Lucas paused mid-sip.

He gripped his wand and stood up from the sofa.

The hatch wouldn't budge. Something had jammed it from outside.

Lucas transfigured the door into a rolling shutter and cranked it up. Then he saw the problem.

A yellow inflatable life raft had auto-deployed, fully inflated, wind-blown, wedged snug against the hatch like it belonged there.

Lucas stared at it for a moment.

He flicked his wand, pulled the valve, and the raft sagged flat. He packed the survival gear back where it belonged.

An inflatable dinghy had absolutely no business showing up in a wizard's emergency escape plan.

Ministry of Magic issue, he decided. Prepared for Muggle inspections.

As he folded the deflated raft away, he came across a supply crate. The lid was open. Bottled water and tins had rolled out across the floor.

Lucas rearranged everything and noticed one section of the crate sitting empty.

He dug through and found an instruction leaflet, basic maritime self-rescue, notes on how to use the supplies.

Chocolate and ration biscuits are high-calorie foods and should be rationed carefully.

Lucas rummaged through the crate. No chocolate.

He put everything back in order and moved on.

Lunch was bread, steak, and vegetable soup.

Once it was ready, Lucas walked to Snape's door and knocked with a completely straight face.

Knock, knock, knock,

The scheming little wizard stood in the doorway, composing his next line.

"Professor, lunch is ready."

Silence from inside.

"Professor, I feel a bit cold. Did you happen to bring any chocolate?" Lucas leaned against the door and began working his angle.

Still nothing. Just as he was preparing to try a different line, the door was yanked open hard from the inside.

Lucas lost his support and stumbled forward into the doorway.

Snape stepped aside so Lucas didn't crash into him, but reached out and caught him by the arm anyway.

He looked Lucas over with a cold expression, assessing whether Lucas had genuinely not recovered from the side effects yet.

"Professor..." Lucas kept pressing.

Professor, professor, professor. Snape had never found the word quite so irritating before.

He scowled. Then he followed Lucas to the dining area.

The lunch was simple but well-balanced.

Lucas continued to shine in the domestic magic department. The bread had been re-toasted before serving, its crust crisp and golden. The steak had a perfect sear, Lucas's portion, cut open, revealed a rosy interior cooked to an ideal medium-well, with a handful of toasted nuts scattered along the edge of the plate.

Snape had not planned to eat lunch. He pulled out a chair and sat down.

Lucas ladled him a bowl of vegetable soup, clear-brothed, tender seasonal greens floating inside.

"Chocolate." Snape slid it across the table.

Lucas accepted it happily and decided not to ask why the chocolate bar was broken to pieces.

He ate a few bites and watched Snape cutting his steak. "Isn't it better than what the Hogwarts House-elves make?"

Snape's hand paused on the steak.

He had nothing but contempt for the way Lucas moved on so quickly, pretending nothing had happened. But something in that smug tone got to him, and he couldn't help pushing back: "Your life's ambition is to surpass a House-elf?"

Hook, line, and sinker.

Lucas shook his head with exaggerated surprise. "How could that be? My goal is to become a great wizard—just like the Headmaster."

Then he pivoted. "I just happened to think of the House-elves at the Manor. There are quite a few Ministry of Magic officials in that area, so I can't activate the Manor, but Lucius Malfoy told me that summoning House-elves isn't affected."

Snape had a clear memory of those two elves who had prostrated themselves at his robes.

He gave a cold snort and chewed his steak. It was, in fact, quite good.

Seeing that Snape still remembered them, Lucas continued. "I looked after them for a while. With magical nourishment, regular meals, no more going hungry—they recovered quite a lot."

Snape paused. "Where did you settle them?"

"Malfoy Manor." Lucas let that land, then added, "The school owls stay busy, but House-elves pass messages about the shop just as fast."

No further questions. Lucas went on. "Then one day, a House-elf told me that Malfoy Manor's recipes weren't as good as the devillote family's."

Snape finished his steak and started on the toasted nuts.

He considered where Lucas was steering this.

"Naturally I had to ask—what was the devillote family's secret?" Lucas could make even a one-sided conversation sound vivid. "The elf told me that House-elves use their feet to marinate meat."

Snape's chewing stopped.

He glanced sharply at Lucas to confirm he hadn't misheard.

Lucas smiled and nodded. "That's right. Right up until the end of the last century, House-elves marinated steaks by stomping on them with their feet."

