The warm yellow lights flickered and died. A sharp smell of scorched wiring filled the cabin.

Beep,

The backup lights kicked on. Deep red, deeply ominous.

Those black strands of algae — tossed by the rolling hull, swept by the churning water — had caught against the cabin walls. They pressed into the magical runes etched along the lower sections, sinking in as though alive, as though the wall itself was drawing them in.

The walls were covered in black rune symbols.

Lucas had waited a long time and Snape hadn't come. So he came to check. What he saw made him recognize it immediately, this was something described in that book.

They had already left wizarding waters. By any reasonable measure, they shouldn't have encountered a storm this powerful. The nautical charts had given no warning whatsoever.

The most likely explanation: they hadn't strayed into an existing rift. They'd been caught by one still forming.

Right now, they needed to buy the ship as much time as possible, and peel these black algae off the hull before it was too late.

Lucas watched silver runes detach from the walls in sheets and drop to the floor.

Tins from the kitchen rolled out across the flooding deck. This species of algae could contaminate food, too.

The tip of Snape's wand produced a dark gold curse.

It reacted with the clumped algae and slowed the frantic growth somewhat. The effect was poor.

On deck, conditions deteriorated further.

The transparent shield blazed with a blinding white flash as it caught an incoming wave, then dimmed rapidly afterward.

The hull shuddered harder. Lucas heard the steel being compressed, a nauseating, tooth-aching groan.

They were like prey caught in the claws of some invisible beast.

Snape had Lucas's arm in his grip, squeezing hard enough to nearly crush it.

"The eye of the storm is a natural anti-Apparition zone." Snape spoke close against Lucas's ear, a faint tremor threaded through his voice. He delivered his verdict: "We are trapped."

Lucas looked up. The overhead cabin structure was deforming. With the defenses broken, the ship had struck something, one side had begun to be dragged under.

The two wizards ran for the rising stern.

Snape pressed something cold into Lucas's hand. The compass Dumbledore had given them.

It had guided them out of danger once before. If it was at all possible, Snape hoped they'd be that lucky again.

Lucas quickly produced the Gillyweed potion. They each drank a bottle.

They clung to the stern railing like wasps clinging to a hive about to plunge from its own weight.

The potion worked fast. Gills sprouted behind both their ears. Webbing spread between their fingers.

They looked at each other. Kicked off their shoes. And leapt into the fathomless black sea.

The ship's red emergency lights sank alongside them, not far off. But underwater, every savage sound of the storm died. The world around them went suddenly, profoundly quiet.

Supply crates drifted above their heads.

Lucas adjusted to the water around him, breathing through his gills. The smallest movement shifted his direction.

Snape was right beside him. He clearly wanted to say something, but only managed a stream of bubbles.

Visibility was too poor. None of the subtle shifts of expression could carry across the dark water.

The long-silent Heartstrings pushed through Snape's disapproval. The link was faint, though. Snape was working hard to suppress everything else.

Lucas had never severed the Heartstrings at all.

He had seen plenty of dangerous moments. This wasn't the end of the road yet. He compressed his emotions into a vague, formless blur — panic mixed in, and pushed them back.

Snape seemed to hesitate.

He reached out and found the back of Lucas's neck. Gave it a reassuring squeeze.

Lucas felt an odd, tingling numbness run through him. He steadied himself.

Snape had already found a direction. He gestured for Lucas to open the compass underwater.

The strangely shaped creatures stirring all around them were driven back in waves by the sound it emitted.

The luminescent needle pointed one way. Snape led Lucas toward it.

Then Lucas overtook him. The Ageing Potion was still in effect.

As an adult, Lucas turned out to be the athletic type.

Every stroke carried him a significant distance forward. Snape still had hold of his wrist, so he was dragged along a considerable way in Lucas's wake.

Lucas noticed. He reversed his grip and locked onto Snape's wrist in return, then simply towed the Potions professor forward.

The fair-haired wizard was fully extended in the water, limbs spread wide. He hadn't had time to change before drinking the Ageing Potion, his upper body was bare, the gills from the breathing potion rising and falling below his ribs.

And below those, eight starkly defined abdominal muscles, flexing and springing with each stroke.

With Lucas doing the work, Snape expended almost no effort. He wasn't much of a swimmer anyway, so he kept himself as streamlined as possible and let Lucas pull him forward.

He freed his wand hand and used it periodically to knock back whatever had slipped past the compass's sound waves.

They swam for over half an hour. The monsters grew sparse. The water grew colder.

That state reached a threshold.

The compass snapped shut without warning. Its luminescent glow went dark.

Lucas stopped, immediately alert. He tightened his hold on Snape and drew him close.

