Spying a large brass dial with an attached lever, he gripped it and tugged.
The lever ratcheted, turning the dial past several notches. When it stopped, the readout showed a single word, white letters printed on black: HOGWARTS.
The wheel began to turn in James’ hand, spinning ponderously and bringing the Gertrude about. With a lurch, it rocked forward. A spray of mist began to plow up beneath the bow. Then, heavily, the bow began to rise and fall on the waves, striking with sickening force and sending up gouts of spray.
The Gertrude drove onward, faster, but it did not submerge.
This was all part of Judith’s design, James realized. To maroon them far from any hope of escape, to set a murderous storm upon them, preventing their return, and hopefully killing them all. It was just as Scorpius had said: this was the final act, and the stage was set. It was the Triumvirate brought to horrifying life: a ruse of an ocean journey, a magical storm racing them back, and the villain Donovan, along with his ally, the Lady of the Lake this time instead of the Marsh Hag, forging ahead, ready and prepared to freely execute their final, fatal plan.
And yet their intent was no mere wedding conspiracy in pursuit of a seat of power. Their plan was to somehow kill Petra, leaving Odin-Vann to take over as Judith’s host, harnessing her chaotic power instead of thwarting it.
As James finally grasped this horrible change of events, a surge of undiluted anger welled up in his chest. Odin-Vann had lied to Petra all along about helping her to fulfill her destiny as the Crimson Thread.
He had never intended to help her save the world. He had tricked her, sabotaged her, fed her guilt and the madness of her scheme, only to betray her in the end in the worst way possible.
“But,” Rose asked James, not taking her eyes from the rushing waves and the advancing, terrible storm, “How can Odin-Vann and Judith kill Petra? They know she made a Horcrux.”
“Potter here knows better than anyone else,” Scorpius answered darkly. “Horcruxes can be created, and they can also be destroyed.
They needed Petra alive for some reason, until this moment. Where there’s a will, there’s a way.”
James knew that Scorpius was right. But he had a deep suspicion that Judith’s answer would be a lot simpler, and more final, than even Scorpius suggested.
23. – Chaos Descends
The Gertrude could not outpace the storm. Even as it plowed forward through the rising waves, the arms of the tempest encroached on both sides, surrounding the blockade runner in a smothering embrace.
Wind tore across the deck in capricious gusts, shrieking in the rigging and whumping the furled sails hard enough to shudder the entire boat.
In the wheelhouse, the windows rattled in their frames. Raindrops fell hard enough to ring on the roof like coins.
“It’s slowing us down,” Zane observed, raising his voice over the gale. “The storm is coming around against it, forcing us backwards!”
Scorpius leaned toward the window and peered up. “It’s the sails and masts,” he said. “Too much wind resistance.”
James understood. “We need to lighten our load and get more streamlined. Come on!” He reached for the door.
“What are you going to do?” Rose asked, her eyes wide. And yet James saw that she already had an inkling of his plan. She drew out her wand in preparation.
He nodded, one hand on the door. “We need to strip away the masts, the sails, the rigging, everything that’s slowing us down.”
He shoved open the door against a sudden, shocking force of wind. Rain sprayed in, immediately spattering his face and hair. He squinted against it and pressed out into the gale. Rose followed, with Scorpius and Zane right behind.
The driving rain was like icy pebbles pelting their heads and shoulders. Indeed, the deck was scattered with tiny knots of hail. They rolled with the increasing sway of the ship, pushed by ever harder gusts of wind.
“Hagrid will likely kill us!” Rose cried over the storm as James raised his wand, aiming at the foremast.
James hoped they lived long enough to find out. He sighted down his wand, squinting one eye shut, and shouted, “Convulsis!”
The bolt struck the mast just below a junction of pulleys and netting. With a deafening crack and flash of purple, the base exploded, spraying splinters in every direction. The mast crunched down, still momentarily suspended in its web of rigging, but then the force of the storm caught it, pushed it, and the mast keeled over ponderously, dragging whips of rope and torn netting with it. The boat rolled and the mast fell into the waves, where it was tugged away from the ship completely.
From the rear of the ship, another flash and crack marked the aft mast. Zane and Scorpius backed away quickly, peering up as the mast creaked, snapped, and tottered backwards, spearing into the waves beyond the stern.
Suddenly, sickeningly, time seemed to double back on itself in James’ mind. As he watched the aft mast break and tear away, the Gertrude became the Gwyndemere. He heard Petra’s surprised scream as the falling boom swept her overboard, felt the weight of her hanging from the back of the ship over hungry, mountainous waves. He brooch fell away, and her eyes pleaded with him. Let me go, James, she said with terrible calm…
He was shaken back to the present as Rose tugged him by the arm. “The lifeboats,” she cried, pointing. There were only two, one on either side of the bow, lying upside down and battened down with canvas straps.
Together, they broke the straps with their wands and blasted the boats over the side, taking some of the railing with them.
James paused and looked back over the ship, shielding his eyes with one hand. The Gertrude was no longer a high, noble craft but a streamlined, if ragged, bullet shape, stripped down to a low profile that noticeably cut the waves much faster, driven by its magic-powered paddle wheels.
“That’s the best we can do,” Zane called, returning from the stern, his hair plastered to his forehead by rain. “We blasted away everything that wasn’t bolted down, and plenty that was!”
“Let’s go back inside,” James shouted and pointed to the wheelhouse, which was now the highest point on the ship.
The storm boomed thunder and spat lightning, illuminating miles of waves like a flashbulb image. The four students clambered back into the relative warmth of the wheelhouse and James resumed the wheel, catching it as it spun sluggishly.
“What now?” Rose asked, wiping her wet hair out of her face.
James considered this, and shrugged a little helplessly. “We see if we can outrun it.”