Amazingly, this did now seem possible. Relieved of its excess weight and drag, the Gertrude plowed ahead like a torpedo. The storm still strained on both sides, trying to close in on the little ship, but it could only keep pace. Slowly, it began to fall behind.
Within a few minutes, the waves ahead shrank from sharp-peaked hills for the Gertrude to climb to streaming whitecaps for the ship to cut through. The blasting wind gradually diminished, replaced by warmer currents. Thunder still boomed, sounding like an enraged beast cheated of its prey, but from greater distance.
And then, so suddenly that James gasped and flailed with one hand, grabbing for the steadying bar behind him, the Gertrude angled down like a whale. Its bow plunged into the ocean, buried itself in the waves, and the entire ship followed. Water rushed up over the diminished shape of the boat, overtook the windows, and swallowed the Gertrude with a deep, gurgling roar. Dimness filled the wheelhouse as the bow dropped first into rushing green pressure, and then into swift and total darkness. The lantern was gone, of course, having been blasted away along with the foremast.
James could see nothing. The ship creaked ominously all around, adjusting to the pressures of the deep.
“I hate this part,” Rose said in a strained voice.
The external pressure changed somehow. James felt it in his stomach and the very sockets of his eyes. With a shudder and a blast of bubbles, the Gertrude sucked into some smaller, tighter space, accelerating at an even more alarming rate than before. Stripped of its external structures, the ship was an underwater arrow, careening into blind darkness.
The ship suddenly dropped, fell through a burst of loose water, and landed with a shuddering thud in the sluice of the returning tunnel.
Freed of the surrounding depths, it sped onward, rocking with the angle of the walls.
The storm was behind them now, and they were utterly beyond its angry reach. It may be a magical storm, as James suspected, but they would outpace it easily, at least until they reached their destination.
All that was left was to return to Hogwarts and hope that they weren’t too late to stop whatever Judith and Odin-Vann intended to do.
With this in mind, James leaned forward into the rushing dark, peering uselessly through the black window. He groped and put his hands on the wheel again, doing whatever he could to keep the ship pointing straight ahead, willing the boat to go even faster.
“We can’t confront them, you know,” Scorpius said, sensing James’ thoughts. “Judith and Odin-Vann. She’s too powerful. And he countered my stunning spell before it so much as left my wand. He can deflect any spell we might cast. There’s no way to battle either of them.”
“I don’t care about battling them,” James said grimly. “We just need to get to Petra. We have to tell her what we know.”
After a worried moment, Zane asked, “And then what?”
James narrowed his eyes in the blind dark. With conviction, he answered, “Then she can battle them.”
The return journey seemed to take far longer than James thought possible. The Gertrude barreled onward through endless curves and pitches. Rose and Scorpius braved the rushing wind and sloping decks to leave the wheelhouse and climb down to the hold, hoping that the motion would somehow be less pronounced below. Only Zane stayed with James. Neither spoke, but James was glad of his old friend’s presence. After what felt like hours, James loosened his grip on the wheel. His fingers ached from strain, and his eyes bulged for light.
Zane sensed James’ respite. “This isn’t the same without the Ralphinator, is it?” he said for the second time.
James sighed deeply and nodded in the dark. He knew Zane couldn’t see him, but didn’t think it mattered.
Zane spoke again. “I wonder what our parents are up to right now?” He seemed to consider this in the rushing darkness, and then said, “Actually, I know what my parents are probably doing. They’re home in St. Louis starting to think about dinner. Greer is probably at the table doing her homework and being really grumpy about it, while my dad teases her, thinking it will put her in a better mood, although it never does. They’re Muggles, so they don’t know anything about halted destinies, and rogue sorceresses, and magical snafus threatening to end the whole universe. I think, for the first time in my life… I’m a little jealous of them.”
“My dad is probably home in his office,” James mused quietly.
“Probably looking over the latest reports and emergency procedures, but not really reading any of it. Just moving pages around while his brain spins on like a machine, trying out ideas, testing plans, figuring out what he’s going to do next. I’ve seen him like that a thousand times.”
“We should call him somehow when we get to Hoggies,” Zane said with resolve. “He’s Harry Potter. He’ll know what to do.”
James shook his head slowly. “Do you remember what the dryad said, back during our first year?”
Zane blew out a breath, as if he’d been secretly thinking the same thing. “Yeah. She said your father’s battle was over. She said this one would be all yours.”
“Well, fortunately, it’s not all mine. I’ve got you, and Rose, and Scorpius.”
Zane seemed to accept this. Then, uncomfortably, he added, “But no Ralph.”
“Ralph is his own problem now,” James said, half angry, half sad.
Gradually, light began to blossom far ahead. James at first wondered if his senses were teasing him, but the glow quickly resolved into a solid blur, deep blue, reflecting on the rushing river and the walls of its tunnel, growing with increasing speed.
James tensed to alertness and gripped the ship’s wheel again.
“Looks like we’re almost back,” Zane said, approaching the windows and peering out.
James suddenly didn’t feel ready. He realized now that he had drifted into a sort of stunned stupor, lulled by the motion of the ship and the timelessness of the dark. Now, adrenaline surged through his body like electricity, bringing with it a sick dread. He felt the weight of his wand in his pocket, and wondered how soon he might need to draw it, to use it to defend either his own life or someone else’s.
The blue light grew to fill the tunnel, but remained dim and murky, rushing forward to illuminate the ship.
“Something’s wrong,” James said, almost to himself.
Instead of angling out into the open air of the moonpool, the tunnel river rose suddenly, washing up the tunnel walls and closing over the bow of the Gertrude. The ship bobbed upward with it, rising on the sudden tide until the wheelhouse roof crunched against the ceiling, screeching and scraping with deafening force until the roof began to cave in over James’ and Zane’s heads. They ducked instinctively, eyes wide with fear.