James Potter and the Crimson Thread

by G. Norman Lippert

  James wheezed, “But… how are you here? No one can Apparate onto Hogwarts grounds!”

  Zane straightened and hugged himself against the cold. “No Apparation required. It’s another Experimental Communications test project.” He raised his right hand and pushed back his sleeve. A yellow symbol was printed neatly on the inside of his wrist.

  “Is that,” Rose squinted, and then pointed vaguely toward Ralph, “his Protean duck tattooed on your arm?”

  Zane dropped his arm again. “Does the phrase ‘quantum chromodynamics’ mean anything to you?”

  James merely stared at his friend.

  “Me neither,” Zane agreed. “But old Stonewall’s been yakking about it for months. Quarks and gluons, freons and peons, I don’t even know. Point is, the ink in this here temporary tattoo is technomancically identical to Ralph’s duck. Squeezing it once causes the atomic waveform to collapse, bringing me here in an instant. I’ll need to warn Raphael about that re-entry. Phoo! You did explain it all to them, right?” This last he addressed to Ralph.

  “This just goes to show,” Ralph said, glaring reproachfully at Rose, “Just because you see a duck, doesn’t mean you should squeeze it!”

  “First rule of technomancy,” Zane agreed sagely.

  From the jetty, Hagrid called quizzically, “Walker? Is that you?

  What in purple blazes…!”

  “Hi, Hagrid!” Zane said, turning and sauntering to the ship.

  “Nice place you have here! You don’t happen to have a coffee maker aboard that thing, do you?”

  Rose turned back to Ralph, planting her hands on her hips.

  “What?” Ralph demanded, shoving the Protean duck into his coat pocket. “He was just supposed to be a back-up plan! I told him to be ready even though we probably wouldn’t need him.”

  James sighed, “How much does he know about the plan?”

  “Almost nothing,” Ralph said, sagging a little. “He said he preferred it that way, and quoted something about crouching lions and hidden dinosaurs.”

  “That sounds like Zane,” James nodded.

  “And what sends him back, then?” Rose asked, still glowering at Ralph.

  “Two squeezes of the duck.”

  Rose jabbed out her hand, palm up, silently demanding the duck back.

  “Hold on,” James said, gently pushing Rose back a step. “Now that he’s here, he may as well come along. If he wants to. And of course he does.”

  “Are you serious?” Rose demanded, turning her glare onto James. “Is there anyone else you want to invite along? The Minister of Magic? Rig Mortis and the Stifftones, maybe?”

  “There’s safety in numbers,” James soothed, pressing Rose down toward the jetty, where Zane had joined Hagrid. “Besides, it’s Zane.”

  He turned to Ralph and offered him a wink. Ralph nodded wryly.

  “Hey guys!” Zane called up to them, pointing at the gangplank as Hagrid levitated it into place. “We’re gonna go rescue a dragon! By boat! Pretty wild and crazy stuff, eh?”

  Rose groaned.

  Five minutes later, they stood on the bow of ship, blinking in the light of a single lantern and adjusting to the incessant sway and rock of the waves. Heddlebun was already aboard and waiting for them in the wheelhouse, nervously wringing her knuckly hands. Hagrid and Rose began bustling about the deck, tugging ropes taut and retying knots, closing and battening portholes, checking hatches, calling to each other in indecipherable boat jargon. They enlisted Ralph’s help, since he was big enough to lug the coils of rope and swing the enormous booms.

  From James’ vantage point, the ship looked nearly as long as the Quidditch pitch, but very narrow, divided along its length by a covered paddlewheel and the wheelhouse. Two masts jutted up, one each from the bow and stern, festooned with rigging and limp canvas sails.

  “So what’s the name of this tub?” Zane asked James, holding onto the railing for support.

  “The Gertrude, apparently,” James answered.

  Zane nodded. “That’s an atrocious name.”

  “Finally, something you and Filch agree on.”

  Zane lowered his voice, “So, what’s the news from Petra?”

  James glanced aside at his friend. Zane’s American directness always took a few minutes to adjust to. He considered how to answer for several seconds as the boat rocked beneath them, Rose, Ralph, and Hagrid still calling to each other over the stern.

  Finally, he said, “We kissed.”

