James Potter and the Vault of Destinies

  "Congratulations, James," she said weakly, and offered him a small affectionate smile. "You won."

  A ripple of commotion moved over the crowd as realization dawned on those closest to the front: this was Petra Morganstern, the one who had attacked the Hall of Archives and cursed Mr. Henredon, the one who had been escorted to the Medical College unconscious, in preparation for her imprisonment.

  "But they gave her the poison apple!" someone whispered harshly. "How'd she wake up?"

  "She's a criminal," another rasped. "She's dangerous!"

  And another: "Look what she did to the Medical College!"

  A low clamor arose from the crowd, spreading to a rabble. Then, louder voices called out in commanding tones. James looked up and didn't know whether to be relieved or dismayed to see Chancellor Franklyn approaching, shouldering through the throng. Professor Jackson and Mother Newt were close behind, their faces grim. Inexplicably, Albus seemed to be following along in Professor Jackson's wake, his eyes shining with the excitement of it all.

  "Ms. Morganstern," Franklyn announced as he broke through the crowd. "What are you doing? Return to the Medical College at once! Where are your guards?"

  "I'm sorry, Chancellor," Petra said, and James heard in her voice that she truly was. "I'm sorry for everything that's happened. But I won't be going back. Perhaps I will be able to repair everything. But not now. There are more pressing matters."

  "There are no more pressing matters, miss," Jackson proclaimed grimly. James saw that the professor had his wand in his hand, at the ready. Albus peered avidly around Jackson's elbow as he went on. "You are a convicted criminal. You understand that we cannot allow you to leave this campus."

  "And you understand, I think, that there is no way you can stop me," Petra replied, almost apologetically.

  Jackson raised his wand. Franklyn saw this and raised his as well, his face strained. He opened his mouth to speak, but Mother Newt interrupted him.

  "What is it you need to do, my dear?" she asked, moving ahead of the two men and smiling curiously at Petra.

  Petra looked aside, at James. "We have a journey to make," she answered. "Not far and yet, I think, very far indeed. Are you still with me, James?"

  James nodded. "But how do you know about that? I never got a chance to tell you…?"

  "I know because you know," she said, and James understood: the silver thread. It ran both ways. She may not have understood the plan before her arrest, but she did now. James could see it in her eyes as she looked at him.

  "And what, if I may be so bold," Mother Newt asked, still smiling faintly, "is the purpose of this journey?"

  James answered this time. "To find out the truth, ma'am."

  Franklyn shook his head firmly. "No. I cannot allow this. Professor Newton, you do not understand what it is they intend to do. They mean to open the Nexus Curtain. You see that Apollo Mansion once again stands atop Victory Hill. Given the proper key, they may succeed in passing through into another dimension. The young lady means to escape into a realm where none will be able to follow her!"

  "That's not true," James called out, moving to get in front of Petra. "Petra doesn't need to escape because she's not guilty!" He stopped and then glanced back over his shoulder, his brow knitted. "Er… are you?"

  Petra met his gaze but didn't respond. At least, not with words.

  "Chancellor," Mother Newt said, "as a matter of fact, I am inclined to disagree with you. I do not believe that Ms. Morganstern means to escape. I believe that she is telling us the truth. About everything."

  "All evidence to the contrary, Professor," Jackson said, his wand still raised and pointed at Petra, "how could you possibly know this?"

  Mother Newt's smile broadened as she continued to stare at Petra. "Call it woman's intuition," she said with low emphasis. "Besides, I suspect that she is right about one more thing: I don't believe we can stop her even if we wished to. She is…," Mother Newt paused and narrowed her eyes, "… unique."

  "Professor Newton," Franklyn said, shaking his head again, making his square spectacles flash in the moonlight, "we cannot simply allow this woman to leave. She is a convicted prisoner of the Wizarding Court of the United States."

  "But she isn't leaving, not technically," Mother Newt replied lightly. "If you are right, Chancellor, then Ms. Morganstern will simply be entering Apollo Mansion. She can still be said to be confined to the campus. None would deny that fact. Thus, I believe, we can be honestly said to have performed our duties as well as could be expected under the circumstances."

