As Ralph left, James thought he could sense just the slightest spring in the big boy’s step. Now that the disaster of James’ botched Apparation was over and the trio of little prats had been put in their place, Ralph could at least enjoy the fact that he had succeeded at his own first Apparition, unlike James.
“You’ll be fine at it, next time,” Odin-Vann said, as if reading James’ thoughts. He seated himself on the floor and held up a hand.
“Don’t try to get up just yet. Your body needs a few minutes to get reacquainted with itself. Tell me, James,” he peered at him with a slightly cocked head. “What was it like?”
“What, you mean being nearly split into two copies?” James asked, a wave of embarrassment washing over him again. “It felt like being a massive failure, that’s what. But it also felt…” He paused and narrowed his eyes, “a little like being strung out between two cliffs, with nothing but empty space between them. Part of me was stuck there, floating in the nothing. I could feel it, and see into it a little.”
Odin-Vann was nodding. “The Transitus Nihilo. The void outside of matter. Intriguing.”
“But it wasn’t a complete void,” James sighed and slumped. “I could see the cord that connects me to Petra. It crosses the border of Apparation with me. I could see it trailing off into the darkness.”
“Your connection,” Odin-Vann said thoughtfully. “The means by which you travel to her when you’re asleep.”
“Whenever she lets me,” James agreed, slumping back against the wall beneath the window.
Odin-Vann relaxed as well and went on in a different tone of voice. “You know, I’ve been curious about that connection of yours, James. We have a few minutes whilst you collect yourself. I wonder if you’d mind telling me about it?”
Rose interjected suddenly, a bit too loudly. “Oh, James has been besotted with Petra ever since his first years at Hogwarts. He’s just a magical romantic and a poet. Not a very good poet, of course, but he’s a Potter, so what can you expect?”
“No, Rose,” James said, glancing back and forth between his cousin and the professor. “Look, if we’re going to trust each other enough to steal back the crimson thread together and try to send Petra to be Morgan in some other dimension, then we have to be willing to trust each other with everything.” He focused on Odin-Vann again, who seemed merely to be patiently waiting. “It happened right before my third year, when we were on our way across the ocean to America and Alma Aleron…”
As briefly as he could, James recounted the story of how Petra had climbed to the stern of the Gwyndemere just as a freakish storm descended on the ship, threatening to capsize it amidst mountainous waves. He described how Petra had been in a sort of confused funk, facing the storm almost as if she meant to let it take her. Thus, when lightning struck the ship, cleaving a mast and knocking her overboard so that she dangled perilously from the rigging, she had considered letting the broken mast drag her down into the depths. James had rushed to grasp her hand, but she had resisted, asking him to let her fall.
“But I couldn’t,” he said, losing himself in the retelling, staring down at the dark classroom floor, “I couldn’t let her die, no matter what she said. There was nothing I could do, though. She started to slip from my outstretched hand, and I realized she was letting go. She was loosening her grip, ready to drop into the waves below the ship and sink.
She fell, and it felt like my own heart was falling away with her. And that’s when it happened.”
“The cord appeared,” Odin-Vann half whispered.
“It caught Petra, connected my right hand to hers, glowing like an acromantula web in the dark, vibrating like a harp string. It caught her and I was able to pull her back up.”
Rose seemed to have accepted the fact that James was going to share the entire story with Odin-Vann. She herself was now caught up in the retelling. “Lucy wrote me about that night when she was in the States. She was always a great one for writing letters. I remember it almost word for word. They were all below decks, in the Captain’s quarters, watching from the stern windows: Lucy, Merlin, Izzy, Uncle Harry and Aunt Ginny, everyone. They saw Petra fall from the back of the ship and dangle in the rigging. But then Merlin clouded the windows so they couldn’t see what happened next. Uncle Harry was unhappy about it. He said they should do something, but Merlin said no. Lucy quoted him exactly. He said something like…” She squinted and thought for a moment. “He said that the storm would claim its own, but the rest of them had nothing to fear. And in the end, it turned out that he was right. James saved Petra by borrowing from her own powers.” She glanced up at Odin-Vann, suddenly unsure if she’d said too much, but he only nodded.
