James Potter and the Crimson Thread

by G. Norman Lippert

  “It’s a matter of confidence, students,” McGonagall instructed grimly, scrutinizing them over her spectacles. “Pour as if you fully expect the cup to appear. Any hesitation at all will spoil the magic.”

  James shook his head and lifted the teapot again, even as it bubbled and steamed, magically refilling itself. He sucked his red fingers, then held out his hand once more, preparing to catch the teacup as it formed from the tilting spout, and knowing that it would never happen. This, he mused, was the tricky thing about confidence: the more you tried to force it to happen, the more elusive it was.

  Finally, dinnertime came and went. James barely noticed it, being far too focused on the appointment afterward. But then, somehow, time seemed to catch up to him, snapping forward with cruel elasticity, and he found himself walking toward the rising spiral stairs of the headmaster’s office, caught once again on the miserable knife edge between wanting to get it over with as soon as possible and wanting to run away as fast as he could.

  “Potter,” the Gargoyle guard said in its gravel voice, nodding him onward toward the stairs.

  James paused. “Aren’t you going to ask me for the password?”

  “Do you know the password?” the gargoyle asked, raising a suspicious marble eyebrow.

  “Um,” James admitted reluctantly, “No, I don’t.”

  The gargoyle nodded again, as if satisfied. “But I know you, and that’s what counts. Passwords can be forgotten or stolen. New times call for new measures. Now, go on up. He’s expecting you.”

  James swallowed hard and turned to the gently rising steps.

  Effortlessly, they lifted him and carried him up, around, into darkness, and then into the mellower, golden light of the headmaster’s antechamber. The large office door stood open, casting a bar of firelight out onto the waiting bench and the wall of miscellaneous portraits, paintings, and plaques.

  James approached the door, feeling twice as heavy as normal.

  It’s just Merlin, he told himself. I’m most of the reason he even exists in this time and place and isn’t still floating around in the Void of disapparation. I’m part of the reason he was given the post of headmaster. He helped me rid the school of that loony Muggle reporter, and I helped him rid the world of the Gatekeeper. We go back together. We’re friends…

  And yet James knew that what Merlin called friendship and what he called friendship were likely two extremely different things. As different as the two worlds, a thousand years apart, that formed them both.

  As always, the headmaster’s office was crowded to the point of claustrophobia, filled with trunks and crates, bookshelves and tables, tools, talismans, and enormous oddities of every imagining, including (but hardly limited to) the gigantic stuffed alligator that hung from the ceiling, its glassy black eyes staring down and its hundreds of teeth bared in an uncomfortably jolly grin.

  “Come in, James, and do close the door,” Merlin said easily, not looking up from his desk, where he seemed to be writing something with one hand, consulting a large book with the other. “It seems to be a customary expectation of the age that I offer you a seat. But frankly I prefer for you to remain standing. Thus, I shall leave the option to your good judgment.”

  James moved cautiously to a space equidistant from the hearth on his left and the desk in front. The stone floor was warm. The air of the office was heavy with the sleepy scent of candle wax, old leather, and, unexpectedly, cocoa. James glanced down. A silver tray sat perched on the edge of Merlin’s desk, nearly pushed off by a haphazard pile of books. On the tray, a large stoneware mug of hot chocolate steamed gently. As James watched, Merlin reached without looking, scooped the mug into his hand, and sipped a deep draught, finally leaning back in his chair as he did so.

  “Ahh,” he said, half-closing his eyes. “You know, James, I’ve gone in and out, to and fro in this new world. I’ve seen, smelled, and tasted its million strange discoveries. And I don’t care what the politicians, priests, and poets say: hot chocolate is the pinnacle of your era. Perhaps any era.” He breathed the mug’s rich steam, sipped again at its contents, and then, reluctantly, set the cocoa aside on its tray.

  Returning his gaze to James, a speculative look in his eyes, he said, “You’re probably wondering why I’ve summoned you here.”