The position let them layer their defensive spells together. It made it much harder for them to be separated.

Being separated in the deep sea could very easily mean a permanent goodbye.

Snape was the first to think to look down.

In the darkness, a shadow swept past. Then another, crossing it.

Snape struck Lucas and motioned downward.

The thing concealed in the dark water chose that moment to open one eye.

Then the vibration reached them, slow, grinding, with the feeling of enormous friction building beneath.

The massive creature below was rubbing against the reef it had coiled around for years. It was shifting. Stretching.

Countless layers of silt churned up from the seabed, spiraling into columns of grey-yellow muddy water.

The monsters that had been pursuing the two wizards turned and fled. Every bit of commotion the wizards had caused had not disturbed this thing at all.

It was a giant octopus.

Its body was three or four times wider than a whale, covered in dark suckers.

But the color of those suckers was still changing. They flexed in the current, releasing one by one, pop, pop, pop, soft and rhythmic as corks drawn from bottles, then reattached themselves to the reef.

The foremost tentacles had begun to move. These were the shadows Snape had first seen. They were so impossibly long they wound away into the far dark, coiling out past the edge of visibility.

No book had ever recorded anything like this.

Wizards didn't even know it existed.

If they had, the magizoologists would surely have been willing to spend their entire lives stationed here just to witness it, this ancient creature, stirring in the deep.

Or perhaps someone had recorded it long ago, and simply stopped calling it an octopus.

Sea monster was probably more fitting.

It was only then that Snape registered that Lucas was pressed up against him, one arm slung around his shoulder, pulling him close.

➤ Next: The Professor and the Sea

Chapter 277 - The Professor and the Sea

The little wizard made no effort to hide his wonder.

Lucas's eyes had gone pale grey underwater, like glass beads.

He watched the sea creature, searching for any chance to escape.

The creature was waking. Its movements were agonizingly slow.

Every living thing beneath the sea fell silent.

No one could say how much time passed before it finally stirred.

It swam out of the trench where it had lain and began to rise.

One of its eyes drifted close to the surface, where faint light still filtered down.

The creature paused. Its ridged, slick skin relaxed slightly, suckers trembling in small pulses. Its pupil contracted and expanded, slowly adjusting to the light.

Now.

Lucas rode the current the creature had churned up and swam.

It had stopped using its tentacles. Instead it undulated its bell-shaped body, driving enormous thrust through the surrounding water. The sea carved into furrows around it, the water on either side compressed tight.

Swimming through by sheer physical strength alone was not an option.

Lucas adjusted, turned sharply, and wrapped his arms around Snape.

The current around him shifted at once — it locked into the same frequency as the waves the creature was generating. That tremendous thrust carried them away from the creature with directed force.

Snape was pulled along with him.

The experience was deeply unpleasant, like being sealed inside a cocoon of water. No room to struggle. The current scoured their bodies like a coarse brush.

They were being launched outward at tremendous speed.

A tentacle swept past — no contact, but it had already found them.

Lucas had no way to tell Snape which spell he needed.

What he needed was something that could shine underwater and move fast. Magic of the same origin, to pull the creature's attention away from them. That incantation had circled on his tongue countless times before.

Lucas pulled his wand free with one hand. His position was far from ideal for casting, but not all magic required a prepared stance in a classroom.

Expecto Patronum!

Wisps of white mist took shape rapidly, and the instant they solidified they shot off toward the creature.

Same-origin magic. The tentacle's attention followed, just as expected.

It slowed. Lucas was already accelerating.

This time he made no attempt to mimic the creature's frequency — he simply let the water carry them as far as it could.

Further. Further still...

Then Lucas felt his Patronus dissolve.

The vast dark shape came surging after them again.

A graceful silver doe leapt across a tentacle. Snape's Patronus had taken solid form. It was far more agile now, stepping lightly across the tentacle as though it were nothing more than a rough forest path.

A second tentacle gave chase.

Lucas steadied himself and cast again. His Patronus drew the second tentacle off in another direction.

They kept putting distance between themselves and that stretch of sea.

Then, all at once, something seemed to shatter.

The tentacles advanced no further. The water around them grew warm.

Lucas looked back one last time at that terrifying black ocean, the tentacle receding into the dark, and the faint, flickering light of Snape's Patronus fading with it.

Lucas's magical reserves were severely depleted.

He fumbled the compass onto Snape's arm and tied his carrying pouch to it.

The Gillyweed solution was still far from wearing off.

His consciousness began to sink. The danger had passed. Resting for a little while seemed harmless enough.

They had survived.

Snape let out a stream of bubbles.

He pried Lucas's hands loose from around him, and one very large wizard went limp and