Snape stopped paying Lucas any attention. He picked up what he'd been given and carried it back to the bedroom.

The door shut with a bang.

All over a tin of sunscreen.

Lucas stood where he was for a moment, then waved his wand and cleaned the bowls and dishes, returning them to their place.

An hour later, Snape called Lucas into the sitting room.

Lucas pushed open the door and stepped inside.

The sitting room was a twenty-square-metre space. The ship's interior had been expanded by magic, stretching the original twenty metres to forty. Not particularly large by any measure. Apparently the ship needed to pass through wizarding shipping lanes, and some floor space had been sacrificed to keep her stable.

Lucas noticed the black balloon floating in the air in front of Snape.

"Professor — have you already dealt with the Boggart?"

Snape couldn't possibly have actually tied up a Dementor. The Boggart was the favourite prop of every Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher who taught the Patronus Charm.

"We'll examine your theoretical knowledge first." Snape had settled into his normal lecturing manner.

On the surface, the sunscreen incident had already passed. He posed the question in the ordinary way: "In the foundational theory of the Patronus, what is the single most essential point?"

Lucas spoke clearly: "The Patronus Charm is a powerful defensive spell. It requires absolute conviction — the commonly cited conviction of happiness, or a strong conviction to protect."

Snape gave a cold snort. He thought of Lucas fishing the evening before, then of the farce less than an hour ago, and felt a creeping irritation.

"Beginning now, think of something happy." Snape tapped the balloon. The black balloon flinched away from his knuckles.

Whatever Snape had done to the Boggart, the creature inside was terrified of him.

"I want you to think of something specific." Snape waited.

Lucas tilted his head, thinking.

His hair had grown a little long and kept falling over his eyes. He brushed it aside before answering. "Last year, when you said you'd take me on as your apprentice, does that count?"

Snape's hand stilled.

He did believe Lucas's reaction that day had been entirely genuine. But he doubted one memory would be enough to sustain a full casting of the Patronus Charm.

Lucas had the same doubt: "That much happiness isn't enough, though. Otherwise I should have already mastered the spell by now."

Life was bitter as a blade. Lucas felt it keenly.

Snape pulled his attention back. "Then try the power of protection. What is it you want to protect?"

Lucas blinked. He brushed the pale-gold hair from his face again and said, half-joking: "I hope for peace in the wizarding world?"

"Do you think I'm joking with you?" Snape's voice cooled.

Inside the black balloon, the Boggart felt the Potions professor's low pressure settle over the room. Trapped as it was, it shuffled sideways, putting as much distance between itself and Snape as it possibly could.

"But that is what we're doing right now, isn't it?" Lucas turned serious. "When you took me on as your apprentice, you meant it. Then we both heard the prophecy, and this sea voyage followed. What we're doing right now is making sure I fit the 'apprentice' in the prophecy, isn't it?"

He said it with complete seriousness.

Snape went still for a moment. Then came the anger. He fixed his eyes on Lucas and said, word by measured word: "You could have chosen not to board. You can leave right now. I have never left you without a choice."

"I'm not saying I regret it." Lucas reached up in frustration and grabbed a fistful of his own hair. "I'm saying I ought to be living very happily right now, because the version of me in the future will pay the price."

Snape was so exasperated by that logic that he almost laughed.

He hadn't expected Lucas to think of it that way.

"First, the prophecy does not say you will die. Second, are you implying I ought to treat you as well as possible right now? Put you on a pedestal?" Snape's tone eased, as though leaving Lucas plenty of room to imagine.

He continued: "I'm afraid you've been detached from reality for too long. The prophecy was not constructed with hidden layers of meaning. I will not indulge you. I will train you, until you can face whatever storms come."

It was not too late to correct this peculiar way of thinking.

He was teaching Lucas so that one day, in the chaos the prophecy foretold, Lucas would have a chance to survive. Not to send Lucas to his death.

Snape felt somewhat disheartened.

Lucas said nothing. The answer was exactly what he'd expected.

In truth, this hadn't really been his own question. It was more like one he'd asked on the Saviour's behalf. If it happened to stir some guilt in Snape, that would have been a welcome side effect, but clearly it hadn't. At the very least, perhaps it had helped free Snape from whatever guilt he'd been quietly carrying.

