“Eww,” Lily grimaced and shuddered.
“And what makes you such an expert in these things all of a sudden?” James couldn’t help asking, sitting up in his seat to glare at his brother.
Albus shrugged, refusing to make eye contact. “Stands to reason, is all.” He flopped back in his chair and crossed his arms.
“Well there’re really only two things we can do,” Rose said after a long, meaningful pause. “First of all, James, you must use your dreaming connection to Petra to watch her as closely as possible.”
“I will if I can,” James nodded. “I don’t think I have a lot of say about it, either way. Petra, neither, no matter how hard she tries. But why?”
Scorpius answered, “Because little Albus might be wrong about Morganstern’s ability to stay pure as the wind-driven snow while tapping into the mouldy-Voldy bloodline. The tapeworm, as he calls it, may grow fat enough to take her over completely. If that happens, she won’t care about finishing her mission. She’ll become the enemy that the magical world already believes she is.”
James wanted to argue. He wanted to point out that Petra, being a sorceress, was stronger than Voldemort had ever hoped to be.
The guttering shred of that villain caged in her soul was a mere flickering candle compared to her roaring bonfire.
But he remembered that look in her eyes, underneath the shame and sadness—that buried, ironclad spike of defiance. You won’t understand why I must do this, James, the look said. You can’t understand.
And I don’t blame you. But please, don’t dare try to stop me. I won’t allow even you to stand in my way…
“What’s the second thing we have to do?” Ralph asked, turning to Rose.
Rose sighed deeply, resolutely. “We have to help Petra,” she answered with a slow nod. “Any way we can. We have to assist her in completing her mission to take the place of the Crimson Thread.
Because Scorpius is right. If Petra is tapping into the power of the Bloodline of Voldemort, that shred of ghost won’t be content to merely help her. It will seek to rule her. It will persuade her to give in more and more. If it succeeds, Petra may well lose the will to complete her task. She may truly become the She-Voldemort.”
James shook his head firmly. “That’s crazy,” he insisted. “Petra isn’t like him—”
“James,” Lily said, her quiet voice interrupting him more effectively than a shout. “The worst thing Voldemort ever did was kill and create Horcruxes. Petra is the only other person who’s done the same thing. I don’t like it any more than you. But the fact is, she is already more like Voldemort than any other living person. She isn’t thwarting the Bloodline anymore. She’s using it.”
“We have to help her replace the Crimson Thread in that other dimension,” Rose finished, watching James’ face intently, “before she changes her mind about doing it at all.”
James didn’t agree with Rose. But he didn’t argue.
Resolved, if unhappy, the troupe began to stand. There were no sounds other than the scrape of chairs on the stone floor and the creak of the door as it opened.
They were halfway down the hall before Albus suddenly piped up.
“I almost forgot why I was looking for you in the first place,” he glanced aside at Ralph, James, and Rose. “Debellows said your first duty as ‘junior Aurors in training’ has come up.”
“But, it’s Saturday,” Ralph protested, slumping. “This is supposed to be a replacement for class time, not weekends.”
“Hush, Ralph,” Rose said, shouldering the big boy aside.
“What’s Debellows want us to do?”
“Search me,” Albus shrugged. “He just said to meet him outside the headmaster’s office at four this afternoon.”
Rose stopped in her tracks, her eyes going wide. “And you just now remembered to tell us!? You do know that it’s…” She consulted her watch frantically, and then nearly shouted, “five past four already!”
Albus shrugged again. “I’m a messenger, not your bloody secretary.”
His words were lost on Rose, however, who had spun on her heels, already retreating back along the corridor at a dead run. James and Ralph glanced at each other, and then scrambled to follow, pelting as fast as they could in Rose’s wake.
They would have made it to the headmaster’s office only slightly late if they hadn’t been stumped, of course, by the gargoyle that guarded the spiral staircase. There, they spent several agonizing minutes attempting every Old Welsh and Celtic former password they could remember, all to no avail. Eventually, steps rang from above as people began to descend the staircase from the headmaster’s office. Debellows himself came into view first, followed by Professors Votary, Heretofore, and McGonagall.
