Something was indeed sneezing in Odin-Vann’s quarters, but it wasn’t the professor. Perhaps it was a recording of some kind, or even an Augurey trained to repeat the same violent noise randomly. Either way, the professor was not there. And James had a terrible feeling that he knew where he was.
Odin-Vann was in America, with Petra. They were finally completing her task, breaking into the Alma Aleron Hall of Archives and descending to the Vault of Destinies, where the halted Loom waited for them. They would restore the symbolic crimson thread, using whatever complicated magic was necessary for the task, and reset the Loom. Then Petra, the living, breathing Crimson Thread, would be torn from the world and sent to whatever darker dimension Morgan, the other Petra, had come from.
“Perhaps it’s already happened?” Rose asked in a whisper.
James shook his head. “We would have sensed it. Wouldn’t we?
The whole point is for this ruddy destiny to be undone and replaced with our original history. But nothing’s changed. Or, would we even know if it had?”
Rose merely shrugged. Like him, she was worried. But James was also conflicted. He wanted to be the one helping Petra during her final moments in this world, not Odin-Vann. He wanted to look her in the eyes when she departed her home dimension, and him, forever. He wanted, more than anything, simply to say goodbye.
But that was not meant to happen, it seemed. When Odin-Vann returned, one way or another, the deed would be done.
As they hurried back through the darkening corridors, Rose asked, “But what about Albus? He’s supposed to have some task to perform as well, isn’t he? Only he’s still here. We saw him an hour ago at dinner, moping at the end of the Slytherin table, just as tragic and morose as ever.”
James shook his head and shrugged. “Maybe he was just a failsafe. Maybe she didn’t really need him. Or maybe he can play his part from here. Who knows?”
James wanted desperately to ask his brother directly, but Albus’ mood had indeed spiraled darker and more reclusive since his breakup with Chance Jackson. When he did show up at mealtimes, he sat alone, his brow lowered, his eyes staring sullenly into space. When James approached him, Albus stalked away, either angry or elusive. Perhaps he knew what James meant to ask, and had no intention of answering.
James could have pursued his brother, of course, demanding to speak to him. And yet some buried part of him, quiet but persistent, held him back, whispering that the longer he didn’t know, the longer the inevitable could be delayed.
The truth came home to James on a Friday, as he hurried along the corridor toward Divination, his final class of the day. Something small and hard bounced off the back of his head, startling him so that he nearly dropped the crystal ball in his hand. He stopped and turned, clapping his free hand to the back of his head.
On the floor behind him, a small badge lay glinting in the sun.
It was shaped like a shield and engraved with the letters J.W. As he watched, the badge skittered on the floor, spun around, then shot backwards into the air. It socked into the waiting hand of Edgar Edgecombe, who stood along the far wall, his wand in his hand. The boy grinned at James, his eyes squinting meanly. To his right, Polly Heathrow sniggered into the back of her hand. Quincy Ogden scowled at James from Edgecombe’s left, his chin raised challengingly.
“You little—” James began, his face heating with rage. “What is your problem!?” The words came out much more loudly and forcefully than he intended, causing students nearby to stop in their tracks, eyes suddenly keen.
“We didn’t do a thing,” Heathrow said, her nasal voice high and smug. “You’ve got nargles in the brain, that’s all. They was knocking to get out.”
Laughing, Edgecombe pinned his badge back onto his robes.
“Walk on, Potter. Before we get annoyed and report the whole lot of your stupid night Quidditch league to the authorities. See if we don’t.”
James knew the boy was trying to pique him, and knew equally well that he shouldn’t let him. But he was angry, and fed up, and already feeling helpless about so many other things. He felt the weight of his wand in his robes and longed to pull it out, to brandish it at the horrible little git and his two bratty friends.
“What’s night Quidditch mean to him?” Ogden sneered. “He’s used to making other people pay for his stupid ideas. Sometimes he even lets other people die for them.”
James felt a rod of ice jam down his spine at Ogden’s words. He stood stock still for a moment as every watching eye turned to him. He opened his mouth to respond, but Heathrow spoke first, raising her shrill voice in a parody of woe.
“Oh, boo—hoo, my cousin’s dead,” she cried nastily, cocking her head and drawing a hand up to her thin chest. “Everybody feel sorry for me because I got my cousin killed off meddling in stuff I had no right to!
I’m a tragic hero, don’t you know! Who else wants to die to prove it?”
James’ hands moved of their own accord. He heard the brittle crack of the crystal ball as it dropped to the floor and shattered, saw the lunge of his own wand as he pointed it at Heathrow, then Edgecombe as the boy burst into braying laughter, blind to James’ furious approach.
Only Ogden saw and responded, whipping his own wand forward and pointing it at James’ face.
They both fired at the same time—James, a blasting curse; Ogden, a total body bind—and both spells spat across the space between them, lighting the walls and faces of the surprised observers with brilliant red and electric purple.
And at that exact moment, a quake shook the floor, sharp and sudden. The windows rattled in their frames. The grasses beyond shuddered, undulating across the grounds. Leaves shivered from the trees in the Forbidden Forest and birds startled in clouds from their nests.
And neither boy’s spells struck their marks.
As James watched, the curses ground to a halt in mid-air, hovering and crackling with energy, as if suddenly suspended in jelly.
There was perfect silence apart from the throbbing hum of the frozen spells. No one had ever seen or felt such a thing before. James had a moment to wonder if Merlin was involved. He even glanced around, looking to see if the sorcerer was standing nearby, his staff in his hand, exerting some sort of deadening force over the boys’ rash curses, causing the dreadful tremor that had just shaken the world.
The headmaster was nowhere in sight.
Cautiously, gingerly, Sanjey Yadev shouldered through the crowd of stunned observers, approaching the crackling spells where they hung in space. He raised his wand to them, less like a magical instrument, and more like a tree branch with which to poke a spider to see if it’s dead. As the tip of his wand neared James’ thrumming Confringo spell, it collapsed upon itself, disintegrating into glowing dust and falling uselessly away.
A split second later, Ogden’s spell did the same.
The silence that followed was breathless with confusion.