James Potter and the Crimson Thread

by G. Norman Lippert

  And yet her eyes were soft, pained with regret as she looked up at him. James realized that he, like the tombstones and monuments, was also being held aloft in Petra’s sorceress grip, but tenderly, as if gravity had simply forgotten about him for a moment. Dimly, he realized that blood was wetting his shirt, cooling fast in the stormy wind.

  Petra studied him, seemed to look into him. And then, using the powers that were unique to her, she began to mend him. He felt a tingle and then gasped, more in surprise than pain, as his ribs shifted back into place, releasing his lungs from their broken death-clench. The ruptures deep inside his body first went numb, and then warmed as the pain faded away. Tentatively, he took a breath. His chest expanded, drew air, and his head swam.

  “That was stupid of you, James,” Petra said quietly, affectionately, as she settled him back to the grass, coming to meet him.

  The cyclone of headstones still swam all around, rushing and surreal. “I could have withstood the falling stone, and protected you from it.”

  “I didn’t think about it,” James whispered, buckling slightly as gravity collected him again. “I just acted.”

  “That’s you in a nutshell,” she said, and smiled wanly.

  She reached out to him, placed a hand on his chest. His shirt was still soaked with blood. It stuck to her palm greased it with red.

  James looked down at her. Her own face was bloody. It was a shocking sight to see. Something, probably a hunk of the falling obelisk, had struck her temple and cut it. Blood trickled from beneath her hair, down the line of her cheek, and dripped from her chin. Falling stone might not be capable of killing her, but she could still be cut.

  She was still just human enough to bleed.

  He cupped her cheek, felt the warm wetness of her blood against his fingers, tried to wipe it away from her skin.

  She took her hand from his chest and looked down at it. Her palm was slick and tacky with his blood. With her head still lowered, she looked up at him with her eyes. There was a disconcerting, calculating look in her gaze, as if she wanted to say something, but didn’t quite dare.

  An object glimmered mildly on the lapel of her jumper. James glanced down at it, saw that it was her father’s brooch, the identical twin of the one that had fallen into the ocean four years earlier.

  Without a word, Petra raised her head. Keeping her bloody right hand raised, she turned, as if facing the incoming storm.

  “Claudicatis in æternum mortiferum!” Her voice was terrible, deafening as thunder, yet clear as birdsong.

  Lightning cleaved the sky. It lanced through the skull of the Dark Mark, brightening it, and struck the earth immediately before Petra. The blast propelled James backward, toppling him again into the mass of heather and weeds. The lightning did not strike and vanish, however, but remained locked in place, caged between earth and sky, rioting within itself, crackling with a voice of doom.

  “Petra!” James shouted, but his voice was virtually inaudible beneath the noise.

  She didn’t hear him, or chose to ignore him if she did. But she did look back. Against the blinding, boiling glare, her face was a mere silhouette. Storm wind tore at her hair, flailed it about her face as she turned back to him one last time. She tried to smile. It was a sad, pathetic attempt. Her eyes sparkled with regret.

  And then, with a shuddering breath and squared shoulders, she faced the magical portal that she had conjured, stepped forward, and walked into its violent glare. It swallowed her up with an explosion of blinding light and hurricane-force icy wind.

  The blast flattened James, bowled away in every direction.

  All around, the maelstrom of stone and iron fell away, crashing to the ground, bereft of its mistress.

  “No,” James said again, no longer shouting, barely whispering.

  He stared at the crackling, captured bolt of lightning, the magical portal, now empty. It hadn’t vanished with Petra, but the Dark Mark above it had.

  James scrambled to his feet, made to move forward into the bolt, to follow Petra, but a hand grabbed his shoulder. He didn’t see whose it was and didn’t care. He twisted to throw it off, his eyes still locked on the writhing fork of light.

  “James!” a voice shouted, and the hand yanked him harder, jerking him backwards. Still James fought it, lashing out, struggling to bat the grasping hand away.

  More hands gripped him, tugged him, wrestled him back.

