The Vault of Destinies (James Potter #3) (76 page)

On the third Saturday in April, James, Zane, and Ralph climbed their way to the library in the Tower of Art, ostensibly to do homework, but also in hopes of researching a new lead in the Roebitz riddle.

The library occupied the space immediately below the penthouse museum and took up the equivalent of three full floors with its dizzyingly tall bookshelves and rolling ladders, long polished tables decked with green Bankers Lamps, and overhanging balconies, stairways, and landings. High in the very center of the space, visible from nearly every angle, hung a monstrous crystal chandelier, its thousands of pendants winking rainbow prisms in the glinting candlelight.

Around this, somewhat unsettlingly, books of all sizes flew like bats, flapping their covers, their ribbon bookmarkers trailing behind them like kite tails. James had been to the library several times before he realized that the flying books were actually part of the library's shelving system. Loose tomes would occasionally soar up from the carts next to the front desk and circle the chandelier, almost as if it were a sort of roundabout. One at a time, the books would eventually swoop back down toward the leaning monolithic bookshelves, furl their covers with a soft
thunk
, and slip into place with their fellows.

James had a strange suspicion that part of the reason that the books spent so much time circling the chandelier was because they were (being magical books) very slightly alive and liked the hustle and bustle of what the librarian referred to as 'the sorting cloud'. The ripple of their pages and the gentle clap of their covers as the books circled the chandelier sounded vaguely like whispered speech and James couldn't help wondering if the books spent their time in the cloud trading gossipy stories about the students and teachers below.

Considering the way James sometimes treated his own library books, this was not a very comforting thought.

"This really seems like a long shot," Ralph whispered as they settled down to a table on the edge of one of the upper balconies. "I mean, fish eggs?"

"
Roe,"
Zane replied, annoyed. "Fish eggs are called roe.
Roe-bits?
It's worth checking out, at least. Maybe Magnussen was really into aquariums or something. Maybe he hid the secret of the Nexus Curtain in some fish food and fed it to his pet catfish, which then had baby fish… and… er."

James pressed his lips together tentatively. "It's a long shot," he said, agreeing with Ralph.

"I don't see
you
two coming up with any genius brainstorms," Zane groused, pulling a huge picture book toward him. On the front of it was a moving photograph of the Loch Ness Monster snapping its prodigious jaws. The title was embossed in gold: '
MAGICAL FISH and MARINE LIFE
OF THE WORLD
'.

"I'll be back in a few minutes," James said, slipping out of his seat. "I need to find a book for my kettles and cauldrons Home Ec paper."

"Don't remind me," Ralph said, rolling his eyes. "I have to write a paragraph on the difference between cupcakes and muffins."

"You ought to be an expert on that," Zane said without looking up from his book. "You ate three of each at breakfast just this morning."

Ralph frowned. "It was research," he said a little defensively.

James worked his way back down the stairs to the main floor and then meandered through several rows of tall, crooked bookshelves. The highest levels seemed to totter precariously over him, their books threatening to spill from their shelves at the slightest provocation.

After several turns, James finally found the reference section. Huge dusty volumes lined the shelves, bowing the wood under their accumulated weight. Finally, near the end of the aisle, James found what he was looking for. An entire section was devoted to an anthology of huge encyclopedias, all arranged by letter and subject. There appeared to be thousands of volumes in the collection, each cloth-bound in frayed beige, their spines nearly two feet tall. James craned his neck to see into the upper levels of the bookcase and then pulled one of the wheeled ladders toward him. The rungs squeaked as he began to climb.

He stopped halfway up the ladder and reached carefully for a particular volume. A huge embossed letter S decorated the top portion of the spine. Beneath this were the words '
SNYXPORIUM through SORDHISIUS'.
Clutching the heavy book against his chest, James inched back down the ladder. He sat down cross-legged on the floor at the base of the ladder and cradled the huge volume on his knees. After a brief pause, he opened it.