  “Well,” James said, his voice dry, “Yeah. I mean, yes sir. I assumed…” He stopped and cleared his throat nervously. “I assumed that I was in trouble, like.”

  “Oh, but you are, Mr. Potter,” the headmaster nodded somberly, and drew a little sigh. “As headmaster of this school, I would be bereft in my duties if I did not correct aberrant behaviour by the accepted means. I know it’s been a month, but do forgive me. I’m a busy man.”

  “But,” James blinked, sincerely baffled, “but you said on the boat that there wouldn’t be any punishment for the whole dragon-in-London thing!”

  “Oh, I truly doubt I said anything that direct. I prize nuance, Mr. Potter. But you are, in essence, correct. There is no discipline to be meted out for your failure to control the events of that night. Your lesson, one might hope, has been learned.”

  Behind James, somebody gave a light, peremptory cough. He turned quickly, in time to see the portrait of Albus Dumbledore, unusually awake and alert. Dumbledore folded his hands on his lap and looked past James, staring politely into the middle distance.

  “Yes,” Merlin said, drawing attention back to himself. “And yet there is the small matter of your being out of bed past the accepted time.

  For that, I’m afraid I must deduct, let me think… perhaps five house points.

  At the headmaster’s words, James fancied he could hear the tiny clink and clatter of rubies emptying from the Gryffindor vial, far below.

  He knew he was imagining it.

  “Um,” he said after a long, hopeful pause, “is that all, sir?”

  “No, James,” Merlin said, and his façade of unassailable authority seemed to evaporate, as if it was a robe the huge man put on and took off whenever it suited him. “It is not. And yet, for the life of me, I find myself so often at a very unaccustomed loss for how to proceed with you.” He picked up his cocoa again but did not drink it, merely regarded James through ribbons of rising steam.

  James’ previous nervousness rushed back, and doubled. He gulped. “Should I be, er, sorry, sir?”

  “Where do you think she keeps it?” the huge man asked, his voice so calm and quiet that it was almost a lion’s purr. “Has she told you? Has she, perhaps, shown you?”

  A thrill of exquisite fear coursed from the crown of James’ head to the soles of his feet, shaking him where he stood. And he knew: Merlin was reading him like a book. Merlin knew everything. Merlin couldn’t be fooled.

  He heard his own voice ask, almost automatically, “Where she keeps what, sir?”

  “Her Horcrux,” Merlin answered, and then shrugged vaguely.

  “Or the thread itself. Both are equally important to her. Though not quite as important, I am willing to wager, as this.”

  He took one hand away from his mug and held it up. Sparkling between his thumb and forefinger was Petra’s brooch, the one she had lost from the stern of the Gwyndemere, and the one that she had refound in the World Between the Worlds, brought over by her alternate self from another, darker dimension. James’ eyes widened at the sight of it.

  Merlin turned his gaze from James to the brooch in his hand, tilting his head back to examine its silver and moonstone through his spectacles. “It was a gift from her father, while she was yet in her mother’s womb. He was never able to give it to her, sadly. He died in prison.”

  “He didn’t die there,” James said before he could stop himself, his own voice an octave lower than normal. “He was killed there.

  Murdered by his guards for secrets they believed he was keeping.”

  Merlin nodded, still examining the brooch, turning it this way and that by the firelight. “The gears of justice are too large not to occasionally grind up the
innocent. Or at least, in this case, the only slightly guilty.”

  James opened his mouth to retort, but stopped himself. He narrowed his eyes as an idea—a near certainty—came into his mind. He remembered something that Merlin had said to him back during his first year: nine-tenths of magic happens in the mind. The last tenth is pure and unadulterated bluster.

  Merlin was pulling the same trick that his father had so often used on him. The same trick that had only recently worked so well on Rose, getting her to confess nearly everything about their first disastrous trip to London. The headmaster was pretending to know far more than he did, in order to lure James into telling him all the rest. Only Merlin, being Merlin, was infinitely better at it.

  “I don’t know where she keeps anything,” James said, reverting to the headmaster’s initial question. It wasn’t a lie, exactly. It just wasn’t all of the truth.