"Then I have no objections, Professor." Lucas said softly. "I understand. I'll work hard, so that one day I can break free from fate."

Snape gave a cold snort.

"Now. I'll count to three."

"Three, two — one."

Snape's wand touched the black balloon. It seemed to deflate, collapsing rapidly inward, but it didn't thrash around the room.

Dense black mist drifted out from it, sinking at first, then rising into the air.

The cabin grew colder.

A Dementor took full shape. It floated in the middle of the room, locking onto Lucas as its sole target.

Lucas tightened his grip on his wand. He had the wand movement memorised. Snape's voice reached him from somewhere infinitely far away: "Imagine whatever you want to protect is standing behind you."

The Dementor lowered its head. The vast shadow cast by its hood swallowed Lucas whole.

Lucas made his first attempt. Magic flowed along the path of the incantation. He pushed himself toward something positive and held himself steady.

"Expecto Patronum."

Nothing. The tip of his wand stayed dark, not a trace of light.

He could have chosen a simpler spell. A Summoning Charm would do. Why was he throwing himself against this one?

Lucas clenched his teeth. His free hand balled into a fist.

The Dementor was still lowering its head. It began to drift closer.

Glacial air folded into every breath Lucas drew. The cold slid down his throat and settled into his stomach. His gut seized with cramping pain from the tension.

He wasn't the sort to admit defeat. He had never liked anyone witnessing his failures.

And beyond that, he had decided from the very beginning that he would not surrender this world to Lord Voldemort.

"Expecto Patronum."

A second attempt. His wand burned hot in his grip. Still nothing.

This attempt felt as though an age had passed since the first. Lucas's gaze drifted past the Dementor to Snape standing behind it.

The professor's expression was unreadable. Only those pitch-black eyes, watching him, without any discernible light or emotion in them.

Lucas clenched his fist again. His sense of his own body was beginning to go numb.

"Again."

➤ Next: A River

Chapter 265 - A River

Snape was watching Lucas. By his estimation, Lucas was nowhere near his limit, not given his usual standard.

Before the lesson had even begun, Snape had checked Lucas's magical reserves. They were stable. Very stable.

Lucas was attempting the incantation. His wand movements were correct, his pronunciation clear. Nothing happened.

Snape had high hopes for him. That made the lack of progress all the more irritating.

The young wizard glanced at him suddenly.

Lucas made his third attempt.

The room flashed, then a sharp, crackling burst of sound split the air.

The Boggart caught the scent of fear. It pressed closer to Lucas wearing the shape of a Dementor.

Snape suspected Lucas had looked toward him in that last moment, past the Dementor. The expression was complicated — like someone staring down a problem they couldn't solve — and beneath it, nearly invisible, a trace of grievance.

Then Lucas's wand backfired.

The burst of magic veered deliberately wide, sparing the teaching aid from harm. But the Boggart had gotten quite a fright. It scrambled back into the black balloon in a blind panic.

It had just figured out that the other young wizard in this room was not someone to push.

The Boggart squeezed back inside at speed. Even after it had fully retreated, it went on stirring uneasily beneath that layer of rubber membrane.

Lucas seemed to have had the strength drained right out of him. He sank to one knee, then toppled sideways.

Snape froze.

He caught Lucas before he hit the floor.

The young wizard was still gripping his wand. His posture was locked into a defensive stance.

His eyes were open. Pupils slightly dilated, a white haze drifting across them.

The fear the Boggart had left behind dissipated quickly.

Snape tried to rouse him. Shaking did nothing.

For one blank moment, Snape's mind simply stopped. Then he moved, hurrying to fetch the medical kit.

It wasn't on the table. Lucas had already returned it to its proper place.

Snape was grateful for that. He had watched Lucas take it out that very morning.

He found it without trouble.

He opened it and checked. Nothing inside was suited for a young wizard who had fainted from fright, or from a wand backfire.

Snape rifled through the bottles and jars. Gradually, he steadied.

He went back, levitated Lucas, and settled him onto the sitting room sofa.

He checked Lucas again. The white film over his eyes had receded somewhat. No signs of waking.

Snape rummaged through the kitchen looking for chocolate. Everything was neatly labeled and perfectly ordered. What he needed was nowhere to be found.

"Accio chocolate," Snape called out.

