The Potions professor took the paper clip, tied it to the fishing line, then transfigured the bait with his wand.

Lucas hadn't even made out what Snape had conjured before the rod was already arcing out over the sea.

Quiet settled between them again.

Snape found himself noticing, for the first time, how rarely Lucas was ever this still.

The young wizard had a habit of filling silences, always finding something to say, nothing quite boring enough to ignore.

Snape's gaze drifted to the side of Lucas's face. In the hazy lamplight the boy's features were soft, and if Snape's eyesight were just a little worse, he thought he might catch some trace of the adult Lucas in them.

It had never once occurred to him that Lucas might simply be the quiet type.

Lucas never seemed to stop. Maybe it was only because he couldn't afford to.

"How long have you been out here?" Snape asked.

Lucas blinked, not expecting that question. "A little over an hour," he answered honestly. "It hadn't been dark long — once night falls, it gets quiet out here."

"Quiet?" Snape looked out at the darkness before them. The sea surface was deep and still.

"Are you certain what you're feeling is quiet, and not dead silence?"

"Maybe both?" Lucas said. "But dead silence is still a kind of quiet."

He didn't stay quiet for long. The rod hanging over the water gave a small twitch.

Lucas laid his hand on it immediately, no force yet, just keeping control.

The silence stretched another two minutes or so.

Snape watched to see whether Lucas would actually reel something in.

The fluorescent marker near the surface dipped suddenly, and then more markers disappeared into the water in quick succession.

Lucas grabbed the rod, quick and sure, and began working the line.

Whatever was beneath the surface fought hard. Several times Lucas's pull was clearly a struggle, and yet his expression stayed perfectly calm.

He found his rhythm fast. Line out as the waves surged up; reel in as they fell.

His breathing had nearly synced with the motion.

Snape didn't notice he had leaned forward. He wanted to see what was about to come out of the water.

Time passed quickly.

After some indeterminate stretch the struggle below the surface began to weaken.

Lucas heaved the rod sharply upward, wrist and arm working together, and a silver-grey sea fish broke free of the water.

The tail was still shedding droplets, each one catching the deck's hazy lamplight, something close to dreamlike.

Then came a loud CLANG as the fish dropped into the basin at Lucas's feet.

"Wow!" Lucas let out a small, satisfied cheer.

He set the rod aside and spelled the hook back into a paper clip, then flipped quickly through a fish-species handbook by the light of the lamp.

A moment later, he announced its fate: "Sea bass. This one's good pan-fried in butter!"

Lucas noticed Snape still hadn't touched the sandwich he'd brought over. He had barely sat down before he was back on his feet. "Or we could make it a midnight snack."

Snape called him back and gestured at the seat beside him. Sit down.

Snape had no habit of eating late at night.

He stared at the fishing rod, and his mind drifted back, to Spinner's End, to being a child who had just finished pestering his mother for stories about wizards, only to be sent out by his irritable father to buy liquor.

The streetlamps along the road outside the alley hadn't all broken yet back then. He stood under one that kept flickering from a loose connection and told himself it was his doing. That he was the reason it behaved that way.

In the end, he really did put it out.

But there was no one to share that with. No one he could tell.

His mother would not have been pleased that he'd broken a lamp that lit Tobias's way home.

Snape swallowed the success in silence. And he was beaten on top of it all for taking too long to bring the liquor back.

The next morning, that bad-tempered man declared he wasn't allowed breakfast.

Snape was desperately hungry. His mother had already left for work. The next meal was still several hours away.

He thought of the ditch at the far end of the alley. He had never seen the sea at that age, but for some reason he felt certain he could catch fish from that ditch.

The rod was a tree branch. The line was string pulled from a piece of clothing. Young Snape crouched at the edge of that ditch and stayed there until Eileen came back with lunch.

He caught nothing.

And so in his memory, fishing became the taste of an empty, gnawing hunger. The loneliness of staring at a moving surface of water entirely alone.

That was likely the only thing Snape could think of when it came to sea fishing.

He noticed the puzzled look in Lucas's eyes and gave the sandwich in his hand a small shake. "This is enough for me."

Then he pointed at the rod.

Lucas hesitated a moment, caught on, and picked up Snape's rod. He re-rigged the hook, which had already been turned back into a paper clip.

"That's all there is to it." From his own experience, Lucas showed Snape where to grip the rod when a fish took the bait.

