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!”
James considered this for a moment and didn’t find it particularly surprising. “Well, I did tell him about the Marauder’s Map.
Blokes like Merlin are keen on keeping an eye on everyone else, but not so keen on having any eyes kept on him. But it’s not exactly safe to let Peeves run around with the beacon stone, is it?”
Scorpius shrugged dismissively. “It’s probably the safest place of all. Merlin’s about the only person Peeves is afraid of. Also, the little imp’s too stupid and petty to understand the ring’s significance, and too fanatically jealous of his ‘sworn duty’ to let anyone else so much as look twice at it.”
Even Rose couldn’t argue with this logic.
Later that evening, James found Ralph in the library and attempted to explain Odin-Vann’s “detentions”, and the events that had followed. Ralph’s face was stoic as he listened, his arms folded across his big chest and his eyes glaring pointedly at nothing in particular.
“So, Odin-Vann invites you, Zane, and Rose on some secret, dangerous mission,” he finally said, still avoiding James’ eyes. “But leaves me out of it completely. And you believe him when he says it has nothing to do with the fact that I don’t trust him.”
James shrugged a little. “He said Rose and I were enough. And he was right, more or less,” he admitted reluctantly. “Zane only came because he was the one that emptied out Apollo Mansion. Other than that, we were just there to protect Petra. Turns out we were about as helpful as a pair of Flobberworms.”
“My wand’s a part of Merlin’s staff, if you remember,” Ralph said, raising his chin and finally turning his gaze on James. “If I’d been there, I might have been able to get Merlin’s attention with it, at least.
Did you think of that?”
James hadn’t. Before he could think of any response, however, Ralph went on.
“You lot are keeping Merlin out of this, but I think that’s a huge mistake. Everyone else might be mad with paranoia about Petra.
Maybe even your dad and the Auror department. But Merlin’s better than that. It’s a mistake to keep him out. I think that’s why Odin-Vann didn’t include me.”
James shook his head. “I really don’t think so, Ralph,” he said, dropping his voice to a whisper. “I trust Merlin just as much as you do.
But he’s the head of the school, and that makes him part of the machine that wants to catch and stop Petra. He may be Merlinus Ambrosius, but even he has to obey the laws of the land now. Just like my dad. And besides,” he added, trying not to be stung by Ralph’s words. “Odin-Vann wanted us to tell you about it. He said it was best to keep you in the loop, just in case Petra needed us again.”
This was a slight exaggeration of Odin-Vann’s words, James knew, but he thought he could be forgiven for it. Ralph sighed and returned his gaze to the far wall.
“I don’t trust him,” he muttered. “And more importantly, I don’t like him. I don’t know what it is. But he’s wrong for you lot, and he’s wrong for Petra.”
James leaned forward on the table dejectedly. “It won’t matter much longer, it looks like,” he murmured glumly. “They’ll be returning the crimson thread to the Loom soon. Petra will be gone from our world forever. Odin-Vann may be dodgy and unpredictable, but when that happens, he’ll just be a dodgy and unpredictable Charms teacher.
Nothing more.”
Ralph softened slightly. “So when’s that going to happen?”
James shook his head. “Dunno. Zane has to get them into the Archive to do it, though. He’ll tell us via the Shard just as soon as Odin-Vann gets everything ready and sets the date.”
“Will we see Petra again before it happens?”
James considered this, and then shook his head again, slowly.
“She wanted me to tell you she missed seeing you, and Rose, too. I think that was her way of saying goodbye. Probably to all of us.”
Ralph nodded sadly. There didn’t seem to be anything left to say on the subject.
At another table across the library, Millie Vandergriff sat with a group of other Hufflepuffs, their heads together and whispering animatedly. Her profile was to him, and James considered it as he watched her. She was pretty, he realized. More, he wanted to go to her.
He wanted to sit down with her and her friends, to lose himself in their conversation, and forget the sad worries that hung over his head like storm clouds. Millie didn’t command his heart like Petra did—he had no illusions about that—but neither did she promise the inevitable heartbreak and regret that his love for Petra demanded.
He wished Millie would look over at him, perhaps wave him over. He would hold her hand under the table if she allowed him.
Maybe later, he would walk her to the Hufflepuff common room door, and she would kiss him again.
Or maybe he would kiss her. And this time, he allowed himself to muse, it would be full on the lips.
She did not look around at him, however. She was too engaged with her friends, covering her laughter with one hand, pushing her blonde hair back behind one ear, completely oblivious of James’ pensive, considering gaze.
Soon enough, he got up, gathered his things, said goodnight to Ralph, and left.
Graham was just posting the Quidditch roster on the notice board near the portrait of the Fat Lady, surrounded by a group of curious onlookers, when James approached. He almost asked Graham directly if he’d made the team, but realized he didn’t want everyone to hear the response, just in case the answer was no.
He shouldered toward the notice board and scanned the names, his pulse suddenly thudding in his chest. When he reached the bottom of the list, his heart plunged. His name wasn’t there.
But then he realized that he had skimmed the list too fast, scanning it almost without reading, searching only for his own name.
