As of this morning, the population of the world has metaphorically blinked with surprise, shuffled its feet in mingled embarrassment and relief, laughed a little at itself, and with a bemused shrug, gone back about its normal business.”
James didn’t have any response to this. His mind was a pleasant buzz of shock, and relief, and wonderment. More memories were slowly coming back to him: his previous few years, generally uneventful but packed with regular, everyday concerns. The months of his last year of school, spooling along only loosely tainted by worries of the triple-six enigma. Up until the past week or so, that was, when the dreams had begun: dreams of a different but all-too-familiar version of reality, of an ocean journey to betrayal, and the Dark Mark hovering over a country cemetery, and Petra Morganstern leveling a wand at Albus’ chest…
The dreams and visions had mixed with reality until he couldn’t separate one from the other. And then, completely saturated with the nightmare portents of Petra and Judith, Odin-Vann and Albus and the disintegrating vow of secrecy, he had broken away, apparated out to the cemetery in Godric’s Hollow, convinced that he had the world to save, desperately and hopelessly. The world… and Petra Morganstern.
Although even in the dream, he had only succeeded at the former.
“You and I,” Merlin said in a low, secretive voice, lowering his chin and studying James closely, “are two of the only three living people who know the truth. The triple-six enigma was not, in fact, a dream. It was not a delusion, or mass hysteria. To the contrary, it was simply something terrible that almost happened… but then somehow didn’t.”
James’ heart thudded in his chest. He met the headmaster’s gaze. “So… what I think I remember… really did happen?”
Merlin nodded again. “In a reality only one small step removed from this one, yes. You alone have lived both destinies. Everyone else alive in this sphere merely dreamed of the other possibility, vaguely and in part, because it was so barely avoided. Even I only know what I do because my prodigious arts were augmented by a mutual acquaintance.
The man whom you once knew as Rechtor Grudje, among other names, may be a permanent inmate of the sanatorium ward of St. Mungo’s hospital, but his skill at reverse prophecy is as powerful as ever. He, who now goes by the name of Timothy Dumbledore, is the secret third of our trio. He assisted me, and was much gratified to be of service. He is a changed man from the villain you once knew, you may be glad to know. He has been greatly benefitted in the years since his mind was freed of the caged memories of his legendary uncle.”
James frowned, squinted with dawning bewilderment. “But…that couldn’t have happened, could it? The whole affair of the Morrigan Web, that was from the other destiny! That couldn’t also have happened here…?”
“Alas,” Merlin said almost cheerfully, pushing back in his chair and producing a sustained groan from its joints. “You shall find that there are far fewer changes in this world than you might expect. In fact, it might be simpler for me to explain the few things that have changed— apart from the fact that the world continues to exist, of course—than those that haven’t.”
James sat up again, placing his hands on the armrest with interest. A beam of sunlight warmed his feet as it crept slowly across the office floor, tracking the climbing sun.
Merlin seemed to be enjoying a certain smug amusement. “The Morrigan Web did indeed happen, for example, almost exactly as you remember it. The Quidditch summit occurred. Your father and aunt and uncle were temporarily arrested for destroying the Crystal Chalice.
Rechtor Grudje was confronted by his benefactor and nemesis, Albus Dumbledore, and that wizard’s captive memories were extricated from his mind, allowing him to assume his original identity as Timothy, son of Arianna.”
“But,” James interjected, still frowning in consternation. “The Morrigan Web was only prevented because Petra was there to… to…”
The words trailed off as the memory of Petra surfaced in his mind. A coolness came with it, sadness filling in the spaces around his cautious, budding relief.
Merlin drew a solemn sigh. “You are quite right. Miss Morganstern was not there in our reality. She died tragically, years earlier, sacrificing herself for the safety of many others. Thus, she did not, as you may remember, use the Morrigan Web to lure the Lady of the Lake into a fateful confrontation. She did not hire the unusual Muggle detective to track and reveal the Lady’s destructive plan.”
James was dumbfounded. “But then… who did?”
“Her sister,” Merlin replied simply, his eyes sharpening. “Miss Isabella Morganstern. Known to you and the rest of the world as Izzy.
Much of what you might remember Petra Morganstern doing in that other history, young Izzy did in this one.”
“Izzy…?” James repeated softly, leaning back into his chair again, weak with wonder. “But… she’s not even a witch!”
“Nor is she a Muggle,” Merlin said, raising a hand. “Not since her time with her departed sister. Izzy Morganstern is perhaps the most unusual living being currently on this planet. She is what might be described as a Guardian. She has subtle powers that derive neither from any witchy blood nor from the banked forces around her. She taps into something beyond all knowledge and technomancy, immeasurable and strange, something imparted to her by her sister, probably without her even knowing.”
James shook his head slowly, stunned, and yet somehow not particularly surprised. He looked back at Merlin again. “What else?”
Merlin nodded and drew a deep breath to speak. “The Lady known as Judith was utterly defeated on the night of the Morrigan Web.
Her time in this world was already dwindling since her host, the unfortunate Mr. Odin-Vann, was killed the year previous, during a raid in Muggle New York City, on the night of a holiday parade. The joined forces of your father’s Auror department and the American Muggle Integration Bureau discovered Mr. Odin-Vann standing over the murdered body of an American senator, a man called Charles Filmore.
It was not your father that fired the killing spell, however. It seems that young Mr. Odin-Vann was killed by a Muggle bullet, shot from the weapon of an American M.I.B. agent named Price. Self defence, since Odin-Vann was observed brandishing a wand. Later evidence suggests that Judith sacrificed her host in order to facilitate her own escape mere seconds earlier. Already dying in her absence, Odin-Vann was left behind as a distraction. This act of desperate cowardice sealed Judith’s fate, of course, since the death of her host uprooted her from our world.
“You might be interested to know that the Lady was eventually defeated not by young Isabella Morganstern’s uncanny magic, nor by the combined force of Mr. Titus Hardcastle and his squad of Aurors. She was attacked and ultimately dispatched by a certain pink snake, a manifestation of the fractured personality of an American witch that I believe you know rather well.”