  “If you go into the portal without the sigils,” the voice exclaimed breathlessly, “you’ll be killed instantly! Stop fighting us, you great idiot!”

  James finally blinked and turned, as if snapping out of a trance.

  He found himself looking into the face of his brother, Albus.

  “She’s gone,” another voice said, this one female. James glanced aside, still stunned, and saw Rose holding onto his shoulder. Beside her was Ralph. Scorpius and Zane stood on Albus’ other side, their eyes wide and haunted.

  “What happened?” James asked in a dazed voice, sensing that somehow things were worse than even he knew.

  Ralph swallowed hard. “Once we heard where everyone had gone, we followed. Rose side-along apparated with Zane. We ran into the graveyard and hit the ground when the spells started. The others retreated…” he said, and then shook his head. “And then, all of them…”

  “They’re gone,” Zane said, his eyes bald with shock, as if he didn’t quite believe it himself. “The flying stones took out some of them. Maybe they were just knocked out… maybe…”

  “Dad!?” James asked, turning to Albus.

  Albus shook his head. “I don’t know. When you got hurt, Petra snapped. The whole place went berserk. And then, when she conjured the portal, she sent some sort of… force rushing out over the whole countryside in every direction. We were just inside the fence, hunkered down and hiding. But everybody outside the graveyard, they just…vanished!”

  “Puff of smoke,” Rose said, her voice small and terrified.

  “It was a defensive thing,” James said, looking from face to face.

  “She didn’t know what she was doing!”

  Scorpius met James’ eyes, his face stolid. “I don’t think Morganstern did it at all,” he said with low emphasis. “And I don’t think it stopped when it vanished her attackers.”

  James felt slowly chilled to the bone as the reality of Scorpius’ words settled into place.

  “It wasn’t Petra’s power that caused it,” he whispered, turning back to the flashing, crackling lightning bolt. “It was… a sort of shockwave of finality. It started right here, the moment that she opened her portal. It was the last crashing footstep that brought the whole house of reality down.”

  “But that means,” Rose said in a quavering voice, “the shockwave is still spreading, still swallowing up everything as it goes, extending over the whole earth!”

  “Over the whole universe,” Zane exhaled bleakly, looking up at the falling dark.

  The storm still boiled above, thickening and groaning with thunder. But everything else beyond the graveyard was descending slowly into black, slipping away like things behind a velvet veil.

  “Petra’s plan didn’t work,” Rose slumped, horrorstruck.

  “It was never meant to work,” Ralph countered, anger tightening his voice.

  Albus shook his head. “But it had to!” he exclaimed, fear and frustration raising his voice. “She had all the elements! I didn’t think it would work without killing me or James, but his blood alone must have been enough!”

  “What elements?” Scorpius asked, his eyes sharpening.

  Rain began to fall all around, speckling the graves with fat, heavy drops. Wind scoured the weeds and grass, growing restless even as everything beyond the fence drifted into seamless dark. The lightning portal offered the only illumination, dimming by degrees with each passing second.

  “The three sigils!” Albus cried over the growing wind, throwing up his hands. “Odin-Vann made Petra and I both memorize them so we wouldn’t fo
rget! There was the token of generation, the key of an alternate world, and the blood of dearest love! We came here, dug up Petra’s grandmother’s grave and took a lock of her hair. That was the token of a previous generation. She had the brooch from Morgan’s original universe. That was the key from an alternate world. And then, well, she was supposed to kill me.”

  Rose looked appalled. “You were willing to die for her portal!?”

  Zane boggled. “You were her dearest love?”

  Albus flopped helplessly to a seat on a broken gravestone. “James is the one she loves, although I never could imagine why. She couldn’t bring herself to kill him, though, so I volunteered. She asked me to help, after all. A few weeks ago, Odin-Vann told me what that might mean. I wouldn’t do it for him. But for Petra….”

  “Odin-Vann knew it was his plan all along,” Zane nodded dourly. “Even before the Archive was destroyed and he told Petra about this one last option.”