A rustling came from the deck, followed by the hiss of something inflating. A combined pack of hard biscuits and chocolate flew into the cabin.

It knocked the cabin door open on its way in. Snape caught a vague glimpse of a yellow inflatable compartment sitting out on the deck.

He had no time for that.

The chocolate was in hand.

Lucas had been lying there a short while, and his condition had eased. His hands were ice-cold, but his breathing had leveled out.

Snape held the chocolate and decided to wait.

---

Lucas's sandals touched the flagstones of King's Cross Station. The leather was already soaked through with the faint, cool water underfoot.

He looked down. The station floor still held that same shallow layer of water, the same as always.

His movement disturbed it. The ripples spread outward, blurring the reflection of his already-indistinct face beyond recognition.

Lucas looked around. This place was always the same: pure white light in every direction, soft as a net draped over the world.

The air had no scent. Exactly as it had been during the eleven years he was trapped.

The shame of being unable to defeat even a Boggart's counterfeit Dementor, the suspicion that he'd seen impatience flicker across Snape's face, the hot frustration of having fainted, all of it sank swiftly, like stones dropping through water.

He knew those had been nothing but illusions. Produced while his happiness was being drained away.

Lucas felt only that a weight had finally hit the ground.

He tugged at his collar. He was still wearing the same nondescript wizarding robes.

He'd looked this place up in the library once. The pure-white train station. The theories were countless.

A dying wizard's inward projection. A hallucination that seized wizards under severe shock. A special transitional realm within the mystical arts.

People could not be resurrected after death.

So every school of thought had its followers, and none of them could prove anything true or false.

Lucas walked through the station. The intense emotions faded. In this space, he recovered something close to calm.

He followed the platform forward. The pillars were clearly defined, each subtly different from the next, seven to a cycle, so that reaching the end always meant returning to the beginning.

Lucas knew every detail of this place by heart.

He passed the seventh pillar and found himself back before the first.

His breath caught.

There was a scratch on it. Two inches long, carved into the most prominent face of the stone, at an adult's height, with an adult's force. Possibly made with a small tool.

Lucas jerked back half a step. In this strange space, that put him beside the seventh pillar again.

That mark was not his.

It shattered the near-death projection theory outright.

Was this a shared space, then?

Could he see traces that someone else had left?

Or traces left by a future version of himself?

Lucas pressed on. He returned to the first pillar.

He examined the scratch carefully, then crouched and ran his fingers across every water-soaked flagstone within reach.

In the entire space, only beside the first pillar was there any trace at all.

The mark was fresh.

Lucas touched it with trembling fingers.

He was certain it wasn't his. He had experience with carving, even without proper tools, he would never have worked at that angle.

That left the second possibility.

This was a shared space.

Lucas stared at the pillar. He thought he still had time to think it through. But the white expanse around him seemed to be thinning.

He looked up.

A train was gliding slowly into the station.

He saw the mark the other intruder had left, and then fell into the dark, ordinary silence of unconsciousness.

---

Inside the cabin, Lucas opened his eyes.

The waking world crashed into him immediately. His stomach lurched and rolled.

Before Snape could say a word, Lucas shoved himself off the sofa, stumbled into the bathroom, and was sick.

Snape held the chocolate and walked to the doorway.

The one-on-one lesson had left him feeling defeated. This was nothing like what he'd envisioned when he prepared the lesson plan.

Even Lucas's symptoms were different from every other frightened young wizard he'd seen.

Would he even want chocolate after being sick?

The toilet flushed. Lucas came out moving with a slightly unsteady drift, covering a few steps before he finally turned to look at Snape.

"Professor — did I faint?" Lucas glanced at the clock on the cabin wall. It was only eight in the morning.

Snape confirmed it. "You were frightened into unconsciousness for half an hour."

From every word available to him, Snape had chosen frightened into unconsciousness. He watched Lucas's face.

But Lucas was in poor shape. Distracted wasn't too strong a word for it.

"I think I was just scared." As expected, Lucas said it offhandedly, like it was nothing.

Snape pressed his lips together. He left one blunt sentence, "Training continues tomorrow morning", turned, and went back to his room.

Lucas waited for his stomach to settle. Then he went to the kitchen and poured himself a glass of water.

If someone truly did share the station's space with him, would that person also enter the same river?

➤ Next: No Bottom Line