“That was dead brilliant thinking, Ralph!” James exclaimed as he ran to help his friend. “Are you all right?”
“Ungh,” Ralph moaned and clutched his head. “I don’t think I’ll ever be all right again. Sincerely.”
“Everything’s gone completely upside down,” James declared, “I’m sorry, Ralph. You were right all along about Odin-Vann.”
“You think?” Ralph wheezed, and laughed feebly.
“Have you seen Petra?” James asked earnestly. “Finding her is our only chance. Odin-Vann and Judith mean to kill her and end everything. He has some sort of delusion about becoming Judith’s new host and starting an all new version of our destiny.”
“He can’t kill Petra,” Ralph shook his head, finally standing up straight. “She has a Horcrux. He knows that better than anyone. And how can he start any new destinies? The Loom is destroyed.”
“He’s the one that destroyed it,” James nodded darkly. “But no matter what, Petra is the key to everything. I thought she might have come here, to Merlin, looking for her father’s brooch.”
“Merlin’s been a little busy,” Ralph shrugged and nodded toward a nearby window. “What with the whole world coming down on the castle like a plague. Centaurs, Merpeople, Muggle explorers and news people. I was looking for him myself, to finally tell him everything we know. He’s here somewhere. Just not in his office.”
James’ face hardened and he raised his wand again. He turned back to the decimated corridor and trotted to where Odin-Vann lay, his arm broken and his wands destroyed.
Only the professor was no longer there.
“He disapparated or something,” Ralph said angrily, coming alongside and glancing around. “Had to have.”
“Or she took him,” James muttered. “Judith. She needs him.
He’s to be her new host. Or her pet human. Either way, he’s essential to whatever her plan is.”
The castle shook again, quaked violently with a sustained shock, but this time the violence was accompanied by a gust of wintry, ice-flecked air. It whistled through the broken wall and streamed through James’ and Ralph’s hair.
James’ eyes widened. He glanced at Ralph.
“Petra!” they both said in unison.
“We have to apparate!” James added breathlessly. “The entrance hall!”
Ralph nodded and swallowed hard. James could see that his friend was nervous about testing his apparating skills under such conditions.
James gave him a bracing grip on the shoulder. “You know the entrance hall as well as you know your own house. You’ve been there a thousand times. You can do this, Ralph. On three!”
Ralph nodded, firming his jaw. “On three.”
“One…” James said.
“Two…” they both said together, gripping their wands in preparation for whatever they would find waiting for them.
“Three!”
The world snapped away, whirled wildly, and reasserted itself with a shock of speed and noise. James’ feet struck the stone floor of the entrance hall and something immediately bounced off his head. He blinked, stumbled backwards, and raised a hand to his brow, probing to see if he was injured.
A muffin rolled at his feet. It appeared to be blueberry.
“Elf work is for elves!” a chorus of tiny, angry voices cried, and more muffins sailed through the air. They pelted the walls, bounced from portraits, pattered and rolled down the staircase steps.
“We have quite enough to handle at the moment without your little elven uprising!” a shrill voice exclaimed. James turned to see Professor McGonagall near the stairs, her wand raised warningly. A line of other teachers stood with her, looking variously confused and impatiently harried. “I will say this only once more!” McGonagall shouted. “All of you, back to the kitchens for your own safety!”
“Safety is not our concern!” a tiny voice called back. James turned to see Piggen, his face pained but resolved. “Without service for all of our kind worldwide, death is a preferred option!” Turning to the line of elves behind him, he yelled, “Muffins away!”
Another barrage of baked goods streamed through the air.
Dimly, James sensed Ralph pulling on his elbow, dragging him out of the space between the professors and the elves. Zane, Rose, and Scorpius huddled in the shadow of the stairs, their eyes wild.
“James!” Rose gasped, grabbing his other arm and pulling him into the nominal protection of the balustrade. “What happened?”
“I saw Odin-Vann,” James answered as briefly as he could. “But not Petra. She’s got to be nearby. We felt her magic at work.”
“We felt it, too,” Zane said, and pointed to the closed doors of the great hall. “From in there. Sounds like a war-zone!”
James made to break away from the group, to run across the muffin-littered floor toward the great hall, when the main entrance doors blasted inward next to him, breaking from their hinges, swinging and falling away before a concussive shock. One of the falling doors barely missed James as it slammed down, throwing up a cloud of stinging grit. Light glared and the throttle of an engine roared. The gunmetal-grey off-road vehicle plowed into the entrance hall, bouncing over the broken doors. Its windscreen was smashed to a cloud of cracks and its front end was mangled almost unrecognizable, singed black and smoking. Only one of the headlamps still worked, stabbing its glare up at the staircase.
“Attack!” Piggen cried shrilly, and a barrage of biscuits, rolls, scones, and even pots and pans arced toward the vehicle, bouncing and clanging from its blackened and steaming bonnet.
“They drove their blasted vehicle through the fiendfyre boundary,” McGonagall announced. “We’re breached! Hogwarts is breached!”
The vehicle’s doors sprang open and people began to tumble out, running in all directions, their faces wild with terror.
From the darkness beyond the smashed-in entrance, shadows moved. The clatter of hooves approached. Voices bellowed and shouted.
One of the Muggles did not run away. He stumbled into the centre of the entrance hall, his figure illuminated brilliantly by the vehicle’s headlamp. He was thin and tall, with angular features and sleek dark hair, now mussed and wild. James recognized him immediately. It was the rogue Muggle reporter from his first year, Martin Prescott.
“I knew it!” Prescott shouted hoarsely, triumphantly. He balled his fists, raising them into the air. “I knew it wasn’t a dream! I was here!
I was here!”
McGonagall rolled her eyes impatiently and stunned him with her wand. Prescott tumbled to the floor still grinning, his hands still fisted in victory.
“Protego Maxima!” McGonagall called next, striding past the smoking vehicle and aiming for the door. A burst of blue light formed a shield. Behind her, Professors Shert, Votary, and Heretofore surged forward and added their strength to the charm, defending against the approaching centaurs.
The castle boomed again. The ceiling of the entrance hall cracked along its entire length. Broken plaster and chunks of masonry rained down. Portraits tilted and fell from the walls. Windows broke and shattered all around.