"I wouldn't have guessed," Ralph muttered.
Just then, Harry Potter and Oliver Wood arrived, crossing the lawns and cutting through the noisome throng. Zane saw them first, and grabbed Ralph's sleeve.
"Come on," he hissed, ducking through the knot of students.
"Where are we going?" Ralph asked, following along with James in tow.
Zane glanced back with a crooked grin. "Where else? To see what happened inside the Archive."
James shook his head as they ducked through the babbling crowd. "They'll never let us in there," he whispered harshly.
"Sure they will," Zane replied without looking back. "Just follow me and walk like you don't expect anyone to stop you. You'd be amazed how often that works."
James found himself falling into step behind his own father and Professor Wood as they ascended the steps. Next to him, Zane glanced around wisely, as if he was taking inventory of the pillars around the portico. He had his wand in his hand, held importantly at his side. James produced his own wand and held it the same way. Behind them, Ralph scuffled up the steps, pushing his lank hair out of his face. Almost before he knew it, the three boys found themselves ushered into the darkened entryway of the Hall, following in Harry Potter's wake. The noise of the nervous crowd fell away behind them.
"Mr. Potter," a voice echoed from the inner chamber. "I'm glad to see you've arrived. Your particular expertise might be of great value as we descend to the Archive floor." It was Chancellor Franklyn, his wand lit and held overhead, providing the only light in the huge empty room.
"He seems to have gained some stowaways as well," a woman's voice commented. James recognized the Wizard Home Economics professor, Mother Newt, as she moved into the light next to Franklyn. "Excuse me, boys, but this is no place for students. You must leave this instant."
"We're witnesses!" Zane exclaimed suddenly, pushing James and Ralph forward. "The three of us saw it happen!"
"You witnessed the attack on this building?" Franklyn clarified, narrowing his eyes at Zane.
"Attack?" Ralph replied. "We saw lightning strike it. And we saw—"
"They were moving their belongings into their new house, Chancellor," Merlin interrupted. "If you'll recall, they visited us in the guest house a short while before. Their activities placed them in the vicinity of the phenomena when it occurred. It may prove valuable to interview them presently."
"And this one," Harry said, shaking his head and smiling down at James, "is my son, of course. He and these other two are quite trustworthy. I have called upon their services in the past."
Franklyn removed his square spectacles and wiped them on his lapel, sighing. "As you wish. But let it be known that the school will not take any responsibility for anything that may befall them in this endeavor."
"Nor would I expect it to," Harry replied. "You mentioned with some confidence that what happened here was, in fact, an attack. How can you be so sure?"
"Did you feel the shift?" Franklyn asked in response.
"The shift?" Wood repeated thoughtfully. "Is that what it was?"
"I felt a shake of the earth," Harry said, "as if a giant had stomped nearby. Is that what you are referring to?"
"That was not a shake of the earth," a new voice said calmly. James looked up and saw Professor Jackson stride into the light from the rear of the room. His face was set into a grim scowl, but his eyes were electric as he glanced from face to face, ending on Harry. "The earth did not move," he went on. "Your brain merely attributed the sensation to the most obvious source, but the shift took place on a much deeper, fundamental level."
"I felt it," Zane nodded. "It was as if the whole world suddenly stopped moving, making everything stumble for a moment."
Merlin's voice was solemn in the darkness. "But it wasn't the world, was it, Professor? It was, if I may be so bold as to guess, the very fabric of reality."
"It was a dimensional shift," Jackson agreed soberly. "How deep a shift, we have yet to discover."
"And the occurrence of this… shift," Harry clarified, tilting his head, "is why you suspect the Hall of Archives was attacked?"
Jackson nodded once, curtly. "Mere lightning is not capable of what transpired here tonight, Mr. Potter."
"I suggest we avoid using the elevator," Franklyn announced, turning and striding toward the recessed door in the rear of the room. "Wands out, everyone. We cannot be certain that what happened here is entirely over. Professor Jackson and I will lead. Mother Newt, if you would be willing to stand guard at the upstairs entrance."