“Ah,” Debellows commented, spying the students standing around the gargoyle. “And thus your first foray into Aurorship goes much awry.” He clucked his tongue and gave a condescending smile.
“We’d have been on time, er, more or less,” Rose said, slumping back onto a windowsill, “If your messenger had remembered to give us the password.”
“Ah, but I didn’t provide it to him,” Debellows chided, raising a pedantic index finger. “One never shares passwords with those whose duties do not require them. No, your instruction was to meet me here, outside the Headmaster’s office, where I would have escorted you inside at the proper time. Alas, when the proper time came, you were not to be found. Methinks there is some small lesson here.”
James, along with Rose, was about to protest, when another set of tramping feet rang down the spiral staircase, revealing the last person James expected to see: his own father, wearing his official robes, apparently in close conversation with the headmaster himself.
James ran to meet him at the bottom of the stairs, and then paused, suddenly aware of the presence of so many observing teachers.
He attempted to replace his expression of breathless curiosity with one of mere professional interest, and knew that he was not exactly succeeding.
“James,” his father smiled at him and clapped him on the shoulder. James was nearly as tall as his father now, though both were still half-a-head shorter than the imposing bulk of Headmaster Merlinus nearby. “I’d been told I might see you upstairs. Delayed, were you? No matter. Here you are now.”
“Yeah,” James answered, exquisitely aware of the many watching eyes nearby. “We’ve officially begun a sort of work study, exchanging class-time for on-the-job Auror training. Er, all three of us.” He indicated Ralph and Rose as they joined him.
“Hi, Uncle Harry,” Rose said perkily, ignoring the mutter of nearby voices as the teachers drifted away, led by Headmaster Merlinus.
Harry cocked an eyebrow. “All three of you, eh? Your mother will be so proud that you’ve managed a promotion to seventh-year, Rose.”
“Hush!” Rose said, turning grave and slitting her eyes toward the departing teachers. “I’m not doing a thing you wouldn’t have done, Uncle, and don’t you dare say otherwise.”
Harry nodded wisely and mimed locking his lips. He seemed as cheerful as ever, James thought, and yet something seemed to hang in the air about him, muting his mood and darkening his eyes. Perhaps only James, having grown up with him, could sense it.
“What was that all about, Dad?” he asked seriously. “What’d we miss?”
Harry nodded, turning serious as well. He seemed to consider for a moment. “You three,” he nodded, marking each with his eyes, “you’re all looking to become Aurors, are you?”
James nodded, as did Rose next to him.
“I suppose so,” Ralph answered, frowning a little. “As such. I mean, I’m not all that keen on having loads of dark witches and wizards shooting killing spells at me all day long. But, you know. It’s something to do.” He shrugged as Rose rolled her eyes.
“Good enough, then,” Harry said. “Walk with me.”
They walked along the corridor, passing huge windows and moving in and out of the brilliant afternoon sunlight. Ha
rry didn’t speak, only marched along, knowing his own way along the halls and passages just as if he was still a student. They descended steps and finally passed through the old rotunda, heading toward its enormous but lesser used wooden doors. Only then, as they stepped out into the warm glare of the ancient portico steps, did Harry speak.
“You all were present when those Muggles stumbled into the Entrance Hall, I assume?”
James nodded, trotting down the steps to the brambly yard below. The lake lay beyond a low stone wall, shimmering copper in the lowering sun. “Everyone was. The whole school saw it.”
Harry considered this dourly. “It’s happening all over the magical world. The old protections are thin as tissue, if they exist at all anymore. Muggles are obeying the boundaries out of sheer habit, not because they are kept out. But bit by bit, some of them are wandering in. Just like that family on First Night.”