  “I was close enough to be the final of the three sigils,” Albus shrugged, “being of the same blood as James. So yeah, I was willing to die in this world, for Petra, but not in any forever sort of way. I’m no martyr. Petra said that if she did her part right, we would get a sort of alternate destiny instead of this one. None of this bad stuff would have happened. I’d be alive in that other destiny, and we’d probably never even remember this version of events.”

  “So, when she got my blood on her hand,” James wondered aloud, “she knew that it might be enough to open the dimensional portal. After all, if she hadn’t healed me, I probably would be dead right now. She called the incantation, and it worked.”

  Zane gave a low whistle. “A one-way ride to the other side…”

  “But why did this part need to happen at all!?” Rose moaned, her eyes wide and her mouth turned down in misery. “Our parents! The whole world! All breaking away into nothing! Whatever portal Petra opened and went into, it sure didn’t change anything! Why even make her do it!”

  “Everything Odin-Vann said was a lie!” James exclaimed, suddenly filled with a sort of bereft rage. “He just wanted her busy so he and Judith could work their plan behind her back! He probably forced her to conjure a portal into nothing just to end her!”

  “No,” Ralph suddenly said, his voice low. His eyes bulged in thought, and he reached out in the lowering dark, groping, grabbing onto James’ arm. “No! He didn’t lie about everything! At least… not about one thing!”

  “But…” James blinked, turning aside to his friend. “You said…nothing Odin-Vann said could be trusted. And you were right. He was a liar and a traitor from the start.”

  Ralph was shaking his head in wonder, still staring at nothing, deep in thought. “There was one thing he didn’t lie about. Because he didn’t really mean to say it! He let it out without even thinking. And then, just as quickly, he covered it up. Don’t you remember?” His eyes finally focused and he turned to James.

  Urgently, Albus demanded, “Out with it, Dolohov.”

  “Rose,” Ralph said, turning aside to her. “Yesterday when we all met up on the Gertrude, you asked Odin-Vann where Petra could go to accomplish her task, where destiny was still intact and her choices would still matter. Do you remember what he said?”

  Rose frowned at him in the dark, her eyes wide and stricken.

  “The past,” James answered softly, realization dawning on him.

  “I remember. He let it slip, and then glossed over it, saying that he meant some place that Petra had once been to, someplace important to her. But that was just a cover up. Because the past is where he and Judith planned to go all along…!”

  Ralph nodded slowly, somberly. “He never intended for Petra to conjure a portal to Morgan’s dimension. He meant to use her to conjure a portal through time. As a sorceress, she’s the only one powerful enough to do it! Whatever he and Judith mean to do, whatever new destiny they intend to create, it has to be done back before destiny was shut down. When choices still mattered!”

  “Before all of this happened,” Rose said faintly.

  “We have to follow her!” James cried, rousing and stepping toward the lightning portal again, even as it thinned, still fading.

  “We can’t!” Albus said, grabbing his brother’s shirtsleeve again.

  “I already told you! Anyone who enters the portal without the three sigils is killed instantly! It’s dark magic! It requires payment!”

  “Here you go,” Scorpius said, approaching and taking James’ hand, dropping something onto his open palm.

  James glanced down, his mind spinning, and saw a pair of old black spectacles resting on his hand. They were heavy, the lenses fogged with dust. He looked up at Scorpius again. The blonde boy shrugged and twirled his wand.

  “Accio casket,” he said simply. “I saw where this was headed and ran back to visit your grandparents’ graves. They’re right over there in the corner where these two started out.” He tilted his head toward Albus. “Those are your dead grandfather’s spectacles. I doubt they’re your prescription, though.”

  Ralph glanced quickly from Scorpius, to Rose. “What about the other two sigils? A relic from some other dimension? Where we going to find something like that?”

  “Holy hinkypunks…!” Zane suddenly announced, raising his eyebrows in an epiphany of inspiration. He glanced around at Ralph, then Zane, his eyes wild with wonder. “I never really got around to returning it to the museum in the Tower of Art after we used it last fall!

