JAMES POTTER AND THE VAULT OF DESTINIES

        I glance around the lake and look intently back toward the woods behind me.

        'No one is coming,' I say, amazed and surprised.

       'No,' the voice deep in my thoughts agrees, 'the boy James does not come this time. The misguided force of good has no voice here. 'Good' is a myth. There is only power. Nothing else matters.'

       James stopped reading. His eyes were wide, shining in the wandlight, and his heart was pounding so hard that the parchment shook in his hands.

Merlin predicted this, he thought, nearly saying the words aloud. Back at the end of last term, when he, James, and James' dad had met in the Headmaster's office to discuss the aftermath of Petra's encounter with the Gatekeeper, Merlin had warned them that Petra's battle might not truly be over.

       'Don't think that, despite her actions,' he had said gravely, 'she will not lie awake on cold, lonely nights, pining hopelessly for her dead parents, and wondering, wondering, if on that fateful night in the Chamber of Secrets she made the wrong choice.'

       Now, if any of what James was reading in Petra's dream story was true, he knew that she had indeed wondered those very things. According to the story, she was still haunted by the events of that night, and had subsequently seen her mother's face in the surface of the Morganstern Farm's lake, after she, Petra, had dropped some inexplicable load of dead spiders into it. The spiders functioned as a tiny sacrifice, giving Petra one more fleeting glimpse of what she had lost in the Chamber of Secrets.

       Somehow, incredibly, Petra appeared to possess the power to recreate the Gatekeeper's awful bargain, only this time without any outside interference. Still, if the dream story was accurate, even then she had not consciously meant to sacrifice Izzy in order to retrieve her mother from the dead. She had meant only to offer the lake some of Izzy's blood, in order to simply talk to the vision of her mother, and hear her guidance. But then, apparently, things had gone very wrong, and the horrid voice of Voldemort had taken advantage of it, pushing Petra to commit the act she was meant to have committed in the Chamber of Secrets: the murder of another human being.

       James was stunned, not so much by the power of the story, but by the nagging question: how much of it was true? He recalled the short bit of Petra and Merlin's conversation that he and the gremlins had listened in on with Ted's Extendable Ears. In it, Petra had referred to the dream, commenting that it was a reminder that one decision can have monumental repercussions. So where, in the dream story, did it stop reflecting what had actually happened on that night? How much of it was real, and how much was plain and simple nightmare? Obviously, Izzy had survived that night, either because she had never really fallen into the lake or because Petra had somehow managed to rescue her. But how? James furrowed his brow and bent over the pages again, reading on.

       I look out over the water again. I can no longer see Izzy, but a figure is rising from the center of the lake. I can see, even in silhouette, that it is the shape I have so longed to see. My mother stands on the surface of the lake. She begins to walk to me, her arms outstretched, and yet I am torn. I cannot let Izzy die! I shake my head and peer down into the water, trying to find her with my thoughts. My wand is broken. I no longer remember how to do the magic without it but I must try. I raise my arms out over the water, close my eyes and concentrate.

       'What are you doing?' the voice inside me asks.

'You are right,' I answer, as firmly as I can. 'No one is coming. I am being the voice of good. I am choosing it myself….' I force the figure of my mother from my mind. I focus on finding Izzy.

       'Don't be a fool!' The voice is becoming angry now. 'Once before you thought you had changed the course of destiny, yet here you are now. You have only postponed the inevitable.'

       I cannot sense Izzy in the depths of the lake but something is hidden in the darkness. It has been a long time since I have moved anything without my wand but I discover that the power is still there; buried but not forgotten. I direct all my energy to the object below.

       Something in the water begins to move—something large. As a result, the figure of my mother slowly begins to sink again.

       'You are not the only one with powers at your disposal….' The voice seethes at me. 'I am you and you are me. You cannot choose the light while I choose the dark!'

       My left hand is suddenly icy cold. Frosty tendrils extend from it out onto the lake toward the sinking figure of my mother, forming a narrow sheet of white ice. She rises again to the surface and walks toward me on the icy bridge. My power is divided and weakened. I cannot maintain my hold on the large object in the water.

       'Give in!' the voice commands. 'Good is a myth! All that matters is power. Embrace your destiny or die fighting. You are not good. There is no such thing.'

       I look at the face of my mother. All I have to do is reach out and take her hand.

       And suddenly I realize that I don't care.

       'Good is only a myth if good people stop believing in it,' I say out loud. 'I may not be good but neither am I evil. Whichever direction I go is up to no one but me!' I feel warmth come over me. My hand is no longer cold. I close my eyes, concentrate and the object of my attention begins to rise once more toward the surface of the lake. I see the water mount up in a boil, slowly at first and then with a great surge. With a roar of falling water, the old gazebo lifts from the lake, resuming its original position at the end of the dock. It is waterlogged and draped with seaweed, but completely recognizable. And lying in the center of its rotten floor is Izzy.

       I rush to her, kneel beside her, and push the wet hair back from her face. Her eyes are closed and she is not breathing.

       'Izzy,' I whisper close to her ear. 'I did it! I made the right choice, Iz.'

       She does not move. I look at her pale face and touch her forehead.

'Please don't be dead, Izzy,' I beg her. 'Please…' I close my eyes and cast my mind into Izzy's small body. I feel warmth inside her soul but she doesn't respond. She has lost hope and is dwindling away. I cannot give up… I will not give up… I feel tears on my face and I try again.

       'Come back, Izzy,' I plead silently, speaking directly to that diminishing spark of her life. 'Please come back.'

       There is no response. Izzy's eyes do not so much as flutter. I begin to panic. 'Don't go Iz, I need you. You're all I have left. It shouldn't end this way. It can't end this way. Good will win out in the end. It has to…' I hold my sister in my arms and rock back and forth, searching for that spark. 'No… No Iz… Don't be gone. Don't leave me alone…'

       I open my eyes and look down at my sister's face…

       Here, Petra's story stopped for a space of several lines. James looked at the blank space, but it wasn't entirely blank. Petra had begun to continue the story three more times, and then scribbled out the results, violently and completely, obliterating the shapes of her neat handwriting. The quill had leaked, leaving ragged black blots on the parchment. Finally, much more roughly, Petra's story continued.

       Izzy lays in the darkness of the gazebo, cold and still, unmoving. The guttering spark of her life is gone. Izzy