Newt agreed to this with palpable reluctance. She moved next to the inner archive door and produced her wand with a flourish, leaving a trail of pink sparks in the air.
"Careful, dearies," she said, smiling cryptically as James, Zane, and Ralph passed her, heading into the massive chamber beyond.
Inside, Ralph and Zane craned their heads at the marching rows of shelved miscellany and the massive chasm that dropped into the Archive's spiraling depths. Silently, Franklyn led the group toward the stairway, which they began to descend in single file, with James, Ralph, and Zane in the rear.
As the group circled the throat of the Archive's staircase, James could see that the strange gold and purple light of the object at the bottom, the thing Franklyn had called the Vault of Destinies, was diminished to the point of darkness. Even more unsettling, the complicated motion of the Vault had completely ceased. It sat in the dim depths like a sort of gigantic gold and glass rose, its petals curled around some hidden shape. The group tromped on in somber silence, listening only to the shuffling clang of their feet on the metal steps. As they passed the lowest of the Archive's dizzying levels, the air grew so cold that James could see his breath puffing out before him. He shivered and pulled his blazer around him, buttoning it up.
Finally, the group reached the floor of the Archive and congregated in the darkness at the base of the stairs. The lowest level was smaller than the rest, and nearly empty. The stone walls dripped with cold water and tiny stalactites hung from the bottom of the stairs above like icicles. The center of the space was a round pool, its water mirror-flat. Over this, the Vault of Destinies was suspended inside a complicated iron framework. Close up, the Vault seemed quite large, slightly taller than Merlin, and comprised entirely of leaf-shaped golden shutters and purplish prisms. In motion, the overlapping shapes would form a dizzying shield of flashing metal and enchanted glass. Now, halted, they embraced the interior shape like a clenched fist. James tried to see inside, but couldn't make anything out.
"Professor Jackson, if you would extend the walkway," Franklyn said quietly, gesturing toward the pool and the dark Vault.
Jackson moved forward and flicked his wand, pronouncing a complicated incantation under his breath. A dull grinding noise sounded, and James startled as something floated over his shoulder. He was surprised to see that it was a block of stone, prized magically from the wall behind him. It floated past Jackson and lowered, touching the pool but not sinking. More stones wafted into place, forming a neat pathway that led toward the Vault. Franklyn stepped forward, his boots knocking on the stones, and raised his wand. Harry followed him, and James and Zane watched raptly, peering curiously at the darkly glimmering shape of the Vault.
Franklyn glanced back, his eyes wide, and James saw that the Chancellor was quite shaken. "My friends," he said, swallowing hard. "Never once has the magic of the Vault been breached. Never once has it been stilled, even by my own hand. Assuming that it opens now…" He paused and shook his head, apparently at a loss for words.
Harry nodded soberly and raised his wand, tip up. "Stay well back, James, and the rest of you. If you wish to return to the outside, now is your chance. None will blame you, and most will credit you for it. Professor Wood will accompany you if you choose to go."
Wood nodded and looked around. James shook his head, as did Zane.
"I know I should probably go," Ralph squeaked. "But if I do, I'll kick myself for the rest of my life. S
o open it already."
Professor Jackson fingered his own wand. "Open it, Chancellor. If the shift means what I fear, being outside the Archive will make no difference for any of us."
Franklyn nodded. He turned back to the Vault, his shoulders hunched, and raised his wand once more. Slowly, he lowered it, and as he did, the leaves began to move. Starting at the top, they began to shuttle aside, turning and descending silently, aligning with and overlapping the ones beneath. With solemn grace, the Vault bloomed, spreading and opening, revealing the shape inside, which was dark and complicated with shadows. As the final golden leaves settled into place, Franklyn stepped forward and raised his wand. Its light fell onto a shape that seemed to loom suddenly up out of the darkness, boggling with bulging eyes, its mouth gaping horribly. James gasped in shock and fear, as did Zane and Ralph. Zane's hand snatched out and grabbed a handful of James' blazer, as if for support.