  Zane nodded slowly, meaningfully. “That’s sure not going to make things any easier, is it?”

  James sighed and leaned against the bulkhead.

  “And Merlin?” Zane prodded. “Any word from him since the World Between the Worlds?”

  James shrugged. “Nothing. I don’t think he saw us at all. He was too busy with Petra.”

  “She ended up with the crimson thread from the loom,” Zane recalled. “But Merlin got her brooch. Do you think she’ll leave this reality without it?”

  James hadn’t considered the question. The whole point of going to the World Between the Worlds was to capture back the symbolic thread, without which Petra couldn’t hope to assume her new role in it’s native dimension. But he remembered now how quietly bereft she had been about losing her father’s brooch. He shook his head uncertainly.

  “I don’t suppose it matters. She’ll be leaving this world forever.”

  “All the more reason to take the most meaningful memento of all with her,” Zane said with uncharacteristic gravity. “Maybe Merlin knew what he was doing when he captured it. Maybe he sees it as a way to lure Petra to him.”

  James wanted to agree, but couldn’t. “You haven’t seen her lately. She’s committed. She’ll fight anyone who gets in her way, including any of us. And she has the worst sort of help imaginable.

  Both Judith and the shred of Voldemort in her blood seem to want her to go through with it.”

  Zane cinched up the corner of his mouth and cocked his head in the thoughtful expression that James knew so well. “But why would they want to help her? Judith especially? Petra is her toe-hold in our world.

  The only reason Judith can even exist here is because of the bargain that happened when Petra killed Izzy’s mother. If Petra vanishes away to some other dimension, Judith has no host here. She vanishes away, too.

  Right?”

  James shrugged. “That’s the theory, I guess. So I don’t know why Judith would want her to go through with the plan. All I know is that she knows I don’t want Petra to leave, and she warned me to stay away from her.”

  “Sounds like a no-win situation, doesn’t it?” Zane offered, studying James’ face by lantern light. “Either you lose Petra and Judith wins, or you win Petra and the whole world pays for it.”

  James had nothing to say to that. He bowed his head and pushed a hand up into his hair, tugging at it.

  Beneath them, the boat suddenly seemed to surge forward, throwing both boys off balance.

  “We’ve got time to make up,” Hagrid boomed from the wheelhouse. “Ever’body inside or below decks! This is like to be a wee bit bumpy!”

  Stumbling against the increasing momentum of the ship, James and Zane hurried to the wheelhouse, ducking in through the narrow metal door on its side. There, they found Ralph, Rose, and Heddlebun gripping a brass railing along a rust-stained rear wall. Before them, a console bristled with instruments, dials, and levers, dominated by an enormous ship’s wheel. Hagrid stood before this, gripping the wheel’s protruding handles and turning it this way and that with tense concentration.

  “It’s a wee bit tight just through here,” he muttered to himself.

  “Just out of curiosity, Hagrid,” Zane asked brightly, moving alongside Rose and gripping the brass railing with one hand. “How many times have you done this?”

  Hagrid offered a quick sidelong glance. “How many times? Oh.

  Wellnow. Technic’ly…” He released one hand from the wheel, splayed his fingers, and counte
d silently under his breath before admitting, “Erm. Zero.”

  Outside the expansive fore window of the wheelhouse, the bow of the ship tilted and swayed, angling ponderously toward one of the giant tunnel throats that surrounded the subterranean lake. Engraved across a stone at its top was the word LONDON. On either side, iron braziers held goblinfire torches. Their yellow light played over the black waves and glimmered in the spray that pulsed on either side of the Gertrude’s prow.

  “I sorta figured that,” Zane shrugged, firming his grip on the railing.

  The ship began to accelerate as it neared the designated tunnel.

  James realized that the lake water was funneling into the tunnel’s maw, drawing the ship steadily forward as it approached. Hagrid threaded the wooden wheel back and forth, muttering urgently under his breath.

  “Hold on, now,” he announced, reaching forward and tugging a large lever down with a thunk. “I’m told this is where it gets a bit hairy.”