Snape found it straightforward enough. He had already watched Lucas go through the whole process.

What neither of them anticipated was that the real difficulty was waiting for a fish to bite.

They sat there for another half hour or so.

Lucas reeled in a few small fish. Snape's line stayed completely still.

It was hard not to draw conclusions. The next time Lucas was unhooking a catch, Snape stood up. "Switch spots with me."

Lucas didn't dare let the smirk show. He met Snape's expression — irritated and baffled in equal measure, and traded places without a word.

They sat in unspoken agreement, waiting, and the fishing trip had taken on a strangely competitive edge.

The vast open sea. A long-unfamiliar stillness.

People were contradictory creatures. The thing Lucas feared most was the platform of the Hogwarts Express, and yet in the eleven years spent motionless, not a single sound had intruded, and Lucas had still found ease in the quiet.

"Ah!" A soft, sudden sound escaped him.

He grabbed the rod Snape had been using. That was the one with a bite.

Lucas worked the line with practiced ease. The fish was small. He had it up quickly.

The fire in Snape's eyes was almost visible. He stared at the fish dangling in midair, then looked down at the basin at Lucas's feet, already too full to take another.

The Potions professor stood up.

"Oh!" Lucas cried out. Snape, already turning to leave, looked back just in time to see the fish still on that line thrash and snap it clean.

Snape and Lucas stared at each other. Neither said a word.

"It seems the problem was with your spot," Lucas said quickly.

Snape's expression went dark. "You think I can't catch a fish, so you're handing me one!" He strode back, his manner suggesting he was roughly half a step from throwing Lucas into the sea.

Lucas obligingly shrank back a little. Face perfectly straight, he said, "The line broke on its own!" Then, in rapid succession: "Let's try a different bait tomorrow night—"

Snape studied him.

Cunning little brat. Always pushing. Still planning on having a tomorrow.

His reason refused to believe the line had broken on its own. It equally refused to accept that he couldn't catch a fish under the same conditions.

Lucas watched as Snape's expression cycled through several changes, right where he stood.

His professor had managed to talk himself down, no headmaster here to smooth things over. He had done it entirely on his own.

In the end, Snape squeezed out a single sentence through gritted teeth.

"Don't let it happen again."

➤ Next: Two Make a Journey

Chapter 263 - Two Make a Journey

The second day at sea.

Morning sunlight spread without reservation across every part of the nameless ship.

When Snape got out of bed, he found Lucas kneeling on the deck.

He suspected he was hallucinating. A quick time-display charm confirmed the hour, only six o'clock.

The familiar routine pulled Snape back to the previous holiday.

He tugged the corner of his mouth, stepped out of the cabin, and walked soundlessly to stand behind Lucas.

Lucas stood up before Snape even reached him.

The sneaking-up approach had roughly a fifty-fifty success rate with Lucas. The young wizard was the alert type, unless he was genuinely focused on something mischievous, startling him was nearly impossible.

That hadn't been Snape's intention anyway. He looked down at the young wizard patting the dust from his knees as he rose.

"Good morning, Professor," Lucas greeted him.

"Good morning. I thought for a moment I had wandered onto a medieval pirate ship. Tell me — were you just kneeling on the deck scrubbing it? To give your work a more immersive quality, shall I order you to clean the gaps between the planks with a toothbrush?"

Snape was curious what Lucas had actually been doing.

Lucas answered directly: "I was observing the crystalline deposits on the deck. This ship's deck should have had an auto-cleaning charm applied to it, but after one night, this particular area still has some crystallization."

"So you wanted to see how the gap in the charm formed?" Snape completed his thought.

"Yes, Professor." Lucas replied quickly. "The situation looks minor for now — a simple cleaning charm will handle it."

"Breakfast is oatmeal porridge and the sea bass we caught yesterday." Lucas followed Snape back into the cabin.

The daytime temperature at sea was high. For ease of movement, Snape was wearing short sleeves, with a hand towel, a gift thrown in with the purchase of the clothes, tied around his wrist. Barring exceptions, that towel went on his wrist whenever he wore short sleeves.

Lucas also noticed a patch of uneven redness along Snape's arm, stark against his pale skin.

A sunburn?

Lucas trailed into the cabin, turning over in his mind where he had put the first-aid kit.

By the time Snape sat down to breakfast, Lucas had already found it. Most of the contents were potion products.

Lucas pulled out a jar of dark green paste. He checked the label first, then opened it and sniffed.