  "Madam," Jackson began, but Mother Newt stopped him with a quick backward glare.

  "Put down your wand, Theodore," she said, her voice suddenly steely. "Don't be a fool. We are teachers. This is, as they say, well above our pay grade."

  "She is a prisoner of the Wizarding Courts," Franklyn insisted urgently, lowering his own wand.

  "And we are not arbiters," Mother Newt answered, sighing. "Let the young lady do what she means to do. She will return. Won't you, dear?" she asked, addressing this last to Petra.

  "If I can," Petra answered. "And I will submit to whatever consequences there are when I do. I am hoping that things will look a bit different by then. To all of us."

  Franklyn's face was red with tension. Jackson appeared to be balanced precariously between raising his wand again and submitting to Mother Newt's suggestion.

  "Thank you, Professor," Petra said to the older woman across from her.

  "Please," Newt said, smiling in a grandmotherly fashion, "call me Mother Newt."

  Petra turned to James again and then glanced aside toward Ralph and Zane, who had also approached, their eyes wide and grave.

  "I guess I'll go get the unicorn horseshoe," Zane suggested in a hushed voice. "It's still buried under the Warping Willow…"

  "No need," Petra said. She let go of Lucy's hand and reached into a pocket on the front of her drab dress. James would have sworn that the pocket was too small to contain anything so large, but when Petra withdrew her hand, she was holding the silvery horseshoe. It glowed faintly and a low murmur of awe and fear thrummed through the crowd.

  "Dear God," a voice said faintly. James glanced back and saw Chancellor Franklyn staring up at the horseshoe, his face draining of colour. He's figured it all out, James thought. Just like that. He is one smart fellow…

  "I didn't expect we'd be doing this in front of the entire school," Ralph muttered, accepting the horseshoe as Petra handed it to him.

  "It doesn't matter," Petra said, smiling wanly. She turned to Lucy and Izzy. "You both stay here. There's no need for you to come."

  Izzy made no effort to let go of Petra's hand and James understood that Petra's suggestion was merely perfunctory. There was no way Izzy would consent to staying behind.

  "I want to come," Lucy said, looking from Petra to James. "I want to see. I don't know anything about what's going to happen, but I'm in on it now, no matter what."

  James expected Petra to forbid Lucy, but the older girl merely nodded. She looked back at Ralph, who still held the faintly glowing horseshoe.

  "Let's do it," Zane announced stoically. "Let's get it over with."

  Together, the three boys and three girls turned and walked up Victory Hill, approaching the corner of Apollo Mansion. The remainder of Team Bigfoot gathered silently around them, but at a careful distance. All of them could see the horseshoe shape engraved in the building's cornerstone, divided by the crack between the main house and the permanent foundation.

  "What's this all about, James?" Jazmine asked quietly. James glanced back at her.

  "It's… a long story," he answered after a moment. "But it's not a bad story. Petra is my friend. I have to try to help her."

  "You'll tell us all about it when you get back, right?" Wentworth suggested, frowning slightly.

  "Definitely," Ralph nodded, producing his large wand. Its lime-green tip glowed dimly in the moonlight.

  "You want us to come too?" Gobbins asked
. "Because we could, you know." The rest of the team, even the reserve players, murmured agreement.

  "No," James replied, smiling, "but thanks."

  "Whew," Norrick breathed. "Good luck, then. Wherever you're going, and whatever you're gonna do when you get there, good luck."

  Mukthatch let out an encouraging woof.

  Ralph turned around and held the horseshoe up, measuring it against the shape carved into the conjoined cornerstone.

  "Petra," James asked quietly, turning to look at her, "what happened back there, in the Medical College? What happened to Keynes?"

  Petra met his gaze thoughtfully. "He's still alive," she answered simply. James sensed her thoughts and sensed that this was the truth. It wasn't all of the truth, he knew, but for now, it was enough.

  He moved a step closer to her so that no one else would hear. "Is it true, Petra?" he whispered. "Are you a… a sorceress?"