Snape set down his fork.

"But I did look into it," Lucas added. "The school's House-elves still marinate steaks using magic."

Snape exhaled.

He turned an irritated look on Lucas. The little wizard had told that whole story on purpose.

"Do you think you can live on storytelling alone?" Snape pushed the plate toward him.

"I can't eat." Lucas didn't move.

He genuinely had no appetite. Stranded at sea as they were, hunger sharpened his thinking, and if anything came to mind, he could have Argos act on it immediately.

---

Slytherins were very good at papering over trouble.

Lucas breezed past the sunscreen incident without a word and said nothing at all about the small confrontation before the Patronus Charm lesson.

Snape watched him warily for several hours. Lucas had no intention of pressing him for any kind of accounting.

No explanation needed. No apology required. Lucas could digest negative feelings on his own.

Snape let out a quiet breath.

But he knew it wasn't right. Even an apprentice shouldn't endure his temper without limit.

Lucas's tolerance was different from Dumbledore's.

The old Headmaster was rarely prodded to a sore spot because of a long life spent weathering every kind of storm. And when Dumbledore encountered a topic he didn't wish to discuss, he would simply stand up and declare the conversation over.

Lucas had never once shown where his limit was.

Snape wanted very much to find out, but there was Dumbledore's bottle theory again. By the time he found Lucas's limit, the bottle would already be broken.

Where else would he find a second person willing to indulge Severus Snape like this?

Better to keep things as they were.

Snape found himself almost coming around to Lucas's way of thinking: if the future was bound to be bleak, at least make the present as good as it could be.

All the present he could allow himself was no more than these dozen or so days aboard this ship.

➤ Next: Chronic Paranoia

Chapter 267 - Chronic Paranoia

Though the Ministry of Magic's vessel documentation claimed the ship was equipped with the most advanced maintenance charms, Lucas didn't trust the Ministry of Magic that much.

He ran his usual inspection anyway.

One sail couldn't be fully raised — it hung at half-mast and stayed there. Lucas rummaged through the cabin until he found a book on ship repairs.

It had probably not been opened by a single person since it left the printing house.

He patted the dust off the cover and flipped through the whole thing. The unread pages had bonded together from years of neglect, and as he turned them, the spine gave off a creaking, crackling sound as it loosened.

Given the grueling Charms lesson that morning, Snape was temporarily leaving Lucas to his own devices.

The foundation of becoming an apprentice was Lucas surviving long enough to become one.

Lucas read in the sitting room. For most of the day he stayed within Snape's line of sight.

Snape had started out tucked away in the bedroom. When he came out to fetch water, he found that Lucas's posture hadn't changed at all — the only thing distinguishing Lucas from a stone statue was that the book in his hands had been turned to the middle.

Was he planning to build a ship?

Snape couldn't be bothered to ask.

But Lucas had a talent for producing signature performances, and he had no intention of letting Snape off the hook.

He slipped the silk ribbon bookmark into his page, closed the book, and called out to Snape, who was already heading back to his room: "Professor, the sail won't go up. I'd like to fix it — could you give me a hand?"

Snape turned. The young wizard was sprawled carelessly on the sofa, sitting cross-legged and watching him.

"How do you plan to fix it? Climb up?"

Yes, climb up.

Five minutes later, Snape walked out onto the deck, changed into a long-sleeved shirt and wearing a hat.

Lucas had thoughtfully prepared an oversized parasol for him, with a beach lounger underneath it that looked extremely comfortable.

Snape pressed down the brim of his hat and watched in disbelief as Lucas climbed the ladder rungs along the mast.

Lucas moved quickly, reaching the midpoint in no time. He'd brought his wand and a multi-function screwdriver.

Inside the bottle, the ship had looked miniature and delicate. But up on the mast, set against the snapping canvas of the sails, the sea wind filled the sleeves of Lucas's short-sleeved shirt, he looked like a swift perched on the rigging.

"Hold the rope tight," Snape called up from below.

His voice was low, yet it cut right through the sound of the waves.

Lucas climbed to the spot where the canvas had jammed.

He looked down. Snape had stepped out from under the parasol and was standing at an angle suited for casting spells. The sea wind pressed his white shirt against him, outlining a lean frame.

The sun hat did what it could, but the dark hair beneath it flew about freely in the wind regardless.

