The Vault of Destinies (James Potter #3) (40 page)

"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. So 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 vibrate, "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."

In a low voice, Wood asked, "And what of the realm from which
this
Loom has come?"

Newt clucked her tongue. "Perhaps they are not so lucky. Or perhaps their Loom was already stopped. Perhaps it comes from a realm not as fortunate as ours, and their destiny has already met its doom. There is no way for us to know, but fortunately, it is not our concern."

"Mother Newt is quite right," Franklyn agreed, settling his empty Dragonmeade glass onto the table. A dragon's talon clinked in the bottom of the glass, black and hooked. "We have only one concern, and we must treat it with the utmost care and secrecy."

James looked up at his father as he nodded somberly, his glasses flashing in the dim light of the Kite and Key's hanging lanterns. "We must find the missing red thread," he agreed. "Once it is returned to the Loom, it may set everything to rights once again. If it were possible to know who that particular thread represents, our task might be substantially easier."

"You may be certain that we will spend all of our considerable arts on that particular question," Franklyn said. "Professor Jackson is the foremost expert on the Loom. If anyone can discover its secrets, it is him."

Jackson sighed and shook his head. "Alas, it may be impossible. But we shall see what can be done."

"In the meantime," Harry added briskly, "I will do my part. Now that the witnesses have been interviewed properly in the Chancellor's office." He turned to James, Ralph, and Zane and eyed them seriously. "Thanks to them, we have our first lead. Two women, one grown, the other in her late teens, were seen leaving the scene of the attack mere moments after it occurred." Here, he winked at James, unsmiling. James understood the wink. Merlin had purposely arranged for Petra's name to be left out of the official account, but Harry Potter was privy to the secret. James nodded at his father, frowning slightly.