“I know of Petra’s strange and seemingly unlimited powers, as I’ve already said. She hasn’t told me as much as I wish to know about them—I don’t suppose she ever could— but I do have some idea of what she is capable of.” He shook his head thoughtfully and turned his attention back to James, his eyes sharpening. “Petra was willing to die, you say? To fall to her death from the back of the ship? But why, do you think?”
“She was confused,” James shook his head, probing his memory.
“She’d just lost her grandfather and was under suspicion in the disappearance of her stepmother. She was homeless and lost and being chased by a… a…” He stopped himself from mentioning Judith, the Lady of the Lake, who had been conjured by the death of Petra’s stepmother through a sort of poisoned bargain. Trusting Odin-Vann was one thing, but James didn’t wish to complicate the matter any further— or implicate Petra any more deeply. He went on a little lamely, “Well, she was being chased by her own guilt, in a way.” Another memory struck him and he sat up. “But she had the brooch. It was sort of an opal thing with silver scrolly stuff all around it. She’d said it was a gift from her father. It must have come in the box of things that the Ministry sent her after he died in Azkaban. She was wearing the brooch on the night of the storm. When she fell off, it dropped into the waves, and she screamed. It seemed to represent a lot to her— the family she’d lost. The life she never had. I think that’s what finally broke her, losing that one thing that connected her to her dead parents.”
Odin-Vann wasn’t looking at James now. His gaze had drifted to the black window behind James’ head, at which he nodded slowly, thoughtfully. There was a strange glint in his eye. “But you were there,” he mused, half to himself. “And you saved her. You saved her from herself.”
James sank back against the wall again. “I guess so. I spoke to my dad afterward. He said that it was more than Petra’s magic that connected us and kept her from falling. He said that it was like when he was a baby and his mum was willing to die for him. Her death called on an older, deeper magic, and it made a sort of unbreakable protection, saving my dad from Voldemort’s curse. Dad said that because I was willing to die for Petra when she fell, we made the same sort of bargain with the deep magic. That’s what really saved her.”
Odin-Vann glanced back at James, his face clouding slightly.
“Really?” he said, and blinked. “Your dad, Harry Potter, told you that?”
James nodded. “He said he recognized the feeling of it.”
“But,” Odin-Vann said, as if reluctantly clarifying some small but important point, “Your dad’s mum died to summon that deep magic. It was her death that created the bond of protection, or so the story goes. You…” he cleared his throat a little awkwardly. “You… didn’t die for Petra.” He shook his head and shrugged a little in confusion.
James sighed again, deeply. “That’s what I told my dad. He didn’t have any answers for me. Just said that because I was willing to trade places with her… that must have been enough. The deep magic caused the cord of her powers to appear, connecting us, letting me pull her back up. I didn’t die. But somehow… being willing to was enough.” Suddenly, to James’ own ears, it sounded weak and unsatisfying. But clearly it had happened, hadn’t it? The Deep Magic had saved Petra, had permanen
tly connected them, just like his dad and Voldemort, even if James hadn’t needed to die to make it happen.
At least… not yet.
The thought chilled him suddenly, deeply, all the way to the bone.
Odin-Vann seemed to dismiss the topic with another shrug.
“Well, I imagine you’ve convalesced enough to stand now, James. I would expect no more trouble from our three young friends, Edgecombe, Heathrow, and Ogden. At least, not about this. I have known young people like them in my life, though, and they do always find new ways to spread their particular brand of viciousness.”
Rose began to climb to her feet and shot a glance at the door, clearly remembering the trio of poisonous first-years. “I almost hope they cross my path again. I owe them more than a stunning. I can’t begin to imagine what their gripe is.”
“Ah,” Odin-Vann said, rising and tugging James to his feet, “Therein lies your mistake, Miss Weasley. You assume people like Edgecombe have a specific gripe. Clearly it has not occurred to you that some people like to harm others simply for the pure, unadulterated power and pleasure of it. They may invent excuses to satisfy the diminished shreds of their consciences, but they are merely that: excuses.