  Her eyes hadn't left his. "Yes," she mouthed, and shrugged faintly. Tears stood in her eyes, shining dully. She tried to smile, but it faltered.

  James nodded. For now, there was nothing more to say.

  With a soft grating sound, Ralph pushed the unicorn horseshoe into the shape engraved in the cornerstone. There was no shocking noise or burst of magical light, and yet the crowd responded. A sigh of awe washed over the quadrangle. James looked up, as did the rest. A faint rose-coloured light glowed from every window of Apollo Mansion. It shifted softly, seeming to hint at every colour of the rainbow and even some colours that James had never imagined.

  "I guess we go inside," Lucy suggested, her voice an octave higher than usual. "Is that it?"

  James nodded. He reached out, took Lucy's hand in his right and Petra's in his left. Slowly, the group began to walk toward the main entrance of Apollo Mansion.

  "Boys!" a voice called suddenly. James paused again with one foot on the first step. He looked back and saw Chancellor Franklyn peering up at him, his face lit with the soft, rosy light.

  "If you see Ignatius Magnussen," Franklyn said earnestly, "tell him… tell him to stay away. Tell him not to come back. Will you do that?"

  With those words, James thought he finally understood Franklyn's reasons for wanting to keep the Nexus Curtain closed for good. Magnussen, despite being Franklyn's friend, had been a monster. If he had escaped through the Nexus Curtain, then perhaps—hopefully—it had been a one-way trip. Perhaps the only way the murderer could ever return would be if the Curtain was opened again from this side. Franklyn had made it his life's mission to assure that that never happened.

  "He won't be coming back, Chancellor," Ralph answered stolidly, raising his voice just enough to be heard. "Trust us."

  Franklyn studied Ralph's face for a moment and then nodded slowly.

  A moment later, Zane reached for the door handle atop the short stoop of Apollo Mansion. He gripped it, thumbed the latch, and pushed it open. The mysterious pulsing light covered every surface inside, shifting hypnotically.

  "All of us together," Petra said, squeezing James' hand. "Everyone hold onto someone else. I think the moment we cross over the threshold, we'll go through. I think the whole house is the portal. Ready?"

  James gulped. Ralph shuddered. Zane said, "You all go on ahead. I'm just gonna pop back to Hermes House for my camera. 'Kay?"

  Ralph grabbed the blonde boy's hand and Zane gripped it, tittering nervously.

  As one, the six stepped through the doorway into the faint rosy light, and vanished.

  James' first step into the World Between the Worlds nearly tumbled him headlong over a rocky black cliff. Petra and Lucy were still holding his hands on either side and they pulled him back even as his foot dipped into empty space. He gasped as he drew his foot back and wobbled on the ledge. The six travelers peered carefully down into the misty distance.

  They seemed to be standing on the lip of a shallow cave worn into a cliff of sharp black stone. A hundred feet below, monstrous waves slammed against the face of the cliff, sending up explosions of white water as if in slow motion. Beyond this, steely grey ocean stretched off toward the horizon, heaving beneath a low, white sky.

  James shuddered. "I nearly fell into that," he commented, wide-eyed.

  "This isn't the most convenient place to put a portal," Zane nodded. "Even if you survived the drop, who knows what kind of monsters swim around in an ocean like that?"

  "None at all," Petra answered, her voice calm but emphatic. "There's nothing alive in that water. Nothing at all. You can sort of feel it, can't you?"

  Lucy frowned. It was almost a grimace of disgust. "Yes," she answered. "It's like this isn't really a place at all. It's more like a kind of window dressing, something just to take up the space. There's no… no taste to it. No life or colour at all. It's like chewing on cardboard."

  "Or like taking a peek behind the curtain of reality," Ralph agreed, his face tense. "Like it's here just because something has to be, but it's not meant to be seen by anyone."

  "I think it makes sense," Izzy said, still holding Petra's hand.

  Petra agreed. "It's not really a world after all," she mused. "It's just the World Between the Worlds."

  "Look," Zane suddenly pointed, raising his arm toward the distant horizon. "It isn't all just water. There's something out there."

  James followed Zane's pointing finger. Very faint and distant, a dark shape clung to the horizon.

