Odin-Vann was nodding. “The Transitus Nihilo. The void outside of matter. Intriguing.”
“But it wasn’t a complete void,” James sighed and slumped. “I could see the cord that connects me to Petra. It crosses the border of Apparation with me. I could see it trailing off into the darkness.”
“Your connection,” Odin-Vann said thoughtfully. “The means by which you travel to her when you’re asleep.”
“Whenever she lets me,” James agreed, slumping back against the wall beneath the window.
Odin-Vann relaxed as well and went on in a different tone of voice. “You know, I’ve been curious about that connection of yours, James. We have a few minutes whilst you collect yourself. I wonder if you’d mind telling me about it?”
Rose interjected suddenly, a bit too loudly. “Oh, James has been besotted with Petra ever since his first years at Hogwarts. He’s just a magical romantic and a poet. Not a very good poet, of course, but he’s a Potter, so what can you expect?”
“No, Rose,” James said, glancing back and forth between his cousin and the professor. “Look, if we’re going to trust each other enough to steal back the crimson thread together and try to send Petra to be Morgan in some other dimension, then we have to be willing to trust each other with everything.” He focused on Odin-Vann again, who seemed merely to be patiently waiting. “It happened right before my third year, when we were on our way across the ocean to America and Alma Aleron…”
As briefly as he could, James recounted the story of how Petra had climbed to the stern of the Gwyndemere just as a freakish storm descended on the ship, threatening to capsize it amidst mountainous waves. He described how Petra had been in a sort of confused funk, facing the storm almost as if she meant to let it take her. Thus, when lightning struck the ship, cleaving a mast and knocking her overboard so that she dangled perilously from the rigging, she had considered letting the broken mast drag her down into the depths. James had rushed to grasp her hand, but she had resisted, asking him to let her fall.
“But I couldn’t,” he said, losing himself in the retelling, staring down at the dark classroom floor, “I couldn’t let her die, no matter what she said. There was nothing I could do, though. She started to slip from my outstretched hand, and I realized she was letting go. She was loosening her grip, ready to drop into the waves below the ship and sink.
She fell, and it felt like my own heart was falling away with her. And that’s when it happened.”
“The cord appeared,” Odin-Vann half whispered.
“It caught Petra, connected my right hand to hers, glowing like an acromantula web in the dark, vibrating like a harp string. It caught her and I was able to pull her back up.”
Rose seemed to have accepted the fact that James was going to share the entire story with Odin-Vann. She herself was now caught up in the retelling. “Lucy wrote me about that night when she was in the States. She was always a great one for writing letters. I remember it almost word for word. They were all below decks, in the Captain’s quarters, watching from the stern windows: Lucy, Merlin, Izzy, Uncle Harry and Aunt Ginny, everyone. They saw Petra fall from the back of the ship and dangle in the rigging. But then Merlin clouded the windows so they couldn’t see what happened next. Uncle Harry was unhappy about it. He said they should do something, but Merlin said no. Lucy quoted him exactly. He said something like…” She squinted and thought for a moment. “He said that the storm would claim its own, but the rest of them had nothing to fear. And in the end, it turned out that he was right. James saved Petra by borrowing from her own powers.” She glanced up at Odin-Vann, suddenly unsure if she’d said too much, but he only nodded.
“I know of Petra’s strange and seemingly unlimited powers, as I’ve already said. She hasn’t told me as much as I wish to know about them—I don’t suppose she ever could— but I do have some idea of what she is capable of.” He shook his head thoughtfully and turned his attention back to James, his eyes sharpening. “Petra was willing to die, you say? To fall to her death from the back of the ship? But why, do you think?”
“She was confused,” James shook his head, probing his memory.
“She’d just lost her grandfather and was under suspicion in the disappearance of her stepmother. She was homeless and lost and being chased by a… a…” He stopped himself from mentioning Judith, the Lady of the Lake, who had been conjured by the death of Petra’s stepmother through a sort of poisoned bargain. Trusting Odin-Vann was one thing, but James didn’t wish to complicate the matter any further— or implicate Petra any more deeply. He went on a little lamely, “Well, she was being chased by her own guilt, in a way.” Another memory struck him and he sat up. “But she had the brooch. It was sort of an opal thing with silver scrolly stuff all around it. She’d said it was a gift from her father. It must have come in the box of things that the Ministry sent her after he died in Azkaban. She was wearing the brooch on the night of the storm. When she fell off, it dropped into the waves, and she screamed. It seemed to represent a lot to her— the family she’d lost. The life she never had. I think that’s what finally broke her, losing that one thing that connected her to her dead parents.”
Odin-Vann wasn’t looking at James now. His gaze had drifted to the black window behind James’ head, at which he nodded slowly, thoughtfully. There was a strange glint in his eye. “But you were there,” he mused, half to himself. “And you saved her. You saved her from herself.”
James sank back against the wall again. “I guess so. I spoke to my dad afterward. He said that it was more than Petra’s magic that connected us and kept her from falling. He said that it was like when he was a baby and his mum was willing to die for him. Her death called on an older, deeper magic, and it made a sort of unbreakable protection, saving my dad from Voldemort’s curse. Dad said that because I was willing to die for Petra when she fell, we made the same sort of bargain with the deep magic. That’s what really saved her.”
Odin-Vann glanced back at James, his face clouding slightly.
“Really?” he said, and blinked. “Your dad, Harry Potter, told you that?”
James nodded. “He said he recognized the feeling of it.”