Odin-Vann frowned at Zane. “Your professor Jackson spends too much time toying with theory and too little time in actual magical practice. He thinks he knows much more than he does, which is precisely why he must not be involved in this mission at all, or know anything about it. When the time comes, Mr. Walker, I will summon you to assist me in returning the thread to the Vault of Destinies. I understand that you are wily enough to procure a key to the Alma Aleron archive, where it is housed?”
Zane shrugged. “I’m wily enough to get you a live orchestra to play The Blue Danube while you do it, if you want. You just say when.”
Odin-Vann agreed with a nod. “Once I am prepared, I shall indeed say when. If all goes as planned, the moment the thread is returned, Petra shall assume her new role as the Morgan of that alternate dimension. The original Morgan of that dimension, now dead and buried here, will become our version of Petra.”
Still lying on the sofa arm next to Petra, Izzy rolled onto her side and buried her face against Petra’s shoulder. She wasn’t crying, James sensed—she had surely already shed more than her share of tears over the impending loss of her sister—but neither was she ready to allow it to happen just yet. Probably, she never would be.
James found he was shaking his head, finally hitting on an objection that had been brewing in the back of his mind for some time.
“But it can’t be that simple, can it?” He turned to look aside at Petra.
“That other dimension’s version of you, the Morgan version, was evil.
She partnered with Judith to steal Izzy from you, since she accidentally killed her own dimension’s version. She was willing to see my dad and Titus Hardcastle killed by the W.U.L.F.”
“She wasn’t evil,” Odin-Vann corrected with grave certainty.
“Morgan wasn’t evil any more than Petra is, regardless of what the rest of the magical world may think. She was simply heartsick by the consequences of her choices. People will do surprisingly desperate things when they are heartsick. Morgan wasn’t evil. She was simply broken, and crushed, and bereft.”
“And when I go to replace her in her world,” Petra said, still staring blankly into the shadows. “I will be broken and crushed and bereft as well. I will be more Morgan than Petra myself. I’ll have lost the people I love the most. It will be exactly as it should be.”
The chill in her words was terrible to James. She sensed this.
Without looking at him, she felt for his hand between them, squeezed it, and held it.
You’re one of those people, the touch of her hand seemed to say.
He didn’t know if the thought came directly from her, via the invisible cord that connected them, but he didn’t doubt the sentiment, either way. He squeezed her hand back and drew a deep, shaking sigh.
Odin-Vann suggested that he be the one to safeguard the crimson thread until the time of its final use. “For the very reason it was hidden in the World Between the Worlds by Morgan: because it is far too magical to go unnoticed. Despite recent events, Hogwarts is still one of the most magically fortified places on earth. There, I can keep it hidden.”
“Just like Madame Delacroix did with the Merlin throne,” Zane nodded and shrugged, “back during our first year, when we were all still just wide-eyed innocents, untainted by the tribulations of responsibility.”
Petra rolled her eyes at Zane, but there was a ghost of a smile there as well.
Odin-Vann held out a small leather-bound jewelry box, open like a clamshell. Petra stood and placed the crimson thread in the box, which Odin-Vann snapped closed, never touching the thread himself.
James had an idea that the professor wouldn’t have been able to hold the thread even inside the jewelry box if Petra had not placed it there with her own hand, granting her unspoken permission.
James also had an idea that Ralph, were he there, would object strongly to Odin-Vann’s possession of the thread.
“And this,” Odin-Vann said, tugging the unicorn horseshoe from his pocket and handing it to Petra, “I assume you can return to its rightful place of protection?”
Petra accepted it with a weary nod. “The curators of the Tower of Art will never know it was gone.”
Shortly, James felt the pull of the collapsing dream-visit. The walls of the game room darkened. Voices became insubstantial, like noises heard underwater. And then, for a long time, there was only darkness. He returned to his bed via the dark, much more quietly and subtly than he had left.
James spent most of that Saturday midday listlessly haunting the common room, making halfhearted attempts at his Herbology reading assignment and other homework. He had just begun an essay on the seventeen-point mental checklist required before Disapparation (he had only recently begun the class on the subject, but would not be making any actual attempts for several weeks), when Rose came through the portrait hole, followed by Scorpius.
Joining James at a corner table, she demanded explanations of everything that had happened the previous night, and James, in turn, berated her lateness in warning them of Merlin’s departure.
“Late nothing!” she hissed at him, leaning close, her eyes stern.
“He never left at all! At least, not in any way that the Map showed.”
James frowned. “But you sent the Duck warning. One magical battle too late, of course, but you sent it. What do you mean he never left?”
Scorpius unslung his knapsack and pushed it across the table to James. “The Map,” he gestured at it. “It’s there inside. It shows the headmaster all right, just as expected. We followed his movements precisely, all night, from right here in the common room. He started out in the entrance hall. Then he went to the library.”
Rose nodded. “And then he went down to the laundry. We wondered about that, but what do we know? Maybe he checks in on the house elves every night. He’s the headmaster.”
“But then he went to the girl’s third floor bathroom,” Scorpius went on, arching an eyebrow. “So we got a bit suspicious.”
Rose counted off on her fingers as she recited, “Then he went to the Ravenclaw common room. Then a broom closet. The potions classroom. An empty teacher’s lounge. The kitchens. A supply cupboard.”
“And then he spent some time at the top of the stairs just down the hall,” Scorpius said, tilting his head. “So we poked out to see what he was up to.”
James looked from Scorpius to Rose, baffled. “So? What was he doing?”
“Who knows?” Rose said meaningfully. “All we found was Peeves defacing a statue with a stolen lipstick. Peeves wearing Merlin’s black ring on his finger!”
James blinked at his cousin for a moment, trying to absorb the implication of this.
Rose grew impatient. “Merlin gave his beacon stone ring to Peeves for ‘safe keeping’!” she made sarcastic air-quotes with her fingers.
“We tried to take it away from him, told him it was a powerful dark relic, but he acted like we had insulted his dear beloved mum! Er, assuming poltergeists have mums…” She frowned a little uncertainly.
“So Merlin tricked the Map into thinking Peeves was him,”
James finally understood with a thoughtful nod. “But how did Merlin know to do that last night?”
“He didn’t!” Rose perked up again. “That’s just the thing!
Peeves told us Merlin entrusted him with the ring almost two years ago!”