JAMES POTTER AND THE VAULT OF DESTINIES

       James blinked at her, perplexed. 'You…,' he began, but stopped himself. He shook his head slightly. 'Never mind. How have you been?'

       'All right,' she replied, looking toward the fire. 'Reading, mostly. Professor Baruti comes by in the evenings sometimes and helps me with my French. He's very kind and understanding about all of this.'

       James thought for a moment. Finally, in a quiet voice, he said, 'I think we've come up with a way to clear your name, Petra.'

       She turned back to him, frowning slightly. 'How?'

       James wobbled his head back and forth, unsure how much to say. 'It's complicated. But Zane and Ralph are helping. I think we might be onto something. If it works out, we'll find the people who really did attack the Vault of Destinies and steal the crimson thread. Then you'll be in the clear.'

       To James' surprise, Petra was looking at him doubtfully. 'Are you sure that's a good idea, James? I mean, it sounds…,' she paused, as if choosing her words very carefully, '… er, dangerous.'

       'Maybe,' James admitted. 'But it's worth it, isn't it? I mean, Petra, you're in really serious trouble here. If that arbiter, Keynes, says you're guilty of attacking the Vault and freezing Mr. Henredon, you could go to prison for a long, long time. If there's something I can do to stop that from happening—'

       Petra smiled at James as if he was rather silly. 'I won't go to prison, James. Izzy and I will be fine. We've been through worse scrapes.'

       'You have?' James frowned incredulously. 'Petra, that Keynes idiot was serious. Mum says there are more of his kind floating around the streets outside, keeping an eye on the flat, making sure you don't make a break for it or something. You can't just blow this off. Izzy needs you. And so do… er, other people. If you get sent to wizarding prison…'

       Petra sighed deeply. 'I'm not blowing it off, James. I just… I can't worry about that. Not now. There are other things. More important things.'

       'Petra,' James exclaimed, exasperated. 'What's more important than being accused of attempted murder and the theft of some crazy dimensional artifact?'

In answer, Petra looked at James and smiled a little crookedly. 'You tell me, James. We're still connected, aren't we? That silver cord you conjured, it's still there, even now. Don't you feel it?'

       James glanced down at his right hand. He opened it, palm up on his lap. He could feel the cord, now that she had mentioned it. He could even (although it might have been his imagination) see it very faintly.

       'No,' he lied. 'I think it's faded away now. I can't see your dreams anymore.'

       Petra held up her own hand. James looked at it in the light of the fireplace. 'You can't lie to me, James, even if you want to,' Petra said, her voice low, amused. Slowly, she lowered her own hand onto his. When they touched, James felt a small burst of mingled heat and cold. It spread up his arm, making him shiver, and yet he didn't pull his hand away. Underneath the thrumming energy of the magical cord, he could feel the prosaic thrill of Petra's hand resting upon his, her fingers cool and slender, curling around the heel of his palm. He looked up at her, speechless.

       'The cord is still there,' she said very quietly. 'It connects us, probably forever, because you were willing to die for me. I know that now, James. But instead of making a trade—your life for mine, like the laws of deep magic demand—you tapped into something even deeper. Something beyond normal magic. Do you know what that is?'

       James hadn't really considered it, not since that night on the stern of the Gwyndemere, but now, looking into Petra's eyes, he thought he did know the answer after all. He nodded.

       'It came from you, somehow,' he said, not a little awe in his voice. 'I tapped into your power, the same power you used to reconnect the anchor chain to the ship without even using your wand. The power you almost used on Keynes when he was trying to separate you and Izzy that day in Administration Hall.'

       Petra nodded, her face solemn. 'You tapped into my power, yes. I don't know how. Maybe because of how you feel for me and because of what we've been through together, and maybe even just because of the intensity of the moment. You were willing to trade your life for mine, but the magic was bigger than that. The magic saved both of us. But, James, things like that don't happen without a price. I fear that someday…', she shook her head and looked away again, toward the flickering flames of the fireplace, 'someday you might regret it.'

       James was shocked. 'No way!' he whispered harshly, noticing the look his Aunt Audrey was giving them from across the room. He lowered his voice again and went on. 'Petra, that's crazy. I'd do it again right now. And I'll do whatever I can to find the people who really did curse Mr. Henredon so you can be free again. But Petra—' He stopped and knitted his brow. Barely whispering, he went on, 'How can all of this be? What makes you so… powerful all of a sudden?'

Petra drew a long, deep breath, thinking. Finally, she met his eyes again. 'I've always had that power,' she admitted. 'I didn't understand it, and neither did anyone else, especially my grandparents. They were afraid of me because my magic was so much greater than theirs. They didn't believe I would know how to use it, that I would grow up to be something terrible and cruel. But their fear shamed me. As a result, I trained myself not to use my powers. I taught myself to use a wand instead of just my hands. The wand was like a funnel, making the magic smaller, weaker, more like everyone else's. Eventually, by the time you first met me, I'd become so used to the wand that I'd forgotten what it was like to work magic without it.'

       James' brow was still furrowed as he listened to her, but she was looking past him now, her eyes unfocused, her hand still on his.

       'Now, though, both of my grandparents are dead,' she said faintly. 'There's no reason to hide anymore. I broke my wand on my last night at Papa Warren's farm. I didn't do it on purpose. I just let it feel the full weight of my powers. It broke right down the middle, split as if it had been struck by lightning, just like my very first wand, when I was a little girl and hadn't yet learned how to rein it in. Now I don't need a wand. Now I'm learning to use the power the way I was meant to. That's what you tapped into, James,' she said, focusing on him again. 'For better or worse, you locked us together. When you conjured this silver cord, you bound us, maybe forever. Soul to soul. And that, James, you may well someday regret. Someday, you may curse yourself for it, and me too.'

       James' thoughts swam as he looked at the slight girl next to him. It all sounded perfectly daft to him, and yet he could sense the honesty of her words. She believed everything she said. If she hadn't been touching him, her hand on his, making the silver cord pulse like a dynamo, he might have been able to doubt her. Now, however, tiny shreds of memories came into his head, directly from Petra's own thoughts.

       He saw her as a young girl, closing a set of window drapes with a wave of her small hand. Another memory showed her in a sunlit wood, moving rocks through the air with a pointing finger, forming them into carefully constructed, mysteriously sad towers. Finally, he saw her as a ten-yearold girl standing frightened in the darkness of a cellar, several rats lying dead at her feet. She had thought the rats to death, merely sending her mind into their little beating hearts and squeezing them, bursting the little organs like balloons. She had hated the rats and feared them, but lying there dead at her feet, their feet curled and their black eyes staring like drops of oil, Petra felt terrible about what she had done. She tried to think them back to life, but that was where her powers—her prodigious, mysterious powers—ended. She could kill, but she could not return to life. Young Petra cried in the darkness of the cellar, cried for the rats that she had first feared, and then, when it was too late, pitied. She cried for her own lost innocence. She was, after all, a rat murderer.

       And then, buried beneath all of these secret visions, curling under and through them like a snake, was a memory of a woman's voice, crying out with terror and a sort of mad, vindictive spite. I