Lucas instinctively closed off his mind and turned his full attention to reading the emotional ripples coming through.

Snape was shouting at him: "You have that much faith in me — believing I could fight off a whole room of wizards, all just to rescue a reckless little brat like you!"

And yet he had staked a bottle of precious Breathing Potion on exactly that.

Lucas nodded along to the scolding with practiced indifference. Snape always worked himself into a state when he was berating someone.

Better to find something else to divert his attention.

Lucas thought for a moment. Then he threw himself forward and wrapped both arms around Snape's waist.

He spoke quickly: "That time in Albania was organized by the Ministry of Magic — the barman was a Ministry informant. If things had gone wrong, someone would have tipped them off. But that time, I wouldn't have dared make a bet like that with anyone."

"The reason I was able to do what I did," Lucas's voice was muffled against the fabric of Snape's robes, "was because someone was there to protect me."

Snape went rigid.

At the same moment, that newly grown string inside Lucas trembled once, sharply.

A wave of deep, helpless bewilderment came through it.

Still buried against Snape's robes, Lucas couldn't help it. A quietly triumphant smile spread across his face.

Snape's hands hung in the air. He had meant to pry Lucas off him. For a long moment, he didn't move at all.

Crisis averted.

Lucas trotted after Snape, who was already striding ahead to clear a path through the crowd.

That trick had proved more useful than expected. A pity he'd need to keep careful count of how often he used it.

The matter passed. They soon reached a long, busy open-air market bustling with foot traffic.

Along the street stood old shops worn down by sea wind, and here and there wizards had spread stalls along the roadside, calling out their wares.

At the very first stall they passed, a pure silver conch shell sat on display.

The elderly witch running it brightened at the sight of foreign wizards. She pushed the conch toward Lucas eagerly. "A handcrafted silver conch, little one — do you like it?"

The little one did not.

But the little one recognized it as a Guide Conch. Rather than taking it, he leaned in to study the pattern etched across its surface.

"It can point the way across the open sea," the witch said.

Lucas shook his head. He pointed to one section of the pattern. "It cracked here, this part was repaired later with silver." That would leave its navigational function severely weakened. Weak enough to lead a traveler somewhere dangerous instead.

"Do you have anything else interesting?" Lucas crouched in front of the stall and asked in earnest.

The witch considered. Her skin had been darkened and roughened by sea wind, and most of what sat on her stall was the kind of thing one could find washed up on a beach.

"What about this?" She produced a glass bottle with a very faded label.

The bottle was full of seawater. A living jellyfish drifted inside it.

The witch said it was a bioluminescent jellyfish. Immortal, she claimed. Incapable of dying.

This particular jellyfish, however, did not appear to be thriving in any obvious way.

"How much for this?" Lucas turned it over in his hands, managing to look genuinely interested in a sea creature that could be found anywhere after the tide went out.

"One silver Sickle," the witch offered, testing the price.

Lucas paid without hesitation and walked away with the bottle.

By the time they were moving between stalls again, Snape showed every sign of being entirely uninterested in Lucas's first purchase.

Through the heartstring, Lucas could predictably sense a faint thread of curiosity and dissatisfaction coming from that direction.

He walked behind the professor and hooked the corner of his mouth upward. Didn't that jellyfish transaction just pay for itself?

About four or five stalls later, Snape stopped at one to examine Potion ingredients.

Lucas suddenly felt something rise up inside him, a prickling, fastidious emotion, which after a moment shifted into something tangled and uncertain.

He looked toward what Snape was examining. A fragment of tortoise shell.

From that fragment alone, one could picture what kind of enormous creature the living animal must have been.

Snape began to haggle with the vendor. Lucas watched steadily, and the faint emotion welling up inside him kept shifting throughout.

Most of the time it was only a barely perceptible fluctuation. Not the kind that could be pinned down with a single precise word.

Lucas worked out a rough theory.

The contract ritual was beginning to take effect.

Headmaster Dumbledore had made a particular point of recommending this contract. There had clearly been a reason for it.

Over many years, all manner of mentor-apprentice contracts had sought to secure loyalty through various harsh penalties. Human feelings were always in flux, someone might begin full of devotion and bright hope, then discover all manner of dissatisfactions further down the road and want to part ways.

This maritime contract worked in the opposite direction.

Through the tides, through time spent together, it built an emotional link.

Lucas was willing to believe this sharing ran both ways. It was simply that right now, Snape happened to be the one experiencing the larger fluctuations. Lucas's own had been briefly masked, and then almost immediately, Lucas had closed off his mind. Because of this, Snape hadn't yet noticed the one-sided outflow.

