“James!” Petra screamed, her voice brittle with horror and fear, but the sound was distant, strangely unimportant, like a thing heard on a wireless in someone else’s house. Still, some deep, buried part of James’ mind hated to hear Petra upset. He tried to call out to her, to tell her it was all right. But no breath came to his crushed lungs. When he opened his mouth, only blood came out, hot and sticky, tasting like copper.
He knew, with only vague interest, that he was probably dying, crushed under the fallen monument.
But then, blissfully and suddenly, the weight was gone. His chest spasmed, gasped for air, and pain came instead. He felt the splintering grind of his ribs, sensed tearing as the broken bones punctured things deep inside his body.
“No!” Petra screamed, this time with low, furious emphasis.
There was a rush of terrible wind. A sound like shattering crockery. And then, a series of whumps, thumps, crashes, and distant cries.
“Minerva!” a voice bellowed.
“Hardcastle is down!” a woman called breathlessly.
“Fall back!” His father’s voice, panicked and desperate.
James felt himself lifted from the ground, gently, and yet another pall of pain wracked his body.
Blearily, he sensed movement all around. Large, heavy objects whirled around the cemetery like a cyclone, bashing through trees, clanging from the broken fence. They were tombstones, monuments, mausoleum doors, iron gates, all wrenched loose and powered by Petra’s vengeful will, forming an impassable maelstrom.
And yet her eyes were soft, pained with regret as she looked up at him. James realized that he, like the tombstones and monuments, was also being held aloft in Petra’s sorceress grip, but tenderly, as if gravity had simply forgotten about him for a moment. Dimly, he realized that blood was wetting his shirt, cooling fast in the stormy wind.
Petra studied him, seemed to look into him. And then, using the powers that were unique to her, she began to mend him. He felt a tingle and then gasped, more in surprise than pain, as his ribs shifted back into place, releasing his lungs from their broken death-clench. The ruptures deep inside his body first went numb, and then warmed as the pain faded away. Tentatively, he took a breath. His chest expanded, drew air, and his head swam.
“That was stupid of you, James,” Petra said quietly, affectionately, as she settled him back to the grass, coming to meet him.
The cyclone of headstones still swam all around, rushing and surreal. “I could have withstood the falling stone, and protected you from it.”
“I didn’t think about it,” James whispered, buckling slightly as gravity collected him again. “I just acted.”
“That’s you in a nutshell,” she said, and smiled wanly.
She reached out to him, placed a hand on his chest. His shirt was still soaked with blood. It stuck to her palm greased it with red.
James looked down at her. Her own face was bloody. It was a shocking sight to see. Something, probably a hunk of the falling obelisk, had struck her temple and cut it. Blood trickled from beneath her hair, down the line of her cheek, and dripped from her chin. Falling stone might not be capable of killing her, but she could still be cut.
She was still just human enough to bleed.
He cupped her cheek, felt the warm wetness of her blood against his fingers, tried to wipe it away from her skin.
She took her hand from his chest and looked down at it. Her palm was slick and tacky with his blood. With her head still lowered, she looked up at him with her eyes. There was a disconcerting, calculating look in her gaze, as if she wanted to say something, but didn’t quite dare.
An object glimmered mildly on the lapel of her jumper. James glanced down at it, saw that it was her father’s brooch, the identical twin of the one that had fallen into the ocean four years earlier.
Without a word, Petra raised her head. Keeping her bloody right hand raised, she turned, as if facing the incoming storm.
“Claudicatis in ?ternum mortiferum!” Her voice was terrible, deafening as thunder, yet clear as birdsong.
Lightning cleaved the sky. It lanced through the skull of the Dark Mark, brightening it, and struck the earth immediately before Petra. The blast propelled James backward, toppling him again into the mass of heather and weeds. The lightning did not strike and vanish, however, but remained locked in place, caged between earth and sky, rioting within itself, crackling with a voice of doom.
“Petra!” James shouted, but his voice was virtually inaudible beneath the noise.
She didn’t hear him, or chose to ignore him if she did. But she did look back. Against the blinding, boiling glare, her face was a mere silhouette. Storm wind tore at her hair, flailed it about her face as she turned back to him one last time. She tried to smile. It was a sad, pathetic attempt. Her eyes sparkled with regret.
And then, with a shuddering breath and squared shoulders, she faced the magical portal that she had conjured, stepped forward, and walked into its violent glare. It swallowed her up with an explosion of blinding light and hurricane-force icy wind.
The blast flattened James, bowled away in every direction.
All around, the maelstrom of stone and iron fell away, crashing to the ground, bereft of its mistress.
“No,” James said again, no longer shouting, barely whispering.
He stared at the crackling, captured bolt of lightning, the magical portal, now empty. It hadn’t vanished with Petra, but the Dark Mark above it had.
James scrambled to his feet, made to move forward into the bolt, to follow Petra, but a hand grabbed his shoulder. He didn’t see whose it was and didn’t care. He twisted to throw it off, his eyes still locked on the writhing fork of light.
“James!” a voice shouted, and the hand yanked him harder, jerking him backwards. Still James fought it, lashing out, struggling to bat the grasping hand away.
More hands gripped him, tugged him, wrestled him back.
“If you go into the portal without the sigils,” the voice exclaimed breathlessly, “you’ll be killed instantly! Stop fighting us, you great idiot!”
James finally blinked and turned, as if snapping out of a trance.
He found himself looking into the face of his brother, Albus.
“She’s gone,” another voice said, this one female. James glanced aside, still stunned, and saw Rose holding onto his shoulder. Beside her was Ralph. Scorpius and Zane stood on Albus’ other side, their eyes wide and haunted.
“What happened?” James asked in a dazed voice, sensing that somehow things were worse than even he knew.
Ralph swallowed hard. “Once we heard where everyone had gone, we followed. Rose side-along apparated with Zane. We ran into the graveyard and hit the ground when the spells started. The others retreated…” he said, and then shook his head. “And then, all of them…”
“They’re gone,” Zane said, his eyes bald with shock, as if he didn’t quite believe it himself. “The flying stones took out some of them. Maybe they were just knocked out… maybe…”
“Dad!?” James asked, turning to Albus.