  A resounding clank and a thud shook the entire ship. James gasped as the bow mast suddenly hinged ponderously backward like a falling tree, dragging its rigging with it in a series of twangs and whip-like whooshes. With a vibrating shudder, it folded over onto the wheelhouse, thumping into place, and James realized this was a necessary maneuver if they were to fit into the tunnel mouth without shearing the masts right off.

  The ship sped forward, tugged into the rushing current, and the tunnel yawned before them, as dark and featureless as a well. Then, with sickening speed, the Gertrude plummeted inside.

  James’ stomach lurched slowly, inexorably, up toward his throat and he felt himself lighten in his shoes as the tunnel angled downward, drawing the rushing lake water into a roaring rapid, dragging the ship dizzyingly into its force. Hagrid kept his hands fisted on the ship’s wheel, but now he seemed only to be hanging on for dear life, struggling to keep the ship steady and facing forward against the titanic momentum of the tunnel river. The only light was the lantern that swung from a post on the bow, now tilted backward and swinging, casting wild shadows in the pool of its dancing light. Dimly, spray erupted on either side of the Gertrude as its prow dug into the current.

  Droplets blew back and blattered the window like driving rain, blurring the view beyond, drumming loud enough to make speech nearly impossible.

  James wondered how long the journey would take. London was quite some distance away. And yet he had some idea that this was not, strictly speaking, a journey of mere miles. He sensed forces in play, compressing time and space into something teasingly plastic. The Gertrude rocked precipitously to starboard, riding the current as the river curved right. The hull shuddered and jounced, and James had the terrible suspicion that it was scraping the tunnel wall, grinding wood against stone. A few moments later, this happened again, but to the left, with the ship rocking hard to port and hanging there, compressing beneath the power of its own inertia.

  “How much farther, Hagrid?” Rose called, her voice a shrill ribbon against the shuddering roar and blat of spray on glass.

  “We’re a-getting’ close,” Hagrid boomed back, leaning to consult a large brass dial. James saw an ornate arrow on the dial shimmying close to a heading printed in white letters: LONDON, THAMES.

  “We’ll surface just around the Isle of Dogs, south of Canary Wharf!”

  James was grateful to know that the rollicking journey was nearly over. He wondered briefly how Norberta would handle the voyage back.

  She would surely be terrified and cramped, lying low in the hold below decks.

  Then, James’ eyebrows shot up as he realized what Hagrid had just said.

  “What do you mean,” he shouted to the half-giant, “that we’ll surface?”

  Hagrid struggled with the wheel, his ham-sized fists bunched on the protruding handles. “Like the Durmstangs back during the Triwizard Tournament!” he bellowed. “We burst up to the surface!

  Don’ ask me how it works. I jus’ know it does!”

  The tunnel suddenly slanted upwards at a steep angle, forcing James’ knees to buckle. The river ahead compressed and narrowed, beginning to roar up over the bow in clapping waves, closing over it.

  The lantern snuffed out, leaving nothing but perfect blackness, violent motion, and deafening noise.

  “But Hagrid!” James cried, struggling to be heard over the din, “The Thames is frozen right now! First time in a decade! The surface will be as hard as stone!”

  It was too late to do anything about it. James didn’t even know if anyone heard him. He felt small hands grasp onto his trouser-leg and realized that it was Heddlebun groping in the dark for something to batten onto.

  When the bow struck, it hit with such force that every window shattered. Hagrid rammed against the wheel hard enough to splinter and snap it in two. James, Rose, Ralph, and Zane flung forward, stumbling headlong against the console and its array of dials and instruments. Shattered glass and freezing water sprayed in every direction, filling the air and peppering James’ hair and face.

  Blue light bloomed over the ship as it arrowed up, and then, as its momentum exhausted, fell slowly forward, tilting down, down, as if it were falling right over the edge of the world. Finally, with a thudding slam, it smashed flat onto a heaving expanse, rocking, groaning deep in its hull, and crunching against some brittle, ragged obstruction.

  James flung pebbles of glass and ice from his hair and grappled upright against the console. Cold air blew in through the broken window, carrying a freight of fluffy snowflakes and the unmistakable city smells of rotting rubbish, factory exhaust, and dead fish. Huge chunks of ice slid back and forth on the Gertrude’s bow as the ship rocked, slowly coming to rest. Beyond this, James recognized the hulking shapes of warehouses and dark freighters looming in the fog. The Thames was indeed frozen over, forming a pale blue highway marbled with white, except for the scarred black hole that the Gertrude had smashed through.