It was there after all, but reversed, last name first, so that his eye had initially skipped right over it.
POTTER, JAMES: SEEKER
James’ heart leapt upwards again, now trip-hammering. He felt such a deep, sudden sense of elation that he swayed on his feet, nearly faint with relief and surprise.
He had been waiting for this moment ever since his first year, and had begun to suspect, deep down, that it would never— could never—happen.
Only now did he realize just how much he needed this good news.
“Congratulations, James!” Lilly said, joining him and nearly hopping with excitement. “Mum and Dad will be so proud! Both of us playing for Gryffindor, me as Keeper and you as Seeker! We’re destined to take home the trophy this year!”
James’ face split into a helpless grin. He nodded, then shook his head in wonder, and then nodded again. Lily laughed and pulled him toward the portrait hole.
“Come on!” she enthused. “Let’s get the whole team together and start planning formations! Oh, this is going to be simply excellent!”
James was still speechless, but he agreed with a nod, allowing his sister’s enthusiasm to drag him along, into the warmth and light of the common room, where a round of spontaneous applause greeted him.
James’ face reddened, but he didn’t mind. He saw Deirdre and Graham beaming at him, along with Xenia Prince, Marcus Cobb, Walter Stebbin
s, and the rest of the Gryffindor team. James had gotten what he wanted after all: something to distract him from the worries and sadness of the past several hours.
As the team surrounded him, patting him on the back and ruffling his hair, James thought: this might almost, possibly, be better even than kissing Millie Vandergriff again.
But only almost.
The school year finally began to settle from the exciting unpredictability of new classes and schedules to the familiar pattern of assignments and homework, busy week-days and too-short weekends.
Autumn stole over the grounds like a thief, absconding with the hot afternoons and leaving footprints of mist, even curling frost, on the morning-bright windows. The Forbidden Forest began to replace its seamless green with hues of coppery orange, neon yellow, and glossy maroon. The wind became stiffer across the lake, which shivered into choppy waves, as if applauding the oncoming change of seasons.
For James, as the days turned into weeks, there was no more word from Petra, nor any nighttime treks to see her via the invisible, private ribbon that connected them. He didn’t sense that she was shutting him out so much as that she, like him, was simply in waiting mode, with little to do while Professor Odin-Vann prepared the recaptured crimson thread for its return to the mystical Loom from which it, as the symbol of Morgan, had been plucked. According to the Professor, there was a good bit of magic that needed to go along with the returned thread in order to reset the Loom and jump-start the Vault of Destinies again.
Or perhaps, James mused disconsolately, the young professor, like James himself, was simply reluctant to see his old friend vanish from the world forever, and was finding reasons to delay her departure. Zane believed this firmly, implying, via the Shard, that Odin-Vann and Petra were much more than friends.
“His eyes go all ablaze whenever he’s around her,” he insisted one afternoon, half-a-month after the debacle of the World Between the Worlds. “You saw it yourself. When they talk about what he calls her ‘final mission’, he gets so antsy he looks like he’s about to jump right out of his skin. They obviously have a thing.”
James, retying his tie after mid-day Quidditch practice, shrugged and shook his head at the Shard where it lay propped on his bed in the Gryffindor dormitory. He knew what Zane meant by “a thing”, of course, and didn’t like it in the least. Not because he didn’t think it was true, or even likely—it was far more plausible that Petra would fall for the worldly-wise older man than the younger friend still in school—but because he hated the thought so intensely. He hated the jealousy it provoked in his chest mostly because he loved Petra himself, but also because he liked Professor Odin-Vann. He liked the professor’s odd quirks and restrained fervor and his commitment to helping Petra.
Still, if the young man did harbor a romantic affection for Petra, how could James blame him? Maybe, at least, it meant that Petra would enjoy her last days in the world she was born into. If James’ love for her was true, he would want her to be happy, right? Even if that meant finding comfort and love in another man’s arms.
The thought made him prickle all over as he knotted his tie violently under his chin, his hair still damp from a cursory shower.
With a yawn, Zane said, “But I still think this whole ‘magical catalyst’ thing Odin-Vann’s on about is complete Doxie doo.” It was still morning, Zane’s time, and he was lounging in his pajamas—a pair of too-short bottoms printed with bright blue snowflakes beneath an orange tee shirt—seated cross-legged on the rumple of his bed with a steaming mug of coffee balanced on one knee. “I may not like old Professor Stonewall much, but I trust his gigantic noggin. If he says all that’s needed is for the thread to be put back into the Loom, then that’s the way it is. Snap, bang, and Petra is gone to her new dimension. But I guess there’s no harm in being overly prepared, right? Especially if it’s just an excuse for the pointy-bearded professor Odin-Vann to have a few more romantic evenings with his doomed love.”
James said goodbye to Zane abruptly and stuffed the Shard back into his trunk, not wishing to think any further about Odin-Vann and Petra having “romantic evenings”, no matter how doomed.
The truth was, as the days began to tick by like minutes on a clock, James knew that he had to get over his own hopeless affection for Petra. It would only make it harder for both of them to do what needed to be done. And if Petra was indeed romantically involved with Odin-Vann, then perhaps that was all the better.
