and the Lex Carita are in no way twins.
They are exact opposites. Where a Horcrux hoards the
taker’s life via another’s murder, the Lex Carita preserves another’s life via the giver’s sacrifice. While a Horcrux’s bargain is capricious, always seeking to renege its promise, the Lex Carita is a pact of charity, always giving many times more. This is why your connection to Petra followed you into the past, before the moment of its very creation, while Petra’s Horcrux abandoned her the instant that she left her natural timeline.
But most importantly, the Horcrux offers only a poisoned half-life, where the Lex Carita grants perpetual and striving wellbeing.”
James’ thoughts darkened as he listened. When Merlin finished, he looked up at the headmaster, meeting his eyes. “But if this Lex Carita thing is supposed to bring wellbeing to the person it saves, then why did Petra end up right back on the Gwyndemere? Why did she have to die?”
“You assume your own definition of a person’s wellbeing,”
Merlin said, not without sympathy. “Wellbeing doesn’t mean mere happiness and safety. Wellbeing extends to the very depths of a person’s role in the tapestry of destiny. Petra was indeed a crimson thread, for her balance was in the red. She told you so herself: she had killed. The guilt of murder claimed her and defined her. Her turning point was not the Night of the Unveiling, or the gazebo in the lake, or even the Chamber of Secrets. Petra’s turning point was when she turned pain into vengeance. It was when she joined her own sister’s small powers with hers to kill the girl’s very mother. For that reason, the Lex Carita pact was less interested in preserving Petra’s mere life. It was intent on helping her balance the scales of her deepest soul.”
James found this an immensely and exquisitely unsatisfying answer. He pushed back into the chair, arms folded, his face set into a dark scowl of resolve. Perhaps someday he would accept this concept of greater good, and deeper right, and intangible redemption.
But not right now.
For now, he only mourned Petra. Silently, angrily, and hopelessly.
A minute later, he tramped down the spiral stairs to the Gargoyle corridor, just as classes resumed and doors banged shut all around, cutting off the noise of settling voices and squeaking chairs. A warm breeze, smelling of mown grass and lake mist, pushed through the windows lining the left wall. James stopped and took a deep breath, orienting himself to this imminently familiar yet delicately different reality.
“James,” a girl’s voice said from the corridor behind him, echoing in the falling silence.
James turned around, and then took an involuntary step backward, his breath catching, his heart pounding up into his throat.
“What?” the girl asked, smiling with bemused surprise, “you look like you just saw a ghost. Other than Professor Binns, of course, whose class I am currently late for.”
“You…” James breathed, blinking with fragile, unexpected joy.
He moved to her, stood in front of her, looked her up and down.
His cousin Lucy blushed a little in her Hufflepuff uniform. Her dark eyes darted to the window. It had been years since she had gotten over her crush on him, but clearly there was still a hint of something more than friendship between them. It wasn’t like they were blood relatives, after all. She used her right hand to comb a stray raven lock out of her eyes.
“I heard about what happened yesterday,” she said, glancing back up at him. “About how you went a little mental with triple-six fever and apparated off to a cemetery or something. Millie told me.
The whole Hufflepuff common room was having a laugh about it. I told them it wasn’t at all funny and that you surely had a good and important reason for what you did.”
With a warm rush, James remembered. He remembered his cousin’s unfailing loyalty, her boundless inner strength, her almost unconscious leadership. His smile widened into a helpless grin, and then a laugh of pure delight. Unable to help himself, he threw his arms around her and gave a brief, fierce embrace.
“Blimey,” she said, her voice muffled against his shoulder, “I don’t think it deserves all that. Get off me before anyone gets any weird ideas! Especially ‘Dolohov’ and Rose.” She pushed him away, a little ruffled, but clearly pleased nonetheless. “Come on,” she said, hefting her knapsack. “Walk with me to class. And tell me the truth…”
“Anything you want,” James agreed, nearly bursting with good humour. Together, they turned and made their way along the hall, walking in and out of warm sunbeams.
“Did you have a good reason for what happened last night?” she asked, glancing aside at him critically. “Only, I know you don’t have the best record when it comes to odd excuses. Sorry,” she shrugged a little apologetically. “You did miss six whole years of Quidditch tryouts.”
James laughed again and shook his head. “Last night’s excuse is no better or worse than any of the others, I guess.” He looked aside at her again, unable, at least for the moment, to take his eyes off her. “But that’s a boring thing to talk about. Tell me what’s been going on with you, Lu.”