The book smelled like mildew and dust, but its pages were thick and creamy-smooth, yellowed only slightly along the edges. Full-page illustrations filled the book alongside dense fields of small print.

Normally, of course, this was the sort of thing Rose would be assigned to do. As Zane had said, she really was like their very own personal research department. Some things, however, James had been reluctant to share even with his closest companions. The topic he was looking up now was one of those things. He began to riffle through the encyclopedia's pages as quietly as possible until he reached a particular heading, nearly halfway through. He stared down at the words, his lips pressed into a thin line.

Defined simplistically as a magical human male, a sorcerer should not be confused with a wizard. While both are primarily determined by their predisposition to spellwork, potion-making, and the use of magical objects, there is a marked difference in the fundamental source of those powers. While witches and wizards draw upon magical resources within their own bodies (see:
Intrinsic
Magic
), sorcerers collect their powers from external resources, such as growing things, kinetic energy reserves (oceans), or even the passage of time (see:
Elemental Magic, types and uses).
For this reason, sorcerers (or, in the Old Language,
Sourcereurs
) are potentially far more powerful than a typical witch or wizard depending on the residual magical resources of their surroundings. Similarly, where a typical magical individual's power is a constant, a sorcerer's power may be diminished to the point of abject weakness if he is cut off from those magical resources.

It is interesting to note, however, that in every recorded instance, a sorcerer only derives power from one type of extrinsic source. For instance, a sorcerer who draws his strength from growing things will find himself considerably weakened when placed within a desert environment. Theoretically, this is an example of the law of conservation of powers, which predicts that
absolute
power will always be prohibited within a balanced natural world.

While there are many theories regarding the origins of sorcerers, none have been conclusively proven. All such theories, however, can be broken up into two predominant categories: the
Serendipitous
and the
Causational
.

The Serendipitous theory states that a sorcerer is
always
created when a certain series of variable requirements are met. The most well-known Serendipitous theory is the "seventh son of a seventh son" premise, which merely states that any seventh male offspring of a wizard who is, himself, a seventh male offspring will, without exception, be a sorcerer. Other theories are far more complicated, suggesting deviations in times of the year, phases of the moon, ages and lineage of the parents, and even the number of windows in the room of the child's birth.

Adherents to the Causational theory, however, postulate a much different origin, owing itself not at all to randomly determined variables but to the balance of the magical world in general. In short, the Causational theory states that when the scales of the cosmos require a sorcerer (either to maintain balance or to destroy it), then a sorcerer will, out of sheer necessity, appear.

Notably, one variation of the Causational theory adds that there can never be only
one
sorcerer. In order for the polarities of destiny to remain in check (the theory claims) there must always be a duality: either no sorcerers whatsoever or two. This theory, however, like all the rest, has never been proven or disproven.

While any number of legendary sorcerers have appeared in the annals of history, there are very few documented cases of the existence of such individuals. The most well-known and verified instance is Merlinus Ambrosius, whose powers, mysterious origins, and legendary disappearance describe the very archetype of the classical sorcerer.

During his lifetime, he was known to conjure feats of such devastating natural ferocity, including (but not limited to) earthquakes, floods, typhoons, walking forests, and tidal waves, that he was by turns revered and/or vilified by all who knew of him. Since his time (approximately 935-980 AD) there has been no uncontested evidence of another living sorcerer.

While both elvenkind and goblinkind also derive their powers from extrinsic magical sources, they are
not
technically considered sorcerers (despite long-standing arguments by goblin leaders and species rights advocates). Since both goblins and elves can only
contain
the equivalent of any average magical person's power, they do not meet the 'Limitless Magical Expression requirement' (set forth by the
Magical Defining Characteristics Census of 1177)
for sorcerer status.

Contrariwise, there has existed a long-standing theory that claims that the existence of sorcerers implies, by logical necessity, the possibility of sorceresses—that is, a female whose source of power is extrinsic and who is capable of summoning limitless expressions of that extrinsic resource based upon its availability. Despite this, no irrefutable example of such a person has ever been verified.