James, on the other hand, had Millie Vandergriff.
Almost without any official declaration, the two of them had become what Zane referred to as “a thing”, and subtly, the dynamic of James’ entire school experience had changed.
Millie met him occasionally in the halls and walked to classes or meals with him. Sometimes (though not always) she would reach for his hand and hold it lightly as they walked, talking breezily of this or that, pretending to ignore the electricity of their laced fingers, while other students (usually girls) watched furtively and whispered.
Millie often joined James, alongside Ralph and Rose and sometimes Scorpius, for study sessions and homework in the library.
She even came, on rare occasions, to hang out with James in the Gryffindor common room. He returned the gesture once, going to see her in the Hufflepuff quarters, which were low and warm, accessed by a tunnel behind a stack of barrels near the kitchens. James was welcomed by the Hufflepuffs, but didn’t feel quite at home there, despite the mellow wooden furniture and the round dormitory doors reminiscent of a hedgehog’s warren.
Another thing James discovered, with a mixture of pride and consternation, was that dating Millie meant that she (accompanied usually by a small gaggle of her girlfriends) attended his Quidditch practices. She and her entourage would be seated high in the Hufflepuff grandstands, usually chattering obliviously, except when Millie applauded James for some well-executed maneuver. He was invariably embarrassed on these occasions, and yet the sight of her guileless smile and unabashed cheering warmed his heart, even as the air turned cool and crisp all around.
He liked Millie. He liked the way her eyes sparkled when she saw him in the halls, and her unselfconscious precociousness, and the way she didn’t always reach for his hand, or sit next to him in class, or accompany him into the Great Hall for dinner. If she had obsessed and fawned over him (the way Chance Jackson had begun to with Albus, although Albus himself seemed not to mind) James would have quickly felt stifled and overwhelmed. Instead, Millie maintained a sense of pleasant, teasing unpredictability and mystery.
Often, instead of joining James at his table in the library, she would breeze past and sit with a group of fellow Hufflepuffs. He would glance up at her throughout the evening, watching her laugh with her friends, or bite the feather of her quill as she read, or practice spell-motions with her wand while studying the diagrams in The Caster’s Lexicon. But every now and then he would catch her glancing up at him, just as he was her. Usually she would look away, smiling sheepishly. Sometimes, however, her eyes would lock with his, briefly, sharing a surprisingly intimate moment across the hushed anonymity of the library.
James became aware that Millie’s family was what Scorpius referred to as “old magic”: exceedingly wealthy, historically pureblood, and aristocratically connected. Millie herself scoffed at any suggestion that her family was influential in any way, or that she took any cache from it if they were.
“I barely represent them at all, much to my mother’s chagrin,” she told James with a wry smile. “You’ll meet the Vandergriff kith and kin soon enough, I hope. You can make up your own judgment about them when you do.”
On some occasions James felt bold enough to kiss Millie, usually in the evenings after he walked her to the Hufflepuff common room, where they huddled in the nook formed by the stacks of barrels. He would kiss her until her lips formed a delighted smile and she withdrew, her face as flushed as his, whispering breathless goodnights. He would watch her duck into the hidden entry, and then walk back the way h
e’d come, hot and tingling beneath his collar, blaming it on the flickering torches that lined the walls around the kitchens.
Sometimes he thought guiltily of Petra. When he did, he would insist to himself that she was probably doing the same thing with Professor Odin-Vann. After all, it wasn’t like James and Petra were, or had ever been, “a thing”. Petra wouldn’t feel jealous of Millie. She would be delighted that James was happy.
He repeated this to himself, while simultaneously hoping that it wasn’t remotely true.
Midnight Quidditch started up again, and as much as Graham had warned James not to be involved, he simply couldn’t bring himself to stay away. It wasn’t merely that it counted, in James’ mind, as extra team practice. He also relished, more than anything, the chance to ride his beloved skrim, surfing the dark air in ways that no broom could quite duplicate.
Scorpius informed James of weekly matches via notes passed in Herbology class, which James quickly read and, per arrangement, immediately fed to the giant potted Cobra Lily.
He told no one of the Night Quidditch matches, especially Ralph, who would have felt exquisitely awkward knowing of such things in his new role as Head Boy. And yet, despite informal rules to the contrary, James was by no means the only official house Quidditch player who also appeared in the clandestine matches. His sister Lily had been on the night league even longer than she’d been playing for the Gryffindor team. Both Nolan Beetlebrick and Trenton Bloch appeared on the Slytherin night team. Julien Jackson had begun to play for the Hufflepuffs only after she had snuck out the previous year to chastise Stanley Jasper, the daytime Hufflepuff Seeker, about his extra-curricular involvement, only to become swept up irresistibly in the night league herself.
As usual, the teams compensated for their nights of lost sleep via a special potion brewed by Scorpius and Ashley Doone from a questionably legal plant called Somnambulis. Officially, Professor Longbottom had ceased growing the plant three years earlier.
Unofficially, Scorpius was still able to “steal” a fresh supply every three weeks from a cluttered back corner of the greenhouse.