Snape's gaze met Lucas's. His obsidian eyes held nothing but Lucas, and then the words came, without mercy: "What are you looking at me for! You climbed up there to fix the mast!"

Lucas steadied himself. The sun out at sea was merciless.

He wedged the screwdriver into the seam along the mast, applied force with practiced precision, and with a click the decorative casing came free, revealing the gears and magic runes inside.

This was a magical ship. The mast was covered in inscriptions that drove the vessel.

Lucas studied the pattern of the gears and runes carefully. The handbook had offered only a brief description: repairs required eel mucus combined with ground fish bone, and a broken gear would need full replacement.

He'd only climbed up to assess the situation.

But the gears were functioning normally. In the gap between them, he spotted a single dislodged rune.

As expected. Ministries of Magic were the same the world over.

Lucas shouted down, "Professor, could you grab the toolkit I left on the sitting room table?"

Snape hadn't anticipated there being more work involved.

He cast a cold look up at Lucas and briefly considered leaving him stranded on the mast to see whether he'd be sun-dried by tomorrow.

Then the Potions professor raised his wand and used the Summoning Charm to call the toolkit over.

"We are wizards!" Snape said, mocking Lucas's habits around magic. He sent the toolkit up with the Levitation Charm, and as Lucas reached out to take it, the box considerately opened by itself.

"Thank you, Professor!" Lucas was generous with his praise.

The toolkit gave a dangerous little shudder, as though the tools inside were about to leap out and attack him.

Lucas knew when to quit. He searched through the assortment of peculiar tools until he found a seal whisker.

Long, slender, and highly elastic, exactly right for filling in rune inscriptions within tight gaps.

Lucas hooked his feet around the ladder rungs and braced himself against the mast. He took the pre-mixed repair ink from his pocket, dipped the whisker in, scraped the excess off against the rim of the bottle, channeled magic into it, and guided it into the gap between the gears.

From Snape's vantage point below, the whole sequence looked even more audacious than it was.

Even during a Quidditch match, it was rare for a wizard to keep both hands off a broomstick for any extended stretch outside of a full sprint.

What Lucas was demonstrating right now was a remarkable sense of balance.

He was managing the delicate work of drawing runes at the same time, and then a melodious singing voice drifted down from the midpoint of the mast.

The rhythm was short and brisk, like a sailor's steady stroke of the oar, yet it carried a light, easy lilt, and the magic seemed to vibrate in time with the song.

This was a step in the repair process. The correct melody guided the seal whisker threaded between the gears into precise, minute trembling, as accurate as a small boat threading through the eye of a storm.

Repairing a single rune didn't take long.

Lucas drew the whisker back out.

The rune's flickering steadied and returned to normal.

He gave the sail a satisfied test pull. Sure enough, it began to rise.

Lucas snapped the decorative casing back into place and started climbing down.

By the time he reached a safe height, Snape was already heading back to the cabin.

The vampire's trial period has expired, Lucas noted to himself.

Just then, a seabird struck the sail. It hadn't been flying fast, it hit the canvas, left a smear of blood, and tumbled down below the mast.

If Snape hadn't already turned back, he would have been hit.

The impact startled both of them into looking.

Lucas had just jumped down to the deck. He stepped closer and got a clear look at what had fallen.

It was a dull grey seabird, roughly the size of a palm. Its feathers were damp from the sea water, pressed into a deep grey. One wing was curled in on itself, and as Lucas approached, the bird was attempting to preen with its tiny beak.

The self-rescue wasn't going well. Pain flared from the injured wing and forced the preening to stop.

Only then did the little bird seem to realize it was somewhere unfamiliar. It raised its head and found the giant-like Lucas looming over it.

It startled.

Lucas was well used to small animals doing that. He drew his wand and cast the Animagus detection spell on the bird, then followed up with a standard diagnostic charm.

His suspicion cleared for now. He called out to Snape, "Professor, it's just an injured seabird."

As he spoke, Snape arrived at his side. He had watched Lucas run through the diagnostic charms. Rather regrettably, this ship now had two people aboard who both suffered from the same chronic paranoia.

Snape cast an additional identification spell on the bird.

A dull grey bird silhouette materialized in the air, then dissolved into feathers and disappeared. It was a bird. Definitively.

Snape stood down.

➤ Next: Hair Crisis