Rose stopped next to the wall and peered up at her Uncle. “Is that why you were summoned here today? To talk about how to shore up the boundaries?”
Harry shook his head. “That’s already been done, as well as it can be. Merlinus was more than up to the task, and I imagine his unplottability charms are better than any other living wizard today. No, I was sent here today by order of the Minister of Magic himself.”
Ralph blinked in surprise. “Loquatious Knapp sent you? But why? What’s he care about some wandering harmless family at Hogwarts when there’s places like Gringott’s Bank and the giants’ mountain preserve at risk?”
“Because Hogwarts is well known to be one of the best and most heavily protected sites in the entire northern hemisphere,” Harry answered. “Knapp wanted me to see for myself, to hear from those who witnessed it, that the breach is so bad even here that an entire family of clueless Muggles was able to simply drive up to the gate and walk inside.”
James nodded. “Well, that’s pretty much exactly what happened. So what do we do?”
“You mean, as junior Aurors in training?” Harry favored his son with a sideways smile.
“Well, yeah,” James nodded, rising to the challenge. “If we can!
This is all our problem, isn’t it?”
Harry gave a brisk sigh. “You’re right, James. All of you, you’ll have to do your part. I won’t belittle that. But there’s really only one thing the Minister believes we must do. Every official both above and below my rank agrees. Even Titus Hardcastle and the rest of the Auror department, they all know what must be done.”
Ralph frowned. “And what’s that?”
In answer, Harry reached into his robes. James assumed his father meant to produce his wand. Instead, he withdrew a small scrolled parchment. He unrolled it, looked down at it, and then turned it around for all to see.
James had seen copies of it many times before. Each time, it gave his heart a sick little jolt, although over the past few years, as the posters had aged and been pasted over by adverts and graffiti, the jolt had numbed slightly. Seeing the perfectly crisp copy now held open in his father’s hands, the sick, sinking feeling came back stronger than ever.
Petra’s face was printed in black and white, unmoving, not because it wasn’t a magical photograph, but because the girl in the picture was unconscious. It had been taken by the American arbiter, Albert Keynes, during the brief time after they had succeeded in capturing her. They had kept her in a magical sleep, knowing that they could not contain her if she was awake.
Beneath the photo were words printed in huge black capitals:
UNDESIRABLE
NUMBER ONE:
PETRACIA ZOE MORGANSTERN
THREAT LEVEL 10+
DO NOT ENGAGE!
REPORT ON SIGHT
“We have to capture her,” Harry said soberly. “She’s where this all started. And before you begin, James,” he raised a hand to his son, “I know. We all do. You don’t need to remind me. She did it to save us, me and Titus, back during the parade in Muggle New York City. But that doesn’t change anything. Everything began to unravel from that moment. Every Ministry Technomancy expert agrees. Petra started it.
In order to stop it, we must find her.” He paused, and then went on in a low, firm voice, clearly repeating the orders he himself had been given.
“We must capture her, by any means necessary.”
“But,” James began, although the piercing look on his father’s face subdued his tone. “But, what if Petra is trying to stop it all herself?
What if capturing her will keep her from accomplishing the job?”
His father’s gaze was direct and probing. James recognized the look and the posture behind it, the keen alertness. His father was in Auror mode. James had rarely felt the intensity of it turned upon him, but he did now.
“She’s had over two years, James,” he said, unblinking. “If she intended to set things right—which I would very much like to believe—she’s had time to do so. Instead, things have continued to go further wrong, and there are many who believe that she is directly responsible for those things. Up to and including the potential disaster that was the Morrigan Web. Even you have acknowledged that she had a hand in orchestrating that.”
“But…!” James began, but his father overruled him again with a look.
“I know. You also tell me she had her reasons, and that she helped to stop it in the end. I want to believe you. If you’ll remember, it was me and your mother that put Petra up the summer her grandfather died. It was us who supported and hosted her during Keynes’ investigation. I’ve always wanted to believe the best of Petra, despite how it made me look to many of my peers and superiors. And that’s the problem, really. Now, people are watching me. They believe I won’t work as hard as I must to capture Petra. That’s why I must work all the harder.”