  “Holy hinkypunks,” Zane breathed, steadying himself next to James. “I bet that was even better than the Aquapolis bubble tube you told me about.” He considered this, and then shrugged. “Or worse, depending on your perspective.”

  “Worse,” Ralph moaned, clutching his head. “Definitely worse.”

  “Everyone all right, then?” Hagrid said, climbing clumsily to his feet and brushing broken ice from his shoulders. “Rosie? You OK?”

  “I think we’re going to have to realign the rudder,” Rose said breathlessly, shaking the hair out of her face. “If, that is, it’s still there.

  James glanced down in weary annoyance. “We’re here. You can let go of my leg now.”

  Heddlebun turned her enormous eyes up to him in surprise, as if she’d forgotten where she was. Then, sheepishly, she released her death-grip on his shin and backed away, her ears drooping.

  “Well then,” Hagrid sighed briskly, clapping his hands together.

  “I guess we won’t have t’ remember where we parked, now, will we?”

  The damage to the Gertrude was much more visible from the ice of the Thames as they descended via Hagrid’s folding gangplank. Rose stalked fretfully along the jagged edge of the frozen hole, ignoring the precarious cracks and fissures, muttering to herself. Inside the hole, now surrounded by gently heaving chunks and shards of pulverized ice, the ship looked as if it had been squeezed in a giant fist. Sprung planks and splintered decking were evident from stem to stern, and the once sleek length of the hull now seemed to have a distinct and troubling angle to it, causing the bow and stern to point slightly up out of the water, while the mid-ship waterwheel and boathouse rode much lower in the waves than was exactly comfortable to James’ eye.

  “What were the odds, eh?” Hagrid said with a shrug. “This river freezes over, what, every few decades? And it just had t’ ‘appen this year, o’ course.” He seemed to view it as a mere humorous aside, rather than a potentially debilitating stroke of fate.

  “We lost the bow mast,” Rose called, her voice thin with distance as she round
ed the front of the ship. “And the bowsprit and masthead.

  The rudder is hanging on by a toothpick, but that’s sort of academic, since the wheel is smashed in two.” Behind Rose, Heddlebun slunk along closely, wringing her hands, glancing around as if trying to see in every direction at once. The house elf appeared exquisitely uncomfortable this close to the Muggle city.

  “We can reparo most o’ that,” Hagrid soothed, keeping his voice low over the expanse of ice. “An’ what we can’t, we likely don’t need, at least fer the journey back home. It’ll be fine, Rosie.”

  “We can’t reparo what’s been torn off under the ice,” Rose said, clearly struggling to control her exasperation. “But assuming enough bits of the window glass are still scattered around the deck, we should at least be able to seal up the wheelhouse and mend the wheel. We may get back home, but just barely. Assuming there are no other unexpected disasters along the way.”

  Zane clapped Rose lightly on the shoulder. “That’s the spirit, Rosie.”

  She gave him a withering glare. James knew that it was a short list of people who could get away with calling his cousin “Rosie”, and Zane Walker was not one of them.

  Ralph shook his head at the wounded ship, eyes wide. “Thanks, but I think I’ll take a cab home, if you don’t mind.”

  “It’ll be fine, Ralph,” James said, not fully believing it himself.

  “We’ve rode in worse. Er… probably.” With some effort, he turned the big boy around and the group began to cross the ice, heading into the shadow of a ramshackle pier and the extravagantly derelict hulk of a warehouse beyond. The rusty walls and roof of the structure sagged ominously. The windows were enormous square sockets, fogged with grime wherever they weren’t broken and gaping like shocked eyes. The decrepit building made even the bedraggled Gertrude look like a showroom model by comparison.

  “If all went well,” Hagrid said, boosting Rose onto the pier from the ice, “Grawpie and Prechka should be awaitin’ just inside, along with Norberta. We’ll get ‘er out, onto the ship, and be home before the clock strikes two. Grawp and Prechka can be on their way back to the mountains under cover o’ darkness. Neat as can be.”