JAMES POTTER AND THE VAULT OF DESTINIES

low that her wet hull crushed the other ship's deckhouse, smashing it to matchsticks. She plowed over the Poseidon's main mast, breaking it like a twig and forcing the unfortunate pirate ship to roll over in the water.

       James clung to the steering pole, his hair streaming behind him and his eyes wide with a mixture of wonder and terror. Henrietta moved through the air ahead of the ship like a massive, scaly banner, her body flexing and sparkling greenly, her great membranous wings swooping easily, drawing streamers of water across the sky. Finally, gently, she angled downwards, furled her great wings, and dove to meet her long shadow on the waves. She made very little splash as she plunged into the depths. Behind her, however, the Gwyndemere landed like a whale, pounding the surface and sending up an explosion of dense white water, drenching James. A moment later, the crashing waters fell away and the ship cruised on sedately, her sails flapping in the ocean breeze.

       'A job well done, James!' Barstow bellowed happily. 'I told you we'd be in for a wee tussle, didn't I? Why, I'm tempted to recruit you to a life on the high seas, I am! Not everyone can air-pilot an Atlantean razorback their first time out! I was sure we were going to end up riding the Poseidon home piggyback!'

       James flushed, his heart still thundering with adrenaline. 'Well, I don't think they got away quite as undamaged as we seem to have,' he called sheepishly.

       Barstow angled toward the wrought iron stairs, patting Dodongo cheerfully on his enormous head. 'Ah, they'll be fine,' he replied, climbing up and trading seats with James. 'It isn't the first time the Poseidon's been turned turtle in the water. They'll have themselves a grand adventure of it, bashing their way through the hull into the sunlight, then repairing everything and turning her back over. Gives 'em something constructive to do for the rest of the day.'

James felt himself grinning helplessly as he climbed down. Feeling slightly drunk on adrenaline, he angled over toward Dodongo and plopped down onto the edge of the cargo hold doors, resting his arm on the great ape's nose. He replayed the last few minutes in his head, not quite believing everything that had happened. Curiously, the thing that amazed him most was how Barstow had managed to repair the harness chain at the last possible moment. It had looked perfectly hopeless and James understood why: it would have been virtually impossible to see the broken harness chain under the waves, where it was being dragged by Henrietta. Furthermore, doing magic through water, as Merlin had implied earlier, was extremely tricky. So how had Barstow managed it?

       James' eyes widened as he remembered something. Moments before the chain had magically reattached to the ship, Petra had been standing on the prow, her eyes closed, as if in deep concentration. The last time James had seen anything like that had been…

       'On the train,' he muttered to himself. 'On the Hogwarts Express with Merlin, when he'd made the tree grow beneath it, holding it up. But how could Petra…?'

       He frowned to himself. Next to him, Dodongo stirred, pursing his lips and nodding James' arm off his nose.

James got up and looked around the deck, curious to ask Petra about what he had seen, but she was nowhere in sight. James found that he wasn't particularly surprised.

4. THE DREAM STORY

       The crew of the Gwyndemere left the sails up now that the journey was fully underway. The wind filled them and helped propel the ship swiftly across the face of the ocean. For her own part, Henrietta drove through the water like a gigantic corkscrew, never slowing, her scales sparkling wherever her serpentine humps broke the surface, her serrated back slicing the waves neatly in two.

       The day turned long, hot, and hazy bright. James, Ralph, Albus, and Lucy remained on the decks until tea, and then spent the rest of the afternoon in the galley dining room, playing Winkles and Augers or drawing at the long tables with Izzy. James was surprised at how good an artist Izzy was and how amazingly prolific her drawings were. Petra had provided sheets of cheap parchment for the girl as well as a collection of crayons and quills with magically coloured inks that never ran out.

It wasn't just that Izzy's strokes were so confident and swift as she created her pictures; the pictures themselves were hauntingly engaging, somehow simplistic and complex at the same time. Entire landscapes would be summed up in three or four quick lines, whereas a tree on a hilltop would require fifteen minutes of careful, dense detail, overlaid with half a dozen unusual colours, creating something that almost seemed to hover on the parchment, or push past it, into some sort of invisible papery dimension. James tried studiously to mimic Izzy's style with no success.

       Lucy sat across from them, her cheek resting on her forearm as she watched the blonde girl draw. 'What's that one, Izzy?'

       'It's the gazebo,' Izzy answered without looking up. 'The one in Papa Warren's lake.'

       'You mean on the lake?' Lily asked, peering across the table from her own artwork, which was much less expressive and decidedly happier, with a huge yellow sun smiling down on a simple rendition of the Burrow.

       Izzy shrugged. 'Either way. I only saw it once. But I remember it. I'm drawing it for Petra.'

       James leaned closer. There were two small figures standing in the gazebo, both girls, one taller than the other. Izzy had done a remarkably good job at representing both herself and Petra standing under the gazebo's low roof. James couldn't tell, however, if the gazebo was overlooking the lake, floating on it like a boat, or even submerged under its surface. Izzy wasn't a witch, of course, so her drawings didn't move, nonetheless there was something about the background of the gazebo picture that seemed to shift and pulse, just outside the range of vision. The drawing was strange and surreal, and James found he couldn't look at it for very long.

       At the opposite end of the galley, Persephone Remora sat playing a complicated octocard game with one of her younger charges, a boy with lank black hair and pasty skin.

       'Vampirates, I've no doubt,' she said loftily, carefully covering one of the cards with her hand. When she lifted it, the card had turned over, revealing a picture of a capering, grinning skeleton. 'I suspect they normally only hunt the ocean's face by moonlight, but it may well be that they smelled the presence of their kin. Perchance they meant for us to join them.'

       'Begging your pardon, Miss,' one of the kitchen mates commented as he gathered the tea cups and spoons, 'but there ain't no such thing as vampirates.'

       'I'm quite sure that that is what they would have you believe, sir,' Remora sniffed delicately. 'A secret and mysterious sect are they, known only to those who are doomed to be their prey.'

       The mate shrugged. 'As you say, Miss. Person'ly, I always did find that a deadly reputation worked much better on the open sea than mysterious secrecy. Saves you having to prove yourself over and over to every new ship you chase after. Frankly, even if they do exist, life amongst your secret vampirates sounds like nothing but work, work, work, if you ask me.'

       'Excuse me,' Remora said tiredly, rolling her eyes, 'but I don't believe I did.'

The young man sitting across from Remora sighed. 'Mortals,' he said under his breath, pretending that no one else could hear him. James saw the boy glance sideways, but James acted as if he hadn't noticed.