  "Is it a boat?" Lucy asked doubtfully.

  Ralph shook his head. "It's an island, I think. But not like any island I've ever seen. It looks almost like a big giant footstool."

  "It's a plateau," Petra said. "Just like this one, I think. Look over to the right. There's another one."

  "There's more on this side," Zane added, peering around the boulders of the cave's left edge.

  James leaned carefully out over the rocks of the cave's mouth, scanning the length of the watery horizon. The shapes were grey in the ocean mist, so far off as to be almost invisible, but once you began looking for them, more and more of them seemed to appear. They were eerily similar: rocky plateaus, oddly flat on top, rising like giants' stepping stones out of the monstrous ocean.

  "What are they?" Izzy asked in a hushed voice.

  "They're portals," Petra answered, and James did not doubt her. "Like this one. Each one leads to a different universe, or dimension, or reality. Some of them would be almost exactly like our own. Others would be so different, so alien, that we could barely look at them."

  "They're awful," Lucy proclaimed with a shiver, hugging herself.

  "No," Petra countered. "They're just themselves. They aren't good or bad. They just are."

  Ralph asked, "Do you think this whole world is covered with them?"

  Petra shook her head. "It isn't a world. It isn't round, and it doesn't have an end. But yes. I think all of it is like this. On and on, infinitely. If one had a boat, just think of the places they could go, the things they could see."

  James shuddered again at the thought. The idea of taking a boat out onto that strangely disastrous, unnaturally flat ocean was horrible. Looking out over all that distance and those endless bland islands, James wanted nothing more than to crawl back into the shallow of the cave and huddle into a ball. He turned around and was both amazed and relieved to see a door standing in the shadows of the cave. It was framed with wood and James recognized it immediately as the front entrance of Apollo Mansion, seen from the inside. It hung open and through it, James could still see the slope of Victory Hill, the broken werewolf statue, and the crowd congregated on the quad behind Administration Hall, milling uncertainly.

  "I guess that's how we go back when we're ready," he said, gesturing toward the doorway. The others turned and looked, and there was a palpable sense of relief. The view of the dark quad and the familiar campus was very comforting after all that bright, blank vastness.

  Lucy finally let go of James' hand. "So what do we do now?"

  James glanced around nervously. "I guess we just look around,"
he ventured. "The whole reason we came here is because this is the one place that someone could hide something as powerful as the stolen thread from the Vault of Destinies. If we can find the thread, then perhaps we can find out who really broke into the Archive and prove Petra's innocence."

  "Not to mention," Zane added suddenly, as if the idea had just occurred to him, "if we find the missing thread, maybe we can put it back into the Loom! Maybe that would set everything back to rights again! After all, our Loom was switched with one from another dimension, right? It got stuck here instead of reverting back to its own universe because whoever broke into the Vault stole the crimson thread from it! Remember what Professor Jackson said? He said that the switching of the Looms between our dimension and some foreign one changed everything, and maybe even broke the balance of the destinies! He made it sound like if the thread wasn't returned, eventually things would break down into complete chaos! Maybe if we put it back…"

  "Then all of our destinies will snap back to the way they were before the break-in happened," James said, completing his friend's thought. "I wonder, is that really possible?"

  "Perhaps Petra will never have been arrested?" Izzy suggested, a small ray of hope alighting on her brow.

  "Maybe, if we replace the crimson thread," Zane replied thoughtfully, "then none of this will have happened."

  The gathering was quiet for a moment as they all considered this. Finally, James nodded decisively.

  "All right then," he announced. "Everyone take a look around. Let's see if we can find any evidence that someone from our world was here recently."

  Ralph blinked. "Like, maybe, a candy wrapper or something?"

  "Why," Zane asked, "do you see one?"

  "No," Ralph shook his head, and then pointed. "But there are some stairs carved into the rocks by the ledge over there. Maybe somebody dropped something there…?"

  James peered around the larger boy, looking toward the right corner of the cave's mouth. Just as Ralph had said, a series of worn, narrow steps curved around a boulder, leading out into the dull light.