  I’ve just been carrying it around, too wary to leave it home alone, but too lazy to take care of it!” He dug in the pocket of his jeans and produced a largish, silvery object. James’ mouth dropped open at the sight of it.

  “The unicorn’s horseshoe!” he gasped. “You’ve just been carrying it around in your pocket all this time?”

  “Horseshoes are good luck where I come from!” Zane shrugged and bulged his eyes, and spread his palms, one of which still held the miraculous horseshoe. “And for once procrastination is a good thing, right?!”

  James stuffed his grandfather’s spectacles into his pocket as Zane handed him the ancient silver shape. It was cold and very heavy in his left hand.

  “But,” he asked, still looking down at the gently glowing object, “what about the blood of dearest love?”

  Rose reached and grabbed James’ right hand where it hung at his side. She raised it, showing the drying smear of red that still pasted his fingers.

  “Petra’s blood!” she rasped, her eyes wild with amazement. “You touched her bleeding face! I saw you do it from my hiding place, right before she went through the portal!”

  James looked at Petra’s blood on his hand. It still glistened red wherever it hadn’t already dried to a sticky maroon. Freshening drops of rain pattered down, wetting it again.

  “You have the three sigils!” Albus called over the increasing roar of the storm, forcing James to look up into his face. “Only you can follow Petra through!”

  “Go, James!” Zane said, pushing his friend forward. “Go stop them! Don’t let them win!”

  “Save Petra,” Rose added breathlessly.

  “Save bloody everybody,” Scorpius countered.

  Ralph gripped James by the shoulder. “You can do it, mate.

  This battle is all yours.”

  James nodded helplessly. “Just like the dryad said.”

  He turned to the lightning portal. It still crackled and writhed, captive between heaven and what remained of earth. But it was dimming, fading even as he watched, dying away with the rest of the world—with the rest of the known universe. The only thing that remained was the storm overhead. It condensed, descending into a roar that thickened the very air, lowering over James, seeking him relentlessly.

  James drew a deep, shaking breath. With his dead grandfather’s glasses in his pocket, the silver horseshoe in his left hand, and Petra’s blood painting his right, he stepped forward.

  The lightning portal was thinning, yet somehow still blindingly bri
ght. It’s cursed light filled his eyes, blotted out the endless, hungry dark beyond.

  He stepped forward, felt power prickle through his hair, caress his cheeks and shoulders like electric tentacles. He closed his eyes.

  And then, suddenly, the portal enveloped him.

  His next step took him out of the world, out of time, and into forever.

  25. – The Time Between the Times

  “Hurry it up, Petra, and don’t let Noah’s brother see you.”

  It was Ted Lupin’s voice, young and blithe, untainted by worry.

  The girl nodded, brushing past James as the portrait of the Fat Lady swung open to reveal the fire-lit glow of the common room. James began to follow her in when Ted threw an arm around his shoulder, turning him around and bringing him back out onto the landing.

  “My dear James, you can’t imagine we’re going to let you toddle off to bed at such an early hour, do you? There are Gryffindor traditions to think about, for Merlin’s sake.”

  “What?” James stammered. “It’s midnight. You know that, do you?”

  “Commonly known in the Muggle world as ‘The Witching Hour’,” Ted said instructively. “A misnomer, of course, but ‘The Witching and Wizarding Pulling Tricks on Unsuspecting Muggle Country Folk Hour’ is just a bit too long for anyone to remember. We like to call it, simply, ‘Raising the Wocket’.”

  Ted was leading James back toward the stairs, along with three other Gryffindors. “The what?” James asked, trying to keep up.

  “Boy doesn’t know what the Wocket is,” Ted said mournfully to the rest of the group. “And his dad’s the owner of the famous Marauder’s Map. Just think how much easier this would be if we could get our hands on that bit of skullduggery.” Turning back to James, he said, “Let me introduce you to the rest of the Gremlins, a group you may indeed hope to join, depending on how things go tonight, of course.” Ted stopped, turned and threw his arm wide, indicating the three others skulking along with them. “My number one, Noah Metzker, whose only flaw is his unwitting relationship to his fifth-year prefect brother.”