Beneath the lies they tell themselves, they fear you. They know you are better than they. And they hate it. This is the source of their guile. My advice is: don’t engage them any further. You will only frustrate yourself trying to appeal to some buried sense of common decency. None such exists. Some poisoned apples are poison all the way to the core.”
There was a coolness in the way that Odin-Vann spoke of Edgecombe and his cronies. James wondered if the man had had his own encounters with petty bullies, and then realized that the answer was obvious. It was in the way the Professor seemed unable to perform magic when under stress, despite his impressive skills and knowledge.
He was a man who had once been a boy, a boy who had likely been teased mercilessly about his impotence under pressure, which would only have made matters exponentially worse.
As the professor bid them goodnight and relocked the classroom door, James didn’t know if he felt sorrier for the boy Odin-Vann had once been, or angrier at the bullies people like Edgecombe always were.
Mostly, he was just weak with relief that the evening was over, the disaster had been undone and averted, and thankful that Rose, for once, didn’t seem to feel the need to discuss any of it with him as they walked and wended their way back along the dark corridors toward Gryffindor tower. She merely nursed a thoughtful frown, mulling her own thoughts, and James was glad.
Together, they clambered wearily through the portrait hole. Five minutes later, James was on his bed, barely half undressed, sleeping the sleep of complete exhaustion, not even aware that he was wearing two pairs of magically identical underpants, and that both of his socks were inside out.
10. – Hagrid’s letter
The first snow fell on Hogwarts even before the autumn leaves had fully abandoned the trees. The flakes fringed the remaining leaves with sparkling beards, and then cloaked the entire forest with fluffy brilliance. James awoke on the last day of November with grey brightness glaring from the window next to his bed. He sat up blearily, rubbing his eyes, only to find that it was not, in fact, breakfast time, but barely dawn. Outside, the snow had converted the world to a blanket of unnatural brightness, fooling even the birds in the forest, who sang and twittered in the muffling distance.
James was about to flop back onto his bed again when a shape moved silently nearby, accompanied by the stir of coals in the stove at the centre of the room. He was not alarmed, recognizing at once that it was the house elf assigned to Gryffindor tower. He had seen the tiny imp on only a few occasions over the years, but felt comfortable enough with it to whisper a good morning.
Surprised, the elf stiffened so that its shoulders hunched up next to its ears. Its head turned to look back at James with one enormous, crystal-ball-like eye. The iris was mossy green, surrounding a huge black pupil. James could clearly see the reflection of the open stove door reflected in the elf’s eyeball.
“Sorry, Master Potter,” the elf whispered back, hiding the squeak of its voice. It was a male, James was quite sure, his ears pointed like bat’s wings and large enough to serve as an umbrella in the event of rain.
Like most of the other Hogwarts house elves, this one wore a cloth napkin like a small toga. The napkin was embroidered with the Hogwarts crest. “Piggen didn’t mean to wake Master Potter, sir.”
“Piggen,” James yawned hugely, so that his jaw cracked. “That’s really your name? Piggen?”
“Piggentottenwuggahooliguffin, sir,” the elf answered obediently, still in a thin whisper. “Son of Tottenwuggahooliguffinoogersham.”
“Piggen it is, then,” James stretched and flopped so that his head was at the foot of his bed. Arms crossed over his footboard, he studied the elf by the stove. “It’s my last year, Piggen. Just thought maybe I should introduce myself while I still have a chance.”
The elf’s eyes widened and he took a step backward on his huge, bare feet. “No introduction needed, Master Potter, sir. Piggen is happy never to be noticed as he stokes the fire and collects the laundry and dusts and sweeps and cleans the bathroom—”
“My aunt Hermione wouldn’t let me come home for Christmas dinner if she knew I’d had a chance to introduce myself to you and passed it up.” James smiled ruefully.