She shot him another bemused look. “Are you sure you’re all right? You act as if you haven’t seen me in months.”
“More like years,” he grinned, his eyes twinkling with mischief.
“Tell. And I want to hear absolutely everything.”
She shook her head at him as if he was having her on somehow.
She didn’t answer his request on their way to History of Magic.
But she did answer it eventually.
In the years to come, she told him absolutely everything.
Epilogue – Nineteen years later
“It was right here,” James said to the young girl at his side.
“Right here on this stretch of lawn that I graduated almost twenty years ago. Of course, the actual ceremony took place over in the amphitheatre, like it will today, with the families and everything. But that was just the boring part, where we wore our formal robes and they gave out the diplomas and we all shook the headmaster’s hand and they played the Hogwarts salute on bagpipes and harpsichord. The real party was later that night, right here on the lawn overlooking the lake. They put up a huge white tent—only it was nowhere near so huge on the outside as it was when you went in—and we had Rig Mortiss and the Stifftones play live, and we all danced and ate loads too much, and I and Zane Walker and some of his Ravenclaw mates snuck out the back for butterbeers and even a few firewhiskeys, and Ralph and some of the teachers caught us but just chastised us for setting a bad example, since we were all already graduated and there was nothing they could do to us anymore.”
“You drank firewhiskey at your graduation?” the girl asked.
“Well, I pretended to. I never did have much of a taste for the stuff. But Zane said I was a hinkypunk’s uncle if I didn’t, and even I wasn’t immune to a little friendly peer pressure back in the day.”
The girl frowned. When she did, she looked a lot like her mother, Lily. “It’s weird to think of the headmaster as ever being young enough to get into trouble for one firewhiskey.”
“Well,” James hemmed, “I’m not officially headmaster yet. Not until Neville hands out the diplomas at today’s ceremony.”
“Neville is Headmaster Longbottom, then?” the girl asked, reaching to take her uncle’s hand. She tugged him back toward the castle and the amphitheatre beyond. “Why’s he retiring, anyway? He’s not old like Headmaster Merlin was when he retired. Or McGonagall before him. I mean, yeah, Headmaster Longbottom’s old, all right. But they were positively geologic!”
“Merlin really wasn’t all that old,” James smiled and shrugged, allowing himself to be pulled along. “He just looked like it. He’s still around, unlike McGonagall, God rest her grumpy soul. Merlin just has other things he wants to do. He doesn’t stay in any one job or place for very long. He’s restless. He did his part here.”
“Same for Headmaster Longbottom?” the girl asked, squinting up at him in the sun. “He has other things he wants to do?”
James nodded uncertainly. “Herbology is his passion. He wants to travel the w
orld. Discover new species of man-eating trees and whatnot. Write books about them. It’s his first love.”
“What about you? Will you still be here when I start Hogwarts in a few years? Or will you get tired of being headmaster, too?”
James considered it. “You know, Arianna, I don’t think I will get tired of it. I think I’ll stay here until I am a very, very old man.
Perhaps even geologic.”
“Now that’s old,” Arianna agreed gravely.
Together, they walked around the Sylvven tower to the amphitheatre, which droned with assembling voices.
Zane was at the ceremony, as was Ralph and Rose, each with their spouses, each wearing dress robes except for Zane, who sported a dark suit with a bile yellow tie. His wife Cheshire kept distractedly checking a scroll of thick parchment, nicking it out of her purse and unrolling it in her lap, peering down at it.
“They’re fine,” Zane muttered aside at her as the ceremony got underway. “They’re with my mom and dad. They had kids of their own. Greer and I managed to survive.”
“Joanna and Quentin are a serious handful,” Cheshire whispered back. “It’s not their survival I’m worried about.”
Rose’s husband, Aleksander Volkiev, whom they had first met at Durmstrang back during James’ fourth year, sat as rigid as a statue, his chin up-thrust, his back as straight as a tyre iron. His slate grey robes fit him as if they had been sewn directly onto his body by elves.
Considering how little James knew about Volkiev’s Belarusian magical heritage, it was entirely possible that they had been.
James recalled, somewhat wistfully, that Rose and Zane had dated for a fairly long few years. In the end, his brash irreverence had overpowered his irrepressible charm, and she had tearfully called it off.
Volkiev, by comparison, was an icy Siberian river compared to Zane’s American waterslide, and was therefore (unfortunately, in James’ unspoken opinion) a much better fit for Rose’s serious, practical mind.
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