James lowered the book and leaned slowly back, letting his head bump the bookshelf behind him. For several seconds, he merely stared up past the canyon of the leaning bookcases toward the books which flapped silently through the library's upper levels, winging toward their shelves.

It made perfect sense. That was the most dreadful part. The passage in the encyclopedia was like the center piece of a puzzle, the one that brought all the separate bits together and formed the full picture. As incredible as it seemed—as completely gut-wrenchingly unbelievable as it would appear to any sane observer—Petra Morganstern… was a sorceress.

James shook his head slowly, barely able to grasp the concept.

He remembered the first time he had met Petra, back on his first night at Hogwarts. Ted had introduced her to him along with the rest of the Gremlins. She had seemed merely pretty and smart then, the perfect foil for the brash insolence of the rest of the Gremlins. James had had classes with her throughout that year. In all honesty, he had begun, even then, to feel the faintest stirrings of romantic magnetism toward her. Most assuredly, there was something unique about her— something rare and slightly dark, both inspiring and solemn. Even so, how could this slight, smart girl—the one with the tendency to suck thoughtfully on the ends of her raven-dark hair and doodle dancing elves in the margins of her textbooks—how could that girl possibly be something so powerful, so rare, and so potentially frightening as a sorceress?

And yet, of course, James knew it was true. It
had
to be true. Everything pointed to it, from the mysteries surrounding her last day at Morganstern Farm to the amazing magic she seemed to perform without any wand to the strange silver thread that had appeared when she'd fallen from the back of the
Gwyndemere
—conjured by James, but drawn, apparently, from her own power.

Merlin, of course, was a sorcerer. Was that why he was so interested in Petra? Was that why he was worried about what she might do? Was she his equal? His
opposite
?

James shuddered, violently, and the encyclopedia nearly fell off his lap. Instinctively, he grabbed at it and then closed it with a soft thump.

For the first time, seriously, he wondered if Petra really
had
been involved in the attack on the Vault of Destinies. Thus far, James had been able to convince himself that it couldn't really have been her that he'd seen on that night coming out of the Archive alongside the creepy woman in the black robes. He'd convinced himself that it had to have been a trick—someone using Polyjuice Potion, for instance, or perhaps even a
Visum-ineptio
charm. But what if none of that was true? What if Petra really
was in
league with the mysterious dark woman, and had been lying all along about her innocence? Worse, what if the Morgan part of Petra's mind, the part influenced by the final shred of Lord Voldemort's soul, had broken free of the mental prison that Petra had erected for it—the black castle in her dreams—and had
taken over
somehow?

What if James, Ralph, and Zane succeeded in breaking through to the World Between the Worlds only to find irrefutable proof that it
had
been Petra (Morgan) who had broken into the Hall of Archives, cursed Mr. Henredon, and then stolen the crimson thread from the foreign dimension's Vault of Destinies? What then? Would the courts send Petra to wizarding prison?

Perhaps even worse, would they be
unable
to?

For one bright, horrible moment, James envisioned the dark-haired girl (Petra/Morgan) walking resolutely down the center of a broad road, peppered with green Killing Curses and yet unfazed, her brow lowered in cold fury, her eyes flashing black sparks and lightning crackling between her clawed fingertips.

She's not evil,
he told himself resolutely. It was almost a mantra, an incantation. In his deepest heart, he both believed it utterly and doubted it hopelessly. The friction between the two warring convictions was nearly overwhelming, almost like a breaking heart.

"Petra's not evil," he whispered, his eyes wide and bright in the darkness of the library aisle. "She's just…" He cut himself off with a gasp, realizing what he was about to say. Suddenly, he felt very cold, chilled nearly to the bone. This time, when the encyclopedia tried to slide off of his crossed legs, James let it. He barely even noticed.