"Hadley!" Franklyn cried out hoarsely, reaching to touch the figure that stood before him.
"I wouldn't do that," Merlin announced loudly, halting Franklyn and commanding his attention. Franklyn glanced back.
"It's Mr. Henredon! The custodian! He's been… he's…!"
"He looks like a statue," Harry said carefully, moving next to Franklyn on the stone footpath. "It's as if he was turned to stone in the act of trying to intervene in… whatever happened."
"He's been frozen," Merlin said, approaching slowly. "From the inside out. Every drop of his blood has been frozen as solid and brittle as glass."
"Is he… dead?" Franklyn asked, peering at the eerily still figure. Hadley's face seemed locked in a permanent rictus of wide-eyed terror. His right hand was stretched out before him, the fingers petrified into a grasping claw.
"He isn't dead, precisely," Merlin answered carefully. "He is… suspended. If any of us were to touch him, however, the warmth of our skin might… shatter him."
Franklyn recoiled slightly, his face contorting.
Jackson had his wand ready. "Stand aside, gentlemen," he instructed.
With impressive delicacy, Jackson levitated the frozen figure of Hadley up out of the unfurled shape of the Vault and settled him into place on the wet stone of the floor beneath the stairs. Hadley's shoes made a sound like clacking crockery when they touched the floor and the puddle froze instantly around them, producing a faint crackling hiss.
"Can we help him?" Harry asked, watching stoically.
"Only time and a very subtle increase in temperature will answer that question," Merlin sighed. "If he had been frozen outside of this already frosty climate, the warmth of the very air might have been enough to fracture him."
"We have the means and the facility to do whatever is required on his behalf," Jackson announced. "There is nothing further we can do for him at the moment, however. Let us attend to that which brought us here.
As one, the gathering turned toward the dark shape nestled inside the unfurled leaves of the Vault. Franklyn stepped forward once more and raised his wand, letting its light fall over the object.
To James, it looked like a sort of wooden table or platform, covered in ornate curlicue carvings and painted painstakingly in shades of blue and gold. Thick beams stood upright within and over the platform, holding a complicated apparatus of hinged arms, treadles, and spoked wheels. At one end of the platform, standing like vibrantly coloured totems, were thick spools of thread. At the other end, a banner of thick, richly patterned fabric trailed toward the floor, where it overlapped onto itself in gentle folds. As James peered closer, he saw that the fabric was a sort of tapestry or rug, and that it was, in fact, extremely long, folded back and forth on itself dozens, maybe even hundreds of times. The wooden object itself seemed to be sitting on the mound of carpet, held up by it in the center of the Vault's folded leaves.
"It's a loom," Oliver Wood said, his voice low with awe.
Jackson nodded slowly. "It is indeed. Its innumerable threads represent the lives of every living person on the planet. It is their history, condensed into a pattern so complex, so interwoven, that none can decipher it."
"Then that," Harry said, gesturing toward the carpet that pooled from the Loom's end, "is all of the world's history."
Franklyn sighed and nodded toward the spools of richly coloured thread at the opposite end. "And that, as you might imagine, is the future, unmade and unknowable."
Merlin asked the most obvious question of all. "Then why, pray tell, is the Loom stopped?"
"I believe that it was annihilated," Jackson answered.
Harry turned toward the steely-haired professor. "How can that be?" he asked. "It's right here."
"This is a Loom," Jackson replied meaningfully, "but it is not our Loom."
"I'm a little lost here," Wood said, raising his hand.
Franklyn shook his head worriedly. "What Professor Jackson is saying is that the Loom equals destiny. Destinies cannot be destroyed since they are representations of things far larger, far heavier than any of us could comprehend. They are like the axles of existence, utterly unbreakable and inviolate. Theoretically, however, they can be… shifted. Given a shock of enough magnitude, the destiny of one reality can be forced into the next, causing a chain reaction throughout every dimension."
Harry narrowed his eyes. "If I understand you correctly, Chancellor, Professor Jackson, you are suggesting that the Loom of our universe was attacked in some monumental way, and the result was that our Loom was switched with that of another universe. Is that an accurate summary?"