  “You are very nearly of age now, James,” Merlin said, lowering his hand and gazing at him again. “Indeed, in the world I once knew, you would be considered old enough to go off to war, to marry, to own and tend your own holdings. You are no longer a child, but a man.

  And this is not flattery, for it is a terrible responsibility to be a man or a woman, grown and thrust out from beneath the wing of your parents and teachers. Thus, be sure that when I ask you about Petra Morganstern—or Morgan, as she now reluctantly prefers to be called—I do not ask as a guardian to a charge, but as one responsible citizen to another, with nothing less in the balance than the fate of worlds.”

  His eyes were stern as he spoke, but his voice remained calm, low. “I believe that you are keeping your own secret council for noble reasons. Perhaps you mean to assist Morgan or dissuade her using your own unique influence over her. Perhaps you fear for the lives of those you love if you draw them into a potentially hopeless confrontation with her. In short, I trust your motives, James, if not always your judgment.”

  Here, Merlin stood behind his desk, leaving the mug steaming on its corner. James watched him, resisting the urge to speak up, to answer Merlin’s comments. He desperately wanted to explain everything. There was nothing more tempting in the moment than to share the burden of responsibility with Merlin, to be welcomed into his powerful camaraderie and confidence.

  But Merlin couldn’t dissuade or stop Petra. He would die trying. As much as it pained and saddened James, he remained stubbornly silent, afraid almost to look the huge sorcerer in the eye, lest he reveal the truth with his mere gaze.

  “I shall do you the service of telling you everything I know, James,” Merlin said, slowly rounding his desk and approaching the fire.

  “For via my diverse arts I have learned much, however frustratingly incomplete. Petra has identified herself with her dark mirror, the other version of herself, now murdered and bound to this earth. She believes that only by assuming Morgan’s place in her original dimension can she reset the crumbling destinies of our twin worlds. In this, James,” Merlin reached the fire and turned his gaze sidelong to face him, “Petra is both absolutely correct, and terribly, fatally mistaken. For there are other forces in play, powerful forces both terrible and corrupt. They assist Petra, drive her, and yet they do not share her benevolent motives. I see them not, but I sense their movement, like shapes underwater, tracing deep ripples on the surface of causality, undermining all that is true and good.”

  “Judith,” James said involuntarily. A chill traced down his spine, shaking him where he stood.

  “And another,” Merlin nodded slowly. They both knew who he meant, but neither would say it. And this sent another, harder shiver all the way to James’ heels. For many long years—over two decades—no one had been afraid to say the name of Voldemort. Why should they?

  The Dark Lord had been beaten and killed by his young nemesis, Harry Potter.

  But now, the greatest wizard alive, Merlinus Ambrosius himself, stood with his back to the fire in his own office leaving that old name unspoken in the air between them. Voldemort was once again He Who Must Not Be Named. He lived again, if only as a fractured shred in Petra’s mind, but stronger today than yesterday, and growing ever stronger by the minute.

  Because Petra no longer resisted the perverse whisper of Voldemort’s influence. She was cultivating it. She was using it, drawing conviction, and power, and direction from it.

  Every child knew the stories of how the Dark Lord’s black magic worked, back when he was fully alive in power and malevolence: speaking the villain’s name summoned him.

  Now, it was true once again. If either James or Merlin spoke the name, she would know.

  And perhaps she would come.

  “There is only one thing that matters in all of this, James,”

  Merlin said, turning to face him fully now, regarding him levelly.

  “Petra’s—Morgan’s—mission cannot be what it appears as long as the worst villains in this, or any, earth are driving her to accomplish it. She may believe that she can harness the power of the bloodline within her while not succumbing to it. But she grows blinded in exactly the same measure as she grows powerful. And soon, James, she will not care if she is blinded or not. He whose soul curses her will turn her completely.”

  James shook his head slowly, thoughtfully, now looking up at Merlin. “No, she won’t. She can’t be. Petra is good. She can resist.”

