James, on the other hand, may be unaccustomed to confrontation, and he may lose his wit momentarily when surprised, but he could do magic if it came to it. Edgar Edgecombe had surprised him once, but the obnoxious little twit wouldn’t do so again. As Graham had suggested, James did know enough jinxes to put the boy in his place.
Mentally, he checked them off— the Jellylegs jinx, Levicorpus, the Bat-Bogey hex, stinging spells, the Toe Bite r— and decided that he could do most or any of them without getting into too much trouble with the administration. If, that was, the little berk was the tattling type. Maybe instead he was the type of wanton little bully who respected a hard shove back more than conciliatory words or appeals to authority.
Over the years, James had confronted and battled monstrous powers, maddened ghosts, mythical beings, and even doomed love. But up until now he had never had much experience with bullies. Somehow, this nemesis seemed, if not the most difficult, at least the most potentially annoying.
That night, for the first time in months, James dreamed of Petra.
He heard her voice through a fog of what felt like great time and distance. He couldn’t make out her words, but the tenor and lilt of her voice was unmistakable. It awoke in him the unguarded truth, irresistible and implacable in the uncomplicated core of his sleeping heart: he loved Petra. He had loved her for years, despite rarely seeing her, despite the complexities of her mysterious past and her uncertain future, despite even the doubt that sometimes haunted his waking mind.
He loved her with the sort of hopeless, unabashed devotion that surpassed reason and intellect and shot straight to the bright solar centre of his heart, charging and dominating it like a permanent lightning bolt.
Petra owned and occupied his deepest love. He could pretend otherwise while awake. But here, in the depths of the dream, the truth was an iron weight, heavier than the world.
He approached her through the fog, tuning her in, following the silver and crimson cord that bound them, and her voice began to clear.
There was another voice as well—a man’s voice? Was it the Muggle private detective she had partnered with back during the intrigue of the Morrigan Web? James thought not. Marshall Parris was an American.
This voice was British, and a bit younger. James recognized it, but only vaguely.
Gradually, their voices became clearer, closer, although still hidden behind great heaving masses of fog. James propelled himself onward, whumping through the cold greyness.
“I won’t dissuade you,” the man’s voice said, still thin with distance. “In fact, you’ll recall that it was my idea, almost two years ago, when you found me again.”
“I do recall,” Petra said. “But I dismissed the idea as your usual foolhardy blathering. You’ve always tended to be a bit emotional and thoughtless when it comes to protecting me.”
The man seemed unperturbed by this. “So what’s changed?”
“What you suggested thoughtlessly, I’ve given serious consideration.”
James pressed on, and finally the fog broke into tatters. Silver-frosted clouds stretched around him like arms, blocking the moon, casting shadows over a dark landscape: a small town with only a scattering of glowing windows, a scarcity of lit streetlamps. And then, past this, a huge building on a hill, encroached on all sides by forest and bramble, almost claimed by creeping vines and tangled roots. It was a mansion, though very old and utterly dark except for a single upper window, which flickered with the faintest suggestion of light. James approached it, slowing, listening, wanting nothing more than to hear Petra’s voice again, to see her, even if it was all merely a figment of his sleeping mind.
“You have what you need,” the man’s voice said. “What do you require me for?”
“No one grasps the underlying magic and spellwork like you do,”
Petra said. “It’s your particular genius to understand the magic behind the wand.”
The man’s voice, even more familiar now, seemed to smile doubtfully. “Petra, your visit to the Armory of Forbidden Books provided you everything you need to know regarding ‘the underlying magic and spellwork’.”
“Then maybe I just need a friend,” Petra sighed. “Someone who’s known me long enough to tell the truth. Someone impartial enough to see my real intentions. You know why I’m doing this, don’t you?”
James slowed as he neared the window. His dreaming mind rippled through the old glass without a sound. He entered a dark room with nothing but a small fire illuminating it, guttering and spitting in the hearth. The rug, as James’ bare feet touched it, was greasy and threadbare with age. The walls were filthy, cracked, leaning. James brushed them and his fingers came away thick with damp grime. The only furniture in the room was a pair of high-back chairs, facing the fire.
Between them, sitting close to the light of the flames, collecting their glow and glinting brightly, was a silver tray.
Something sat on the tray. Not a cup or saucer. A butter knife?
James drew closer, not sure he wanted to see. Mostly, he just wanted to approach Petra, to look upon her face, to see the glimmer of her eyes and the dark lustre of her hair. He missed her. His heart burned for her.
“You’re doing it because the world needs you,” the man said soberly. “But the world doesn’t know it. The world wants to stop you, by whatever means necessary, even if it means killing you. They blame you for everything.”
Petra sighed deeply. “They may not be entirely wrong in doing so.”
“That’s beside the point,” the man went on. “Even if you are the problem, you are also the solution. They cannot be allowed to stop you.
For the good of all, both the Muggle and magical worlds, you must survive. Your life is more than yours. It belongs to the world. To the universe. No matter what, you… must… survive.”
James occupied the deep shadows of the room, creeping closer.
He could see the top of Petra’s head over the back of her chair now.
The firelight flickered on it like burnished bronze.
“I must survive,” she repeated the words with mingled regret and resolve. “So, even though we are here, in the house of the one whose bloodline I am cursed with, even though I am willingly calling on his power now instead of thwarting it, as I’ve struggled to do at every step so far…”
“He did this for his own selfish aims, for power and destruction.
You do it for the good of the world.”
In the darkness, James blinked, as if coming fully awake in his own dream. What was happening here? Swiftly, he replayed the conversation he’d been barely hearing, having been too enthralled by the sound of Petra’s very voice to attend to her words. He glanced around at the room he was in. The smell of mold and rot filled his nose. What was this place? What had she just called it? The house of the one whose bloodline she is cursed with…?
James suddenly understood, knew with the unshakable certainty of the dream: this was the mansion of Tom Riddle’s father, long abandoned, overgrown, and falling to rot.