James glanced down, his mind spinning, and saw a pair of old black spectacles resting on his hand. They were heavy, the lenses fogged with dust. He looked up at Scorpius again. The blonde boy shrugged and twirled his wand.
“Accio casket,” he said simply. “I saw where this was headed and ran back to visit your grandparents’ graves. They’re right over there in the corner where these two started out.” He tilted his head toward Albus. “Those are your dead grandfather’s spectacles. I doubt they’re your prescription, though.”
Ralph glanced quickly from Scorpius, to Rose. “What about the other two sigils? A relic from some other dimension? Where we going to find something like that?”
“Holy hinkypunks…!” Zane suddenly announced, raising his eyebrows in an epiphany of inspiration. He glanced around at Ralph, then Zane, his eyes wild with wonder. “I never really got around to returning it to the museum in the Tower of Art after we used it last fall!
I’ve just been carrying it around, too wary to leave it home alone, but too lazy to take care of it!” He dug in the pocket of his jeans and produced a largish, silvery object. James’ mouth dropped open at the sight of it.
“The unicorn’s horseshoe!” he gasped. “You’ve just been carrying it around in your pocket all this time?”
“Horseshoes are good luck where I come from!” Zane shrugged and bulged his eyes, and spread his palms, one of which still held the miraculous horseshoe. “And for once procrastination is a good thing, right?!”
James stuffed his grandfather’s spectacles into his pocket as Zane handed him the ancient silver shape. It was cold and very heavy in his left hand.
“But,” he asked, still looking down at the gently glowing object, “what about the blood of dearest love?”
Rose reached and grabbed James’ right hand where it hung at his side. She raised it, showing the drying smear of red that still pasted his fingers.
“Petra’s blood!” she rasped, her eyes wild with amazement. “You touched her bleeding face! I saw you do it from my hiding place, right before she went through the portal!”
James looked at Petra’s blood on his hand. It still glistened red wherever it hadn’t already dried to a sticky maroon. Freshening drops of rain pattered down, wetting it again.
“You have the three sigils!” Albus called over the increasing roar of the storm, forcing James to look up into his face. “Only you can follow Petra through!”
“Go, James!” Zane said, pushing his friend forward. “Go stop them! Don’t let them win!”
“Save Petra,” Rose added breathlessly.
“Save bloody everybody,” Scorpius countered.
Ralph gripped James by the shoulder. “You can do it, mate.
This battle is all yours.”
James nodded helplessly. “Just like the dryad said.”
He turned to the lightning portal. It still crackled and writhed, captive between heaven and what remained of earth. But it was dimming, fading even as he watched, dying away with the rest of the world—with the rest of the known universe. The only thing that remained was the storm overhead. It condensed, descending into a roar that thickened the very air, lowering over James, seeking him relentlessly.
James drew a deep, shaking breath. With his dead grandfather’s glasses in his pocket, the silver horseshoe in his left hand, and Petra’s blood painting his right, he stepped forward.
The lightning portal was thinning, yet somehow still blindingly bright. It’s cursed light filled his eyes, blotted out the endless, hungry dark beyond.
He stepped forward, felt power prickle through his hair, caress his cheeks and shoulders like electric tentacles. He closed his eyes.
And then, suddenly, the portal enveloped him.
His next step took him out of the world, out of time, and into forever.
25. – The Time Between the Times
“Hurry it up, Petra, and don’t let Noah’s brother see you.”
It was Ted Lupin’s voice, young and blithe, untainted by worry.
The girl nodded, brushing past James as the portrait of the Fat Lady swung open to reveal the fire-lit glow of the common room. James began to follow her in when Ted threw an arm around his shoulder, turning him around and bringing him back out onto the landing.
“My dear James, you can’t imagine we’re going to let you toddle off to bed at such an early hour, do you? There are Gryffindor traditions to think about, for Merlin’s sake.”
“What?” James stammered. “It’s midnight. You know that, do you?”
“Commonly known in the Muggle world as ‘The Witching Hour’,” Ted said instructively. “A misnomer, of course, but ‘The Witching and Wizarding Pulling Tricks on Unsuspecting Muggle Country Folk Hour’ is just a bit too long for anyone to remember. We like to call it, simply, ‘Raising the Wocket’.”
Ted was leading James back toward the stairs, along with three other Gryffindors. “The what?” James asked, trying to keep up.
“Boy doesn’t know what the Wocket is,” Ted said mournfully to the rest of the group. “And his dad’s the owner of the famous Marauder’s Map. Just think how much easier this would be if we could get our hands on that bit of skullduggery.” Turning back to James, he said, “Let me introduce you to the rest of the Gremlins, a group you may indeed hope to join, depending on how things go tonight, of course.” Ted stopped, turned and threw his arm wide, indicating the three others skulking along with them. “My number one, Noah Metzker, whose only flaw is his unwitting relationship to his fifth-year prefect brother.”
Noah bowed curtly at the waist, grinning.
“Our treasurer,” Ted continued, “if we ever manage to come across any coin, Sabrina Hildegard.”
A pleasant faced girl with a spray of freckles and a quill stuck in her thick reddish hair nodded to James.
“Our scapegoat, should such services ever be required, young Damien Damascus.”
Ted gripped the shoulder of a stout boy with heavy glasses and a pumpkin-like face who grimaced at him and growled.
“And finally, my alibi, my perfect foil, everyone’s favorite teacher’s favorite, Ms. Petra Morganstern.”
Ted gestured affectionately to the girl who was just returning from the portrait hole, her long dark hair framing a face that James immediately memorized, recognizing straight away that she was soon to become the solar centre of his universe, although he barely knew how or why. She met his gaze and smiled, her eyes twinkling but deep with hidden secrets.
She was so young, so seemingly carefree. James had no idea what lay beneath that easy, pretty smile.
Except that he did.
Both of her parents were dead, her father at the hands of vengeful Azkaban guards, killed for dark secrets they insisted that he was keeping, her mother in childbirth, dying even as Petra’s first cries met the world. Now, Petra lived with her grandfather and his hateful, vicious, Muggle wife, Phyllis, whose bullying even extended to her own mentally handicapped daughter, young Izzy Morganstern, whom Petra loved like a sister and protected as best she could.