JAMES POTTER AND THE VAULT OF DESTINIES

       'Yours is not a dream of exploration,' Franklyn replied, his face darkening. 'It is an obsession with power. This is not one of your fanciful stories of the heroic outcast struggling against ignorant foes. Your actions have affected real people. I should have intervened months ago when I discovered that you were experimenting with the Wizarding Grand Unification Theory. The Octosphere was bad enough, but at least it turned out to be harmless. Attempting to observe and measure all things at once, in the name of domination, is a madman's fantasy.'

       'I was mistaken, I agree,' Magnussen replied, as if he and Franklyn were merely discussing the matter as friends. 'I was preoccupied with the microscopic. I fell into the conviction that observing all things meant breaking the world down into smaller and smaller bits, recording the actions of even the most infinitesimal details—the motion of blood corpuscles through the pathways of arteries, the firing of neurons in individual human brains. I studied these things in great detail, learning what I could from the dead, gaining even more knowledge from my systematic studies of the living. You choose to call it torture, of course, and yes, even murder, because you fail to grasp the monumental nature of the end goal. What is mere infliction of pain in the face of perfect understanding? What is one paltry life in the name of the total unification of the cosmos?'

       'Ignatius,' Franklyn interrupted. 'Stop! You are only making matters worse for yourself.'

       'Eventually,' Magnussen went on, now leaning slightly over the table, his eyes bright, 'I determined that I was thinking too much like my fellows, failing where all those before me had failed. With that realization, I remembered my Heraldium; 'He who fails to see the mountain stumbles headlong over the pebbles.' Don't you see? The secret was not in the microscopic at all, Benjamin. The secret, of course, was in the macroscopic! Not the tiny, but the monumental! Totality of measurement could only be accomplished when one could view the totality of realities! I knew then what I had to do. I had to break out of the confines of this dimension and find a place where I could observe all dimensions at once. What you call a mere legend, I have walked upon with my own two feet. I have been through the Nexus Curtain. I have trod the World Between the Worlds and witnessed the pathways into every other dimension.'

       Treete shook his head, his eyes narrowed. 'Am I to understand then, Professor, that you are admitting to all of the allegations leveled against you?'

       'Please, Ignatius,' Franklyn said, nearly pleading with the big man across from him. 'Your obsessions have driven you to madness. Whatever you have done, whatever you have seen, it has obviously affected you in some dreadful way. There is help for you here, if you choose to seek it. Beware what you say, lest you forfeit that option.'

       Magnussen chuckled drily. 'You think that I should care what this little man can do to me? Let him attempt to stop me. I am beyond the rim now, Benjamin. I am past the event horizon of destiny, incapable of returning even if I wished to. And I do not wish to. I embrace my mission. I will go to it with great relish.'

       Treete pushed back his chair and stood up. 'I am afraid that I have no choice then, sirs. Out of respect for your position, Professor Magnussen, and at your personal request, Professor Franklyn, I leave you now to formulate my verdict. You can expect my return within the week, along with a cadre of wizarding police, to escort the defendant to the Crystal Mountain for processing. Professor Franklyn, for the interim, will you state your willing assumption of full responsibility for the guarding of the defendant?'

       Franklyn's eyes remained locked on Magnussen. 'I assume full responsibility for the defendant.'

       'So be it,' Treete said briskly. He retrieved his wand from his sleeve, reached out, and tapped the yellowed skull that sat on the table before him. Instantly, the room vanished, leaving James, Zane, and Ralph blinking in the darkness of the hall of the Disrecorder.

       'Whoa,' Zane breathed, looking down at the yellowed skull.

       Ralph shook his head slowly. 'Franklyn wasn't kidding around when he said that that bloke was someone the school would like to forget.'

       'Well, now we know why Magnussen went through the Nexus Curtain, at least,' James sighed. 'He was convinced that he had to measure everything in every dimension in order to know the future and control it. Is that how it sounded to you?'

       Zane nodded. 'Magnussen was one crazy whack job. I see why he was Head of Igor House. But where most of those guys just talk a big game about wanting to take over the world, he actually went out and did something about it.'

       'But we still don't know how he got through the Nexus Curtain,' Ralph commented. 'And that's the bit we really need to know, right? How else are we going to get through to the World Between the Worlds and see if the real bad guys are hiding out there?'

       Zane took the skull gingerly from the bowl of the Disrecorder. 'According to Professor Jackson, the Nexus Curtain can only be opened with a key from some other dimension. Whoever attacked the Vault of Destinies has the crimson thread from the Loom, which would do the trick since it came from some neighboring reality. What could Magnussen have used as a key?'

       James shrugged and nodded toward Ralph, who was holding the second relic, the old boot. 'Let's try that one. Maybe it'll tell us what we need to know.'

       Ralph looked down at the boot in his hands. 'You think this is the boot that they talked about in the vision? The one that belonged to that Muggle woman that Magnussen, er…'

'Just put it on the thing, Ralph,' Zane said, shaking his head slowly.

       Ralph stepped forward and placed the small boot onto the stone pedestal before him. In response, the hall of the Disrecorder dimmed, but remained relatively unchanged. For a moment, James thought that there was something wrong with the relic, but then he heard a voice, echoing quietly. He followed the sound of it, turning to look about the hall, and saw a single flame burning in a small table lamp. Next to it was Benjamin Franklyn, seated in a wooden chair with a desk attachment, writing. Unlike the previous vision, which had been bright and solid, the image of Franklyn looked almost like a projection on smoke. Franklyn's ghostly quill scratched on the parchment as he spoke the words aloud, dictating to himself. His voice seemed to come from very far away.

       'These are the notes of Professor Benjamin Amadeus Franklyn,' he said slowly, bent over the parchment, 'detailing the final records of the events of this night, October the eighth, eighteen fiftynine, the last night of Professor Ignatius Magnussen, formerly a valued teacher at this institution, and a friend…'

       Franklyn stopped and looked up, almost as if he'd heard the boys' scuffling footsteps. James froze in place, but then he realized that the vision of Franklyn was merely pausing to think. His eyes were bright behind his square spectacles. After a long moment, he drew a breath and leaned over the parchment again.

       'The flames still burn in the foundation of the house Ignatius Magnussen once called home. How the fire began, no one knows for sure. I myself suspect a deliberate causation, perhaps even set by the professor himself. The mob that preceded the fire was maddened beyond reason and did nothing to extinguish the flames once they appeared. I am dismayed to announce that there were many in tonight's assembly who wished to see Magnussen's corpse pulled from the dying flames, killed as surely as the fire destroyed his home. Preliminary observation of the ruins, however, has revealed no trace of the professor's body. I have no doubt that further searches over the coming days will prove equally unsuccessful. Magnussen is not here. He has escaped, probably during the very height of the fire, while the vengeance-seeking riot was in full fever.'

       Franklyn stopped writing again. He put down the quill and pushed his hand up under his spectacles, rubbing his eyes wearily. He didn't seem to want to go on, but after a moment, he retrieved the quill and began again, speaking the words aloud as he wrote them.

'Where Ignatius Magnussen has gone, I cannot begin to guess. Surely, he has by now accomplished what he swore was his destiny: he has retraced his steps through the Nexus Curtain, into whatever unknowable realm lies beyond. I believe it is likely that from that realm he will never return, thus I wish to record what I now know of his