“Home, sweet home,” he said, pushing the door fully open and ducking slightly to enter. He didn’t invite James, Rose, and Ralph inside. He merely left the door open and assumed they would follow.
James had been in several of the teachers’ quarters before, but this was by far the smallest and most spartan of any of them. The room seemed barely larger than a maintenance closet, crammed with a single bed against the far wall, beneath a single narrow window, next to a single, albeit very large, open leather trunk on a rickety three-drawer bureau. Across from this was a sagging Chesterfield sofa and a tall desk nearly obliterated beneath mounds of paperwork, tools, a huge magnifying glass on an articulated stand, a precariously leaning tea tray, and a thick book James recognized as the Charms class textbook: The Caster’s Lexicon of Spells, Charms, & Hexes. The professor’s copy was dog-eared, fat with use, and crammed with bookmarks and slips of parchment.
“I’ll make this brief, and I shall deny every word should you choose to repeat it,” Odin-Vann announced, remaining standing but indicating the sofa with one hand. With the other, he flicked his wand at the door, which swung shut with a sweep of air and a heavy clap.
Once again, James noticed the Professor’s magical prowess in the wake of a moment of stress. He wondered, perhaps unfairly, if the professor would have been capable of something as simple as closing the door a few minutes earlier, when James had first confronted him in the hall.
Ralph plopped onto the couch, which moaned under his weight.
Rose lowered herself onto the other end. James, however, stood in front of the closed door, observing the professor in the cramped space.
“So you really were there, then,” he confirmed, cocking his head.
In answer, Odin-Vann turned to the desk and began to shuffle papers, seemingly randomly. “How long have you three known her?” he asked. Without waiting for an answer, he went on, “I met Petra right here in school. I was a seventh-year, like you. She was a first year. A strange bridge for friendship to cross, but it happens sometimes. We had similar family situations, you see. She was being raised by her grandfather, who loved her, and his new wife, who did not. It was an unhappy arrangement, and Petra rarely spoke of it, but I recognized the silence. I had a similar home life, being raised by an uncle and his wife and his much older children. None of them wanted me there, and took pains to make certain I knew it. I had come to terms with it, having lived it all of my school years. I had hardened a bit. Petra had not yet hardened. And in my heart, I didn’t want her to. So I befriended her.
We became secret allies. I watched out for her. It was a brief but important acquaintance. I expect she shared more with me during that one year than she did with any other school mates over the following six.”
He handled the magnifying glass on its articulated arm, moving it into a new position, apparently merely to give his hands something to do. He glanced back toward the three students, but not at them, exactly.
“I knew she was powerful, even then. Although I had no idea how much, or why. I just knew that she was special. Later, when I heard about what happened in Muggle New York City, on the Night of the Unveiling, I trusted, deep down, that Petra had had a good reason for whatever she did. She was always powerful and passionate, and she has a lot of buried anger—one can’t blame her for that, what with her upbringing—but she was never driven by it. She may use her anger sometimes, like a healer uses a blade, to lance and excise, but never like a villain with a dagger, to threaten and kill.”
“Is that why you went to her?” Rose asked from the couch, leaning forward with interest. “To help her, once the rest of the magical world turned on her?”
Odin-Vann finally looked at Rose, and blinked. “Oh, I didn’t go to Petra. How could I? No one knew where she was. And frankly, despite everything, I wasn’t even positive that she’d really remember me.
Both of us have changed quite a lot in the many years since we were friends. She was just a child then. I was…” He shrugged and shook his head faintly. “Well, I was just a gawky teenager, more full of ego than wisdom, but willing to spew either to anyone who would give me an ear.” He continued to shake his head wryly, and then looked back at Rose. “No, I didn’t go to Petra. She came to me. It was only a few months ago. She needed help, you see. She has all the power, does Petra, but she doesn’t have all the knowledge, and she is smart enough to know it. It turned out that she remembered her old friend Donofrio after all. She came to me, and asked for my help. And I granted it, of course. But in secret.” He pressed his lips together tightly, eyeing all three students with an air of wary annoyance. “Until now.”
“We’re safe,” Ralph said pointedly, glancing around at the others. “In case you were wondering.”
“Oh, I know,” Odin-Vann admitted. “Petra told me whom I could trust, should I have need to. I believed her, and yet I wasn’t certain I really could trust any of you. Not because you weren’t on her side, but because you’re, well…” He stopped abruptly and blinked at the three students.
James suddenly understood. “Because we’re just teenagers,” he prompted. “It’s OK. You can say it. Maybe we aren’t trustworthy because we’re just clumsy, loud-mouthed students who don’t have any clue about how the grown-up world works.”
Odin-Vann shook his head at James. “No, not like that. I mean… yes. A little like that. But you misunderstand me.”
“That’s good,” Rose commented a bit archly. “Because believe it or not, we’ve been through the gauntlet more than once in our years.
You’ve no idea.”
“Actually, I do.” Odin-Vann said in a different voice. James looked at him and saw a new expression on the man’s face. All the suspicion and caginess had finally gone out of it. He looked at them directly, settling his gaze on James. “Petra told me some of the things you lot have gone through on her behalf. She told me about the World Between the Worlds. She told me about the Gatekeeper’s curse, and how you intervened to protect her from herself. She said that you three, and some American named Zane Walker, have always been there for her, that you’ve faced things that most grown witches and wizards would run screaming from. I didn’t quite believe her, I admit. Because there’s so much at stake, you see. If we trusted you, and you didn’t come through—if you got caught somehow, or blabbed to the wrong schoolmate—well, I was just thinking of Petra’s mission. She mustn’t be stopped, you see. You know that as well as I. I had to be absolutely certain that you were exactly as competent and trustworthy as Petra said.
So I watched.”
Ralph shifted on the end of the couch, narrowing his eyes slightly. “And what did you decide?”