Snape had already completed the transaction.

He had kept an eye on the young wizard beside him throughout, half expecting Lucas to show off some of his talent for haggling.

But Lucas had been a plank of wood the entire time.

Lucas felt a very faint note of dissatisfaction come through from the other end.

He caught up with his mentor and began observing Snape's reactions to different things around them.

By tomorrow morning at the latest, when they sat down again to study the Patronus Charm, Snape would discover this little story about shared emotions.

Lucas now understood the contract's true purpose.

If he were an ordinary young wizard on the cusp of third year, not yet practiced at shielding his own emotions, Snape could use those fluctuations to guide him. It would ensure Lucas did not stray into darkness.

As for Snape, he was a master of Occlumency. Once he learned the link had formed, he could unilaterally keep his own emotions in check.

The Headmaster had perhaps intended this as a surprise waiting to be discovered along the journey.

Looking at it now, it was indeed a surprise.

Lucas's steps grew lighter. He had always been able to see the tension wound tight inside Snape, but now a crack had been wedged open in it.

The young wizard had gone from a plank of wood to a reliable partner.

Lucas swept his gaze across the alchemical items on the nearby stalls, feeling for the magical fluctuations that sat apart from everything else around them.

His eyes lit up. He tugged at Snape's robes. "Professor, do you see that crystal ball at the far edge of the stall on the left? I can see it glowing."

To review Lucas's theory of glowing: he could perceive the radiance of objects with genuine value. A particular ability belonging to young wizards.

Snape turned Lucas's head to face the correct direction. "Noted."

Through the heartstring, Lucas caught a faint trace of anticipation.

On the surface, Snape merely walked over to the stall with the air of someone doing a great reluctant favor.

"How much for this crystal ball?" he asked the vendor.

"You have a fine eye, sir. This crystal ball holds the record of a hidden treasure." The vendor explained through a Translation Charm.

Seeing that Snape looked unmoved, the owner immediately changed tack: the ball also contained the dying curse of a sailor who had drowned at sea.

He leaned close to Snape and dropped his voice.

"A Dark Arts object."

➤ Next: Flush With Cash

Chapter 273 - Flush With Cash

The island had preserved something raw — a primitive strain of wizarding life that the rest of the world had long since polished away.

When the shopkeeper leaned in to speak quietly to Snape, he had the air of a man afraid the dark magical items might frighten him.

Snape found both assumptions absurd.

He gave a noncommittal "Hmph" and jerked his chin toward Lucas. "He's the one buying. What's your price?" The implication was plain: too high, and they walked.

Lucas, however, had already pulled out the chips he'd lifted from the tavern. "Sir, I'll give you three chips for your crystal ball. What do you say?"

From the vendor's expression, those chips sat somewhere in the middle, neither cheap nor particularly valuable. He hesitated, hoping the adult would sweeten the offer.

Snape took Lucas by the arm and turned to leave.

"Deal, deal!" The shopkeeper snatched the chips out of Lucas's hand. "Take it, it's yours!" Whatever story the boy had spun, and whether or not it matched the item, this was not a clean piece of goods.

The crystal ball was grimy. Snape wrapped it up in a leather pouch.

"So what is it?" Curiosity and anticipation came through the Heartstrings.

"It's worth a lot. I saw one exactly like it in a divination shop in Diagon Alley — the label said it was a crystal ball from Merlin's era." Lucas pressed close to Snape as he said it.

The Department of Mysteries at the Ministry of Magic held many crystal balls recording critical prophecies. If nothing had gone wrong, every prophecy concerning the Dark Lord was stored among them. But not every orb could be collected the moment it was made. Many recording legendary events had scattered into the outside world, the prophecy of King Arthur drawing the sword from the stone, things of that kind. Because they were irreplaceable historical records, collectors had always been willing to pay enormous sums to acquire them.

The Heartstrings gave a small, bright flutter of excitement.

Immediately after, Lucas brought Snape to a second location.

Rusty brass telescopes. Mildewed treasure maps sold by the bundle. They worked through several more stalls and came away with a string of valuable junk. Snape's expression never changed, but after he acquired a crucible cast inside a fused outer shell, his mood lifted into something that could only be called delight.

Lucas put his alchemist's eye to full use, leading Snape through the market like a guided treasure hunt. And he had already worked it out: no need to worry about moving any of it. Wasn't there always Malfoy?

----------

The rest of the afternoon belonged to Potions procurement.

Today, Lucas had the privilege of watching a Potions professor restock from the source.

The moment they walked in, Snape produced his list and subjected the clerk to an extremely demanding round of requests.

