“Potter!” One of the portraits commanded in a steely voice.
James turned to see a painting of a very ugly farmer standing in a field of blooming Spynuswort. The farmer’s face was vaguely recognizable beneath his wide-brimmed hat.
“Your brother is not in the castle,” the painted figure said quickly. “Every other student is accounted for except him.”
“Albus?” James asked, his mind spinning.
“Albus Severus, my namesake,” the disguised portrait of Snape said. “And our names are not all that we have in common. His loyalties are divided. You must find him.”
James shook his head. “No, it’s Petra I have to find! She’s here, in the Great Hall! I have to warn her!”
“No!” Snape insisted, his eyes blazing from the painting. “For once in your insipid, reckless little lives would one of you Potters listen to me!? The headmaster has divined the truth! Odin-Vann, whom you were lucky enough to best, was the Architect. But your brother is the Ransom! Without him, their plan fails! Find him right now, Potter!
This is not about his safety, but the balance of worlds!”
James was shaking his head, barely listening now. Another deep shudder shook the floor and broke chunks from the ceiling. The Great Hall doors wrenched open as a blast of icy wind and furious light exploded through them.
James forgot about the portrait of Snape. He broke away from the wall, angled around the smoking vehicle, ducked behind the defending teachers, leapt the unconscious figure of Martin Prescott, and pushed through the crack of the huge wooden doors.
The Great Hall beyond was dark, creaking, full of motion, a wrecked shamble of shocking destruction.
Every window was broken, jagged with shards of glass and bent metalwork. The ceiling was laced with cracks and missing huge chunks, its enchantment flickering and fading, showing mere fractures of marching storm clouds and approaching lightning. The floating candles spun and bounced from the walls, many broken, most with their flames extinguished, streaming ribbons of grey smoke.
The tables were forced against the walls, wrecked and smashed together.
The rose window was intact, but flickering with fire and laced with cracks.
In the centre of the floor, Merlin and Petra faced each other, each breathing hard, each staring at the other with furious intensity.
Merlin’s staff was raised in his right hand, its runes pulsing with green light. Petra’s hair was wild around her face, her left hand raised palm out, fingers splayed. It was clear that the duel between them had descended to brute attack, a stalemate between equal powers and level cunning.
“Go to your common room, James!” Merlin ordered, his voice cracked, strained.
“Obey the headmaster,” Petra seethed, not taking her eyes from the sorcerer before her.
James clambered forward instead, getting between the two, raising both of his hands.
“Petra…!” he began.
The rose window exploded in a cloud of glass as something huge bashed through it, taking its pillars and supports with it. The head table broke under the weight of the object as it slammed down, and James dimly saw that it was a tree trunk, freshly torn from the ground, its roots still clotted with earth. A monstrous shape wielded the trunk, following it through the raining debris, head down and shoulders hunched. It was a giant, its eyes wild with fear, its hairy free hand fisted into a knuckly boulder, ready to fight.
James suddenly wavered on his feet as a bolt of blinding blue shot over his shoulder, emanating from Petra’s raised right hand. She had launched an attack, but not at the giant. Taking advantage of the distraction, she had aimed at the headmaster. The assault drove him backwards with violent force. He struck the dais hard enough to break it, cratering the ruin of the head table, right in the very shadow of the giant. The giant, panicked, reached for the prone human figure at its feet. Its massive hand closed over Merlin and pulled him from the destruction, along with a fistful of broken table.
Merlin’s staff flashed and the giant recoiled, snapping its fingers open again. Merlin tumbled, fell, and arrested his momentum in midair, floating, his arms wide, his eyes glowing with fierce golden light.
But Petra was already advancing, redoubling her attack with merciless intensity. She launched another barrage even as the headmaster arrested his fall. The blast struck him in the chest and bashed him backwards, past the invading giant, through the ruin of the rose window, and into the flaming night beyond.
James’ knees trembled as inexplicable weakness overtook him, making the world fade to grey. He remembered the same feeling when Petra and Merlin had battled in the World Between the Worlds.
Somehow, James was like a battery in Petra’s presence, holding a reserve of her power. She siphoned it from him through the invisible cord that connected them, just as he had siphoned it from her during the debacle of the Morrigan Web, right in this hall, and years before that, when he had first conjured the cord of her power to save her very life.
He staggered in the smoky dark, his head spinning.
Petra strode forward purposefully, climbing the dais and raising one hand to the giant without even looking. The giant blinked, tottered, and crunched to its gigantic rump on the ruin of the table. Its head dipped to its chest and the huge creature snorted a massive, grating snore, even as its bare feet, as large and hard as crypt doors, slid forward, grating on broken glass.
“Petra!” James shouted, clambering forward in her wake. “Petra, wait!”
“I can’t wait, James!” she exclaimed back at him, halting and glancing over her shoulder. “My time here is done! This world is in chaos, and it’s all my fault! You can’t stop me, James! No one can be allowed to stop me!” Her face was terrible in the darkness, illuminated only by the writhing fiendfyre beyond the destroyed window. But her eyes shimmered, and James saw that there were tears in them. She was afraid, and she was driven by guilt, and she didn’t want to leave, and she knew that she had no other choice.
“Don’t follow me, James!” she demanded, firming her gaze, her voice hoarse and desperate. “I can’t be responsible for what happens to you if you do!”
With that, she turned swiftly, leaving him behind and striding out through the broken window, where she was obscured by a pall of smoke.
James struggled over the broken table, his feet slipping on broken glass and destroyed stonework. When he finally climbed over the giant’s feet and the ledge of the decimated window, he could see nothing but smoking lawn and roaring flames beyond. He jumped to the bushes, tumbled to the dry grass, and cast about in all directions, looking for any sign of Petra, squinting against the blinding fire.