  “She has resisted,” Merlin agreed carefully. “But she stopped doing so the moment that she made her Horcrux. Now, she has partnered with her curse. Soon, inevitably, it will consume her.”

  James shook his head again and dropped his gaze. He backed up a step and sank into a nearby chair. “I think… she believes that she’ll be gone before the voice in her mind can get that sort of control over her.

  She’ll be vanished away into Morgan’s original dimension. It won’t matter anymore.”

  “You miss the point, James,” Merlin stated, a note of impatience, even frustration, edging into his voice. “This is no longer a decision that can be left up to her. She is deluded beyond reason. The Petra you once knew is gone already. In her place is the Bloodline. The Crimson Thread. Morgan. She is corrupted. And as such, she is unable to see that her plan is rooted in lies. There is no other interpretation. If the Lady of the Lake and He Who Must Not Be Named are scheming for the success of her plan, then only terror and misery can come of it.

  Never hope. Never salvation.”

  James was becoming agitated with frustration. “But it makes sense, though!” He glared down at his open hands, and then snapped them into fists. “As much as I hate what it means—that she will leave us forever—it makes sense! The world is falling apart more every day, all because of the imbalance caused by the stolen Crimson Thread. Morgan was her twin, so that means Petra is the only one who can replace her and set things back to rights again.”

  “The world is not so simple,” Merlin stated firmly. “I wish that it were, but it is not, and you are grown enough to know that. The young lady who was once your friend has embraced an illusion. Her guilt has partnered with her power to make her vulnerable to the worst of lies, and thus she is made a pawn for powers that would seek not just our slow degradation, but our outright destruction.”

  James realized, with some dismay, that his frustration was edging into anger now. He looked up at the headmaster again, boldy.

  “Everyone thinks Petra is evil. That she’s the worst witch that ever lived.

  The world’s first female Undesirable Number One. And now you think that, too.”

  “Evil, no,” Merlin countered, lifting his chin. “But deluded by evil, yes.”

  “You’re all wrong,” James said, firming his jaw. “I know her better than any of you. I know she’s stronger than you know. Not just in her powers, but in her heart.”

  “Are you willing to stake the balance of the world, and all worlds, on that confidence?”

  James faltered. He glared up at the headmaster still. But he had no more strong words.

  When Merlin spok
e again, his voice was very low, deadly serious.

  “She makes her attempt soon, James. She and those who have chosen to assist her. But she will not leave without this.” He held up the moonstone brooch again. “You were there when I captured it. You already suspect what I know: that the brooch is her heart and soul, because it means everything that she has lost. Before she leaves this realm, if indeed that is possible, she will come for it. I will confront her.

  And then, what will happen, will happen. Unless you, James, decide to assist me.”

  James was still gazing up into the headmaster’s probing eyes. He felt wary, and torn, and deeply worried. His voice a near whisper, he asked, “How could I help you?”

  “By telling me who it is that she has called to her side. There are two that I can sense via my arts, the Ransom and the Architect, but I cannot name them. Besides the villains who drive and protect her, who are these two who mean to assist Petra in her misguided, disastrous plan?

  Tell me so that I may reason with them. For the time is coming, and it may indeed be here, when there will be nothing left but fight, blood, and death. Tell me before it must come to that, James. Only you can do so.”

  James’ thoughts reeled. Could Merlin be referring to Odin-Vann and Albus? Or were there possibly others? What did the mysterious roles mean, the Ransom and the Architect? And if it was Odin-Vann and Albus, which one was which?

  He drew a deep breath, balanced perfectly on the razor’s edge of indecision. And then, with a sort of internal collapse of relief, he knew what he had to do.

  It was Merlin, after all.

  He met the headmaster’s gaze and said, “It’s—”

  Several things happened at once, interrupting him. A voice, harsh and startling, spoke up from the hearth. A fist pounded on the door, urgently. And most disconcerting of all, a horn sounded outside the headmaster’s open window. The noise was low and throbbing, like a note blown on a ram’s horn, only one of massive size, giving it a deep, bass resonance.