Snape's shopping list was longer than anything Lucas put together for his own weekly supplies, longer, even, than the Hogwarts lower-years list. The parchment was covered end to end with ingredient names and precise quantities.

The clerk took one look, recognized a large order, and went straight for the owner.

Once it was established that Snape was a Potions Master, the two of them fell over themselves to offer him a seat and began shuttling in and out, hunting down every item on the list.

The long counter was packed, dried herbs lined up in rows, bottles and jars crowded into every gap between them.

Snape started at one end and worked his way through. Lucas pulled out paper and quill and stood beside him, writing down every point Snape mentioned.

"If you see sea salt crystals forming on seaweed like this, don't buy it. It reduces the potion's stability." Snape watched with visible satisfaction as Lucas wrote quickly.

"If you absolutely must use it, clean it and dry it again. But pay particular attention to—" The shop owner drifted close, eyes bright, listening with great focus.

Snape stopped.

The owner smiled awkwardly. "You two carry on. I believe the dragon blood is down in the cellar..."

Once he was gone, Snape resumed. "Store it among same-batch quality specimens until the surface condition of both is completely uniform before it goes into the crucible."

He turned the seaweed over piece by piece, checking each surface. Every broken leaf, every crystallised leaf mixed in with the rest, he picked them out without hesitation. A Potions Master had nimble hands.

He moved the same way through each herb section, working fast and methodically. The island got good sun; dried ingredients kept well. Snape was not going to miss an opportunity to stock his supplies properly.

By the time the owner came back up from the cellar, the entire inventory had already been through another precise round of selection.

The Potions Master's young apprentice accepted the dragon blood without ceremony.

Lucas set the bottle on the counter, tapped his wand to draw out a single small drop, and placed it on the back of his hand. He rubbed it open with a fingertip and studied the colour and sheen.

Assessing dragon blood was basic alchemy. More to the point, Lucas had spent last term working with the Headmaster on how to use dragon blood in crafting statues, practically attaching himself to Dumbledore until every published and unpublished application had been covered.

"Sub-adult Chinese Fireball. The dragon was near death when the blood was taken. Upper-mid grade." Lucas delivered his assessment.

Snape had no need to double-check the judgement of the walking dragon-blood-theory expert Dumbledore had produced.

He had already sorted his way to the far end of the counter. Most of the materials were good quality; the selection had gone smoothly.

Snape and the owner moved on to price.

Lucas stood quietly to the side and committed to memory the unit price and total weight quoted for each material. If you added it all together, the number would be considerable.

"Nine thousand, seven hundred and thirty-two Galleons, thirteen Sickles, nine Knuts."

The owner was still calculating the last item. Lucas had already worked out the full total in his head.

He said nothing. As expected, the wizards here were not particularly strong at arithmetic.

The owner had overcharged by more than thirty Galleons.

Lucas asked for an itemised breakdown. The paper roll that came out was long enough to drag impressively across the floor.

When the Potions professor saw Lucas take over the verification, a wave of relief came through the Heartstrings.

Lucas made a show of drawing in a sharp breath. He borrowed the owner's calculating tool and went through it patiently, one line at a time. The Potions professor watched as Lucas set aside each disputed item and re-weighed it on the spot.

After several apologies from the owner, the total was recalculated.

"Nine thousand, seven hundred and sixty-five Galleons, eighteen Sickles, seven Knuts." The owner wiped the sweat from his face. Being caught out in front of a customer was unpleasant enough. Being caught out in front of a child was something else entirely.

Lucas gave the owner a smile. The error was almost certainly an honest mistake. Two years of dealing with the school's suppliers had given Lucas a thorough sense of their arithmetic, and this one's mistakes were not even particularly egregious by comparison.

Lucas handed the corrected total to Snape. Snape reviewed the changes, the owner cheerfully rounded down the remainder, and the transaction closed to everyone's satisfaction.

It was a large sum. Comparable to an entire semester's budget allocation for the lower years at school.

Lucas watched, unblinking, as Snape took out his money pouch. Based on everything he had observed about Snape's finances, this was almost certainly the bulk of his personal savings.

Aside from teaching and brewing the Hospital Wing's more troublesome standing orders, Snape had taken on no particularly complex custom commissions in two years, nor had he applied for research funding. He did make time every so often for his Wolfsbane Potion research, but it was Galleons out with nothing coming in.

The shop owner had no idea.

As far as the owner was concerned, Snape was simply adding another layer to the well-established stereotype that Potions professors were all quite wealthy.

Just look at the man's style, this one and this one and that one, he didn't want. Everything else: his.

Both parties left the transaction entirely satisfied.

➤ Next: A Teacher as Mirror