“Ahh,” the elf blinked, “Miss Granger, the founder of the Ess Pee Eee Double-you. We has her school picture hanging on the wall in our rooms, sir. We’re very indebted to Miss Hermione Granger. She’s the reason we has a coalition agreement with the school, making certain only elves do elf work, you see. The master of our guild, Dufferwunkin, has a term for it. He calls it jobsek-yurready. He says jobsek-yerready is very important for us elves.”
“Jobsek…” James squinted. “You mean job security? I don’t think that’s quite what Aunt Hermione had in mind when she started SPEW.”
“Well, we doesn’t wish to become freed, sir,” the elf said, wagging his head with slow emphasis. “Especially now that the Vow of Secrecy is weakened. Well-meaning witches and wizards speak of freeing all the house elves now, even outlawing our service. They say it will look bad to the Muggles, should the two worlds merge.”
James was not a morning thinker under the best of circumstances. He closed his eyes and rubbed them with a thumb and forefinger. “Like, the Muggles will think you’re slaves or something?
But, like, aren’t you basically slaves?”
Piggen stood up as straight as he could and squared his shoulders. “Piggen is in service to his masters, Master Potter, sir. Service is not slavery.”
“So you get paid, then?”
The elf’s eyes bulged so hard that they looked as if they might pop out and roll across the floor like grapefruit-sized marbles.
“Payment, sir! No elf is ever paid, sir! It wouldn’t be proper to take payment from one’s master for service rendered!”
“But you can’t just quit, either,” James went on, frowning at the elf. “Can you?”
The elf seemed distressed and baffled by the concept. “I suppose, er, begging your pardon, sir, that such a thing would be technically possible. At least, here at Hogwarts. But…” He blinked rapidly, glancing around the dim room as if for help. The rest of the beds were filled with faintly snoring Gryffindors.
James shrugged, too bleary to press the issue. “Sounds like slavery to me, no matter how you slice it. But if it makes you happy.”
“Oh, happiness doesn’t come into it, Master Potter, sir,” the elf said with a relieved sigh, as if content to put an uncomfortable subject behind him. “We elves don’t have any truck with things like happiness, sir. Happiness is the mortal enemy of jobsek-yerready.”
James knew he should abandon the conversation while he was still on moderately level footing, but couldn’t help blinking curiously at the elf again. “What do you mean, happiness is your mortal ene
my?”
The elf looked around again, as if worried about being overheard. When he returned his gaze to James, he couldn’t quite look him in the eye. Nervously, he kneaded the knot of his napkin toga with his hands. “There’s another picture we have hanging on the wall of our rooms,” he said, lowering his voice to a whisper so thin and high that it was almost inaudible. “Another house elf, by the name of Dobbyfoggynpuddleneff.”
James pushed himself back up to a seated position on his bed.
“You mean… Dobby? The house elf my dad knew?”
“Dobby was happy,” Piggen nodded gravely, meeting James’ eyes again. “He made friends with Harry Potter. And then, Dobby was killed. He was killed outside of service, with no master or mistress. His head was placed on no one’s wall with the heads of those who came before and after. Dobby died a free elf.” He said this last with a hand cupped around his mouth, as if he was repeating the most offensive swear word imaginable.
“And that,” James said as realization dawned on him, “is why you don’t want me to introduce myself to you.”
Piggen looked miserably uncomfortable. “Begging your pardon, please, Master Potter, sir. Piggen doesn’t wish to be free. He doesn’t wish to be happy. He doesn’t wish to be master’s friend, sir, and no offense meant. He just wishes to do his duties and keep his jobsek-yerready.”
James shrugged wearily. “OK, Piggen. We’re not friends. I’ll pretend I don’t even know your name.”
The elf’s face broke into a grin of abject relief. “Oh, thank you Master Potter, sir. And I’ll be out of your way in just a jiffy.” He turned back to the stove, closed the door with practiced care, and then scampered away into the shadows toward the bathroom, making no sound whatsoever in the dawn stillness.
Scorpius rolled over, gave an uncharacteristically undignified groan, and lifted his head, squinting in James’ general direction. In a muzzy voice, he asked, “Who are you talking to?”
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