“There’s no other way,” Petra said flatly. “I can’t stay here. I can’t be imprisoned here. And most of all, I can’t die here. That would be the worst thing of all. If that happened…” She shook her head, her eyes going glassy. She cradled the object that had been sitting on the bench next to her, placed it on the book on her lap and covered it with both hands.
“You mean,” James said, hating the thought, “that if both versions of you died in this world… there would be no hope of ever setting it right?”
Petra nodded. And then shook her head. “It would be disastrous. Not just for our world, which would have two Petras in it, but the other, which would have none. How can we know what that would cause? Maybe a chain-reaction of collapsing destinies across the whole universe of realities?” Her face hardened at the thought. “That’s why I can’t allow anyone to stop me. No matter what. I can’t be imprisoned here. I can’t die here.”
“That’s why you made the Horcrux,” James said, swallowing hard and looking down at the object under Petra’s hands.
She looked down as well, and then uncovered it. The dagger glinted darkly. Its jeweled handle was possibly the ugliest and most garish thing James had ever seen. Petra was ashamed of the Horcrux dagger, and yet she did not flinch from it. James saw that, to her, it was a necessary tool, guarantee that her mission would succeed, no matter what it cost her.
“I’m Morgan now,” she said, speaking as if to the dagger itself.
“I’ve nothing to lose. And nothing to live for.”
James couldn’t approach that thought. His heart, even more than his brain, rejected it. He shook his head curtly, exasperated and heartsick.
“Maybe Odin-Vann will fail. Maybe he won’t be able to prepare the Loom in the Vault of Destinies. Maybe he won’t even be able to get in. Or maybe the magic just won’t work. What then?”
“It won’t fail, James,” Petra said, a note of pity in her voice as she looked at him again. “And I’ve got more than Don helping me.”
This surprised James. He snapped his gaze back to her. “What do you mean? Who’s helping you besides Odin-Vann?” He realized, with a note of stupid frustration, that he was jealous.
“It doesn’t matter,” Petra said, not meeting his eyes.
“It matters to me, it does,” James pressed. “I think I should at least be allowed to know who’s helping rid the world of the girl that I—”
He stopped himself, just barely, from saying the last word— the girl that I love. Petra stood up, however, and turned her back on him, the fat book in her left hand, the dagger Horcrux in her right.
Quietly, she said, “I need somebody, James, and as much as you’d want it to be you, it can’t be. For reasons that I can’t tell you, it just can’t be. And to be perfectly blunt, I don’t think I owe you any reasons.” She looked back at him over her shoulder, half challenging him, half begging him to leave it be.
He stood as well. “Who is it?”
She returned her gaze to the lake, not answering. The sun was still hovering just beneath the fringe of the trees, and James understood: it’s wasn’t a sun setting, it was a sun forever frozen. This was an orphan hour, replaying itself endlessly, fossilized in time except for the lap of the waves and the hush of the breeze.
“Who is it?” he asked again, daring to raise his voice.
“It’s Albus,” Petra answered, turning her head but not looking at him. “All right?”
“Albus?” James exclaimed, certain that he couldn’t have heard her properly. Petra didn’t move, merely waited. He had heard her correctly after all. A flash of memories swept into his thoughts: Albus on first night, sitting in the Room of Requirement, strangely quiet on the topic of Petra until someone questioned whether it really had been her that had broken into the Armory of Forbidden Books and Artifacts . It was her, he had said with strange confidence. He had known. Had Petra met with him even back then? Had she brought Albus into her confidence months before she had even informed James himself?
Worse, would she ever have told James her plan if he hadn’t been able to visit her via the ribbon they shared, just as he was now?
“You can’t be serious? Albus?” he exclaimed again. Next to him, Izzy stirred and murmured in her sleep.
“It’s not all that shocking, if you think about it,” Petra stated, raising her chin, still not turning back to him. “Albus and I became friends during the summer that Izzy and I stayed with your family.
We’re much more alike than you know.”
James nodded derisively. “Albus says that, too. I just had no idea you agreed with him. Well, this is just fine then, isn’t it? My own brother is working with you to send you off to some other cursed dimension.”
“Not just him,” Petra said quietly, as if committed now to telling James the whole truth.
“Oh, that’s right,” James agreed sourly, throwing out his arms.
“There’s your old pal Don, who’s been your bestie since way back before I was ever in the picture.”
“Not just Don, either,” Petra countered, dropping her voice even lower, shame and defiance mingling in her tone.
“Who then?” James demanded, taking a step closer to her.
She raised her chin and turned to him fully now, her lips pressed into a tight line, meeting his gaze firmly. She didn’t answer, but allowed him to look into her face, to read the truth revealed there.
And another memory came, unbidden, into James’ mind. It was not his own memory, but Petra’s, deliberately broadcast to him on the frequency of their secret connection. In it, a wheedling voice, high and insistent droned viciously, speaking only to Petra herself: GIVE IN! All that matters is power… Embrace your destiny or die fighting it. You are not good. There is no… such… THING!
James’ shoulders wracked with a hard shiver. He had heard that loathsome, hateful voice once before, and recognized it immediately.
Back then it had come from a maimed painting, hissing with venom.
Now, it was the voice from the back room of Petra’s mind. It was the cursed voice of the Bloodline: the last, fractured shred of Lord Voldemort himself, long dead, but captured, like a spark of poison flame, in the lantern of Petra’s mind and heart.
And for the first time, James understood the fatal connection between Petra’s twin identities. She was the Bloodline. And she was the Crimson Thread. Beneath the titles, they were both exactly the same thing: a scarlet vector pointing to one terrible, inescapable destiny.
“You’ve been,” James said, his voice hushed now to a whisper, “you’ve been… listening to that?”
“I don’t listen to it,” she answered, still facing him with stubborn defiance. “But I tap into it. There is power there. And something else… something I desperately need right now.”
James wasn’t joking when he suggested: “Evil?”
Petra shook her head in negation, but took her eyes from him again, turning away. “Conviction. I’m divided, James, don’t you see?