Albus saw him, heard him, but ignored his brother. Even from this distance, James could see the expression of scowling resolve on his brother’s face—the expression that he’d worn almost exclusively over the past few weeks, silent and sullen as he haunted the Slytherin table in the Great Hall and the edges of the corridors, lost in his own dark musings.
It wasn’t simply that he was brokenhearted about his break up with Chance Jackson. James saw it now for what it was. His brother had been steeling himself up for something, preparing for some horrible duty that he believed was his alone to bear. Had Odin-Vann told him even before he’d told Petra? Had he exploited Albus’ natural inner darkness, preyed on his teenage melodrama?
Either way, Albus was the Ransom, ready to give up everything for the sake of the whole world.
Across the shadowy, wind-blown distance, Albus turned aside to Petra. She had his wand in her hand. Slowly, reluctantly, she leveled it at him.
“Do it,” Albus insisted calmly, his voice thin and small, carried on the wind.
“No!” James exclaimed, as loudly as he could. He ran forward, but stopped again as Petra looked at him, her eyes bright and intent, but clouded with blind determination. She would indeed do it, James saw.
He halted again, holding both hands up now, raised in a warning gesture. “The rest are coming!” he heard himself cry out, “and they won’t waste time on words! We only have a few seconds!” He switched his gaze to his brother. “Albus, don’t be a fool!”
“I’m sorry,” Albus muttered. He wasn’t speaking to James, or even to Petra. He almost seemed to be speaking to the nearby graves, as if he was disappointing them somehow. He turned and nodded his assent to Petra.
“Petra!” James yelled frantically, and started forward again, coming with thirty feet of the pair. The storm was blowing in with eerie speed, reaching to blot the moon behind a great, creeping wing of clouds. Wind whipped the grass and rattled the tree branches. “Please don’t! This isn’t who you really are!”
“You’re right, James,” Petra said, her eyes going cold, dead with resolve as she turned to him. Along with her gaze, the wand in her hand swiveled as well, swinging away from Albus, coming around to point at him instead, moving with slow, unmistakable purpose. “As of tonight, I will be known by an entirely different name. I am Morgan now. And since you came after all, despite all of my warnings, I’m afraid it must be you who will die for my cause. Brave Albus was your willing substitute, your surrogate. For his blood is your blood, and therefore able to satisfy the dark magic of the dimensional portal. But now… you are here. And I can’t deny what fate demands.” Tears fell down her cheeks, but her gaze didn’t waver, nor did the wand in her hand. “I’m so, so sorry, my love.”
“No!” Albus cried, and lunged with both hands, even as Petra’s face crumpled and the wand in her hand exploded with vivid green light.
James felt the power of the spell as it blasted toward him, illuminating the graveyard, spraying inky shadows in a radius behind each and every headstone, every individual blade of grass. The killing curse arced across the distance between them and James watched it come, as if time had become plastic, allowing him to stretch his final instant into patient infinity. He saw Albus’ hands on Petra’s wrist, saw the tears wet on her cheeks, her mouth pulled into a frown of wretchedness, her eyes squeezed shut, unable to watch.
And James thought, it’s OK. I’m glad to be the one to serve Petra.Even if it means my death. Even if she’s wrong, and killing me won’t make a dimensional portal, as Odin-Vann surely told her. At least it means that Albus doesn’t have to be the Ransom. She tried to save me. She loved me by sending me away. But it was always supposed to be me here in the graveyard with her, not Albus. If dying is serving her, even if it’s based on a lie and a mistake… then I’m glad to do it.
The killing spell struck and exploded. James felt a spray of grit pepper his face and hair, faltered backward a step with the force of the blast, and then felt himself fall backwards, almost gently, landing in a drift of heather and weeds. And yet, even as he stared up at the terrible glow of the Dark Mark, he sensed that he was not dead, or even particularly hurt. Dazed, he pushed up onto his elbows and raised his head. Directly ahead of him, a headstone tottered, crumbled, and fell apart, still fuming with green sparks. Albus’ intervention had been just enough to spoil Petra’s aim, sending the killing curse into the gravestone instead of James’ chest.
And then, in the breathless silence that followed, chaos broke out all around the cemetery.
A sequence of piercing cracks echoed from every direction and figures apparated into place, surrounding the cemetery and moving immediately into defensive positions. They hunkered behind trees, crouched behind tombstones and mausoleums. There were six of them, and then ten, and then more than a dozen.
“Ware!” a deep voice, Merlin, exclaimed from the darkness near the dead tree. “A killing curse has been fired!”
“Waste no time on Stunning,” another voice commanded.
James had a terrible intuition that this was his father. “But be sure at whom you aim! Innocent people may be present!”
A woman’s voice cried, “I see her! Northeast corner!”
Spells exploded across the graveyard, illuminating it in deadly firework colours.
Albus reached for Petra, but she darted away from him, approaching James at a frantic run. He cringed away from her in sudden fear, but she dropped the wand as she came, running between sizzling bolts of light. As she reached him, she tumbled to her knees and fell upon him.
“You’re alive!” she gasped, and moaned with fear, and hugged him to her.
“Yeah,” he said weakly against her shoulder. “Sorry about that.”
“No!” she said, and squeezed him harder. “I let Albus ruin my aim. I didn’t have the strength to do what I must! I’ve failed everything!
It’s all my fault!”
He hugged her back, and she seemed to go limp in his arms, either with relief or hopelessness. He supposed, under the circumstances, that they might both be the same thing.
“Odin-Vann lied to you,” he said—or at least began to. Halfway through the sentence, a streak of orange light struck a nearby obelisk, destroying its base. It crumbled, broke away, and began to topple.
James saw its looming shadow in the instant before it struck. With every ounce of his strength, he pushed Petra, throwing her away from him and out of the obelisk’s path. It struck him on the shoulder, crushed him down beneath it so hard and fast that he barely even felt it. Darkness plummeted over him, but not the darkness of unconsciousness. He was mashed into the weeds and heather, face down, his upper body suddenly pinned beneath a monstrous, cold weight, as if a giant was standing on his shoulders.