Peppermint. Seaweed. And something earthy.

Snape's knife paused mid-cut. "What did you smell?"

Lucas dabbed a small amount onto his skin and spread it around. He named the scents he'd caught first, then added based on the texture: "Mica powder as well. Possibly fish bone."

He reached his conclusion: "This ointment didn't require heating during preparation, so it isn't particularly difficult to make." He looked toward Snape.

Broadly satisfactory.

But Snape pressed further: "You said you smelled something earthy. What kind of earth?"

"Sea-floor mud?" A flash of inspiration, Lucas thought of his Muggle neighbor's wife, and the smell of the face masks she applied during summer holidays.

Correct.

Snape hadn't expected Lucas to land that one. Still, it was only a test of everyday potion knowledge worked into the moment. He had also just finished breakfast; he set down his knife and fork and moved to carry the dishes to the sink.

"I can handle that, it's part of the ritual." Lucas stepped in front of him. Back during the previous holiday, Snape had always done the washing up.

Snape set the crockery down with an air of discomfort.

Lucas held up the sunburn ointment whose ingredients he had just identified. "Did you get sunburned yesterday?"

It could have been the day before, actually. Snape had been wearing long sleeves last night, so nothing had shown.

"Looking after your daily needs is also part of the contract." Lucas blocked Snape's path and, in the same move, blocked any resistance Snape might offer.

Snape resolved to keep silent.

He didn't withdraw his arm. Lucas proceeded to apply a thin layer of the ointment over the sunburned skin.

"You need to put on some sunscreen."

"Starting today I will teach you the Patronus Charm."

Both voices at the same time.

Snape's refusal was immediate: "I don't need sunscreen!"

He fixed a deeply wary look on the jar Lucas had been keeping behind the sunburn ointment.

It was the specialty sunscreen wizards liked to slather on before holidays, the label even featured a pair of wizards in breezy summer clothes, smiling and winking on a loop.

He did not need it.

"But you're already sunburned. And sunlight is not your enemy."

Lucas pressed on: "We don't know how strict the ritual's requirements are. Since its terms include attending to the mentor, I consider preventing further sunburn entirely necessary."

This was absolutely the most absurd interpretation of a contractual clause Snape had heard all year.

If Lucas directed that same analytical ability toward a Potions essay, he would surely trounce every other student and earn a magnificent O.

But right now they were in the middle of the open ocean, not another soul in any direction, and for some reason Snape suddenly recalled what that old fellow from the Ministry of Magic had said when he lent him the boat: once you're off the dock, you're on your own.

He would have to endure.

"Leave it there. I will apply it myself." Snape shifted strategy. "What we should be discussing is instruction, that is the crux of the contract."

He had learned quickly to raise the contract as a weapon and use it to push Lucas back.

"I can take a step back," Lucas said, making a gesture of surrender.

But in practice he took a step forward. "You only need to apply it to the exposed skin. The clothing itself provides some protection. As for any uneven tan, we're wizards, we can sort that out once we're back on shore."

Lucas, at that moment, was feeling exactly the same way.

On only the second day at sea with Snape, his mentor had become more prickly than the little figurine he'd carved from obsidian.

And yet he was only a second-year student. There were many things he could neither say nor do.

Snape was offended. "I said — leave it there. I will apply it myself."

He decided to re-establish the boundary. "Say one more word and I will throw this jar into the sea."

Oh.

Lucas took another step forward. He said nothing, but picked up the sunscreen from the table and held it out to Snape.

Snape had no room left to think about rules.

He couldn't fathom why there were so many things to deal with, or why Lucas was this fixated on a jar of sunscreen.

This had rapidly become a matter of principle.

Snape snatched the jar from Lucas's hands, strode to the stairs, opened the door, and charged up onto the deck.

A moment later he returned empty-handed. "Now. We study the charm."

Lucas stared at him wide-eyed. He had actually thrown it away.

But Snape appeared to have recovered his good mood. And just at that moment, an owl flew in through the passageway door he'd left open, gliding down to land at the edge of the dining table.

Tied to its talons were a black balloon and a book wrapped in moisture-proof paper.

Finding a fast-moving ship in the middle of the open ocean was no easy task, and there were plenty of rogue birds in the surrounding waters.

The owl had carefully memorized Snape's appearance. Only when Snape grew impatient and pressed it did the bird reluctantly extend its talon.

➤ Next: Disaster Lesson