“This from the person who can’t choose between an entitled, bossy aristocrat and a neurotic criminal sorceress.”
James drew an annoyed sigh and blew it out. He wanted to argue with Scorpius. He wanted to tell him that he, Scorpius, wasn’t a bad person, exactly, he was just bad for Rose. But there didn’t seem to be any point. He realized, almost clinically, how late the hour probably was. Midnight? Even later?
His jaw cracked as a monumental yawn overtook him.
Next to him, Scorpius kicked out one leg and leaned aside, turning away from James.
James no longer cared. Weariness stole over him, weighing his eyelids down, turning his muscles into sandbags.
He gave in to it, and time began to stretch out, first dulling every sensation, and then turning minutes into hours.
He did not dream.
A sudden hard shudder wracked the ship, and James felt himself falling forward. He flailed in confusion, not sure which way was up, his head still reeling, thick with sleep. A wall of cold, worn wood slammed against him, and he realized, very dimly, that it was the floor of the hall.
He pushed himself up onto his elbows and pried his eyes open.
The light was different. Thin pencil-beams of grey daylight lanced down from above, shining through cracks in the upper deck.
Scorpius groaned in bleary irritation, struggling up from his own prone position on the floor.
“We fell asleep,” James rasped, his voice hoarse. He scrubbed his face with his hands, raked them through his hair. “We slept through the night. Had to have. Are we there?”
“I need a loo and a cup of black tea,” Scorpius answered grumpily, pushing himself to his feet and then slumping back against the wall. The ship rocked gently beneath them, accompanied by the distant slap of waves.
James turned and stumbled back along the hall, still bleary with sleep, but forcing himself to alertness.
Rose and Zane met them at the stairs, Rose with her hair bushed out in sleepy tangles, Zane blinking and squinting up into the gloomy dawn above. Together, without a word, they tramped up the steps into cool air and drab, stormy daylight.
Odin-Vann stood on the bow, in front of the wheelhouse. He looked back when he heard them coming, his eyes bright and wary.
“We’re here,” he announced in a hushed voice, and pointed ahead.
James moved to join the professor, blinking against the pall of white fog that surrounded the ship.
“I don’t see anything,” Scorpius said flatly, passing James and peering all around.
“It’s there,” Odin-Vann nodded. “Just visible through the fog.
Trees on all sides and there, just ahead, the old dock and the sunken gazebo. James, you’ve seen this place, yes? At least, the decades’ past version of it that Petra can conjure? You recognize it, don’t you?”
James inched toward the bow railing and peered critically out over the leaden waves. Now that Odin-Vann mentioned it, he could see the shadows of trees, an encircling wood, all shrouded and ghostly beyond the lurking fog. He turned his gaze to the front. The bow did indeed seem to be pointed at a skeletal dock. It swam in and out of drifting grey mist.
“This is it,” he nodded. “In Petra’s version, the gazebo is still there, at the end of the dock. But the version in our time is broken away and sunken. I don’t know how deep.” He glanced down at the water, but nothing was visible through it. The waves slapped at the hull, reflecting the clot of the sky, turning the lake into a shifting, broken mirror.
“We’re drifting,” Odin-Vann said, his eyes still on the dock in its mantle of fog. “Scorpius, take the wheel and keep us in the centre of the lake.”
“I didn’t want to say so last night,” Scorpius replied, tired and terse, “But I don’t think that’s how boats work.”
“Go!” Odin-Vann said with sudden strength, turning back to Scorpius. His eyes were wide and sharp, either on the edge of panic, or triumph. “Rose, Walker, raise the gazebo. Aim for the water just in front of the broken dock!”
Scorpius, James noticed, backed up to the wheelhouse but didn’t enter it. From the shadows, his narrowed eyes watched Odin-Vann keenly.
Rose and Zane approached the rocking prow and drew their wands. Sharing a quick glance, they aimed for the dock, and then dipped their arms slightly, toward the restless waves beneath.
“Wingardium leviosa!” they both called in unison.
James sensed more than heard the surge of magic which fired into the depths. Nothing happened at first. Then, subtly, a deep groan arose from the deep. Odin-Vann moved slowly alongside Zane, his gaze rapt. James sidled in next to him, thinking hard, a sense of cold trepidation settling over him like a shroud. It was all happening so suddenly, too quickly for anyone to think about.
And then, a thought that had haunted the back of his mind since the previous night finally pushed to the fore, bringing with it a deepening suspicion.
“Professor,” he whispered, even as he watched the water at the base of the dock. A surge of dense bubbles pushed the surface into a low swell. “How did you find out that Merlin had hidden Petra’s brooch here? Did she tell you?”
Odin-Vann’s gaze didn’t flicker from the bubbling disturbance.
More deep groans and creaks emanated from the cold depths. Zane and Rose frowned in tense concentration.
“Come, James,” Odin-Vann said, holding out his hand and swinging one leg over the railing. James glanced up at him in surprise.
“Come!” the Professor said in a commanding rasp. “And look!”
He nodded toward the waves below the bobbing bow. There, a haze of white solidified a wave, freezing it into a sudden ice floe, which arose silently, like a surfacing submarine. The floe pressed up against Odin-Vann’s boot, supporting his weight. “See? Petra’s power accompanies us. Come. I will need your eyes and courage to accomplish our task.”
With that, he swung his other leg over the railing and stood atop the frozen, elevated wave. Another crackled into being before him, rising to meet his next step down, forming enchanted, icy stairs. A wintry chill wafted up from them, making James’ breath suddenly puff a visible cloud. He shivered violently.
“Go, James,” Zane said in a strained voice. “Once this thing’s out of the water we won’t be able to hold it up for long.”