"That's crazy," Oliver Wood frowned. "You can't swap destinies."
Merlin shook his head very slowly. "On the contrary, Professor, human beings swap destinies every day, at every moment. Each individual's destiny is, of course, merely the sum total of the choices that they make throughout their lives. This, however, is on a magnitude far greater."
"According to my theories," Jackson went on, squinting closely at the Loom, "our reality should have instantly rejected any foreign destiny. In other words, the very moment that our Loom was forced into another realm, and was replaced with the Loom of some other reality, the balance of the cosmos should have mandated the switch to reverse itself. Something, it appears, is interrupting the self-correcting paradigm of the dimensional continuum."
"I'm sorry," Harry said, shaking his head. "Technomancy was never my strong suit. I don't quite understand."
Zane spoke up, surprising James. "Somebody switched the destiny of our universe with some other destiny," he said seriously. "And then they jammed a chair under the doorknob, forcing that destiny to be stuck here for good, instead of reverting back to where it came from."
"What does that mean?" Wood asked, looking from face to face. "And how did it happen?"
Jackson stepped forward, still peering narrowly at the halted Loom. "It very well might mean that our reality, from this moment on, could be steadily degrading, breaking down, and grinding into chaos," he said with characteristic bluntness. "As for how it happened, what is preventing this Loom from returning to the alternate reality from whence it came… I think the answer to that is quite obvious." He bent slightly at the waist, not taking his eyes from the Loom.
James followed his gaze, stepping forward as well. Everyone did. At first, James couldn't see what it was that the professor was looking at. Franklyn raised his wand once more, however, illuminating the Loom, and the problem became immediately apparent. Something glimmered very faintly in the air over the working space of the Loom, where the countless threads came together and melded into the ever constant flow of the carpet.
One of the threads had been broken and torn out of the carpet. What was left of it was bright red, shining almost as if it was made of finely spun wire. It waved very faintly in the air, forming a curling shape over the fabric from which it had been torn, leaving only the bit that fed from the spools. The broken thread made a shape in the air almost like a question mark.
"Well," Merlin said slowly, his voice so low that it seemed to vibra
te, "this… changes everything."
The Kite and Key was a small tavern built in one of the oldest quarters of the campus, on the far side of Faculty Row, near a corner of the stone wall that enclosed the school. It served many of the same drinks as James had once procured at the Three Broomsticks, including Butterbeer, pumpkin juice and, for the older students, Firewhisky. Not surprisingly, however, it also served some distinctly American drinks and potions, such as Honeylager (which tasted a bit like a Butterbeer that had been allowed to ferment on a windowsill for a week or two) and, also for the older students and faculty, a very dark brown potion with a frothy head called Dragonmeade.
Franklyn drank two Dragonmeades as the night progressed while Harry, Oliver Wood, and Professor Jackson settled for Honeylagers as they discussed the evening's events in low, serious tones. Mother Newt sat in the corner of the table closest to the tiny bay window, knitting and humming to herself, and yet James could tell that she didn't miss a single word that was spoken. This was born out by the few things that she did say, which were always heeded with great deference by the others at the table.
James, Ralph, and Zane sat at the end of the table, nursing Butterbeers and trying to keep up with the discussion. The adults' low, confidential tones of voice, however, and the noise of the rest of the tavern made their attempts to listen rather frustrating.
"Either way," Mother Newt said finally, not looking up from her knitting, "a destiny is a destiny, no matter which Loom represents it. The world still turns. We each have our choices laid before us, as has always been."
"But this Loom has ceased its operation," Jackson replied, raising an eyebrow.
Newt nodded, still knitting casually. Beneath her industrious fingers pooled a small sweater with a jack-o'-lantern on the front under the words, 'GRAMMA'S LITTLE PUNKIN'. "But it is not our Loom, as you have so astutely discovered, Professor. Wherever our Loom is, it may still be operating, still recording everything we do, just as always."