He sighed harshly and slumped a little, then looked up at James again with only his eyes. “She’s had two years, son. She’s had every chance I can offer her. Things are unraveling too fast to wait any longer.
And that’s why I must ask you, all three of you…” Here he looked aside, turning the intensity of his gaze briefly upon Rose, and then Ralph, before bringing it back to James. “If any of you know anything about Petra—about what her plans might be, or where she might be found…if any of you have had contact with her in any way… you must tell me.
Not because I am your father, and uncle, and friend. But because withholding such information is now a crime punishable by law. Not even I would be able to protect you. Even if…” Here, he hunkered down and drew the three students into a close huddle around him. He went on in a near whisper. “Even if, when I was in your shoes, and knew things that no one else did, I might have chosen to keep that information a secret myself, despite every warning to the contrary.”
“You never were one to bring lots of adults in on your plans,”
Rose agreed.
“You won’t want to hear this,” Harry breathed reluctantly, “but I’m going to say it because it’s true. Things are different now. When I was your age, I didn’t have grown-up allies in positions of power. Or if I did, I didn’t know who they were, and wasn’t certain if I could trust them, at least not until it was all over. Things are different for you lot.
You have me, and Hermione and Ron, and Professor McGonagall, and Neville Longbottom. And Headmaster Merlinus, for heaven’s sakes.”
James tried not to smile, even in the midst of his consternation.
“You sound like Grandma Weasley when you say ‘for heaven’s sakes’.”
The Auror mode on Harry’s face softened a little. “That’s not a bad thing. Never a bad thing. But I’m serious. All of you. This is no longer the time to do things on your own. Besides placing the entire magical world in jeopardy, and possibly the Muggle world as well, it’s a Ministry crime. And people I don’t control will assure that such crimes are punished to the fullest extent. We have to end this. If you hear anything, learn anything, know anything… I need you to tell me. The sooner we can capture Petra…” He sh
rugged and his eyes drifted uncertainly. “Well, if she does intend to end this, same as we, then the sooner perhaps we can work together to accomplish that goal.”
James wanted to tell his father everything he knew. But in that moment, he saw the doubt on his father’s face. The Ministry wasn’t interested in partnering with Petra. Capturing her meant punishment, imprisonment, possibly even total obliviation, or worse. The entire magical world blamed her for everything that was going wrong. They wouldn’t be satisfied with anything less. In fact, considering how powerful Petra was, the worst outcome—her own death, or those who opposed her—was the likeliest outcome of all.
Suddenly, darkly, James was secretly glad that Petra had created her Horcrux. In order to preserve and repair the magical world, she had performed the riskiest and most damning spell of all. All James had to do to help her… was lie.
Or not lie, perhaps. Merely omit. For a time. He glanced around at Rose and Ralph.
“We’ll tell you if we hear anything,” he said, still looking at Ralph and his cousin, not quite prepared to meet his father’s probing, knowing eyes. He considered his words carefully, quickly. “If we learn anything that will help you put an end to all this… then we’ll tell you straight away.”
This, he told himself, was not a lie, exactly. Because in his heart, he didn’t believe that anything his father did could put an end to the degrading destiny of the world all around. Only Petra could do that now.
His father studied him intently, his eyes neither suspicious nor gullible, merely watchful, as if he was recording every syllable for future consideration. James finally met his father’s gaze again, knowing that it was a mistake not to. After a moment, cryptically, the elder Potter nodded once, slowly.
“Good. That’s all I expect of you.”
The three straightened out of their conspiring huddle. Harry tucked the Petra poster back into his inner pocket, and then patted his robes, looking for something and muttering. “Where did I put that, then? Ah.” He produced a tiny black velvet bag that James recognized.
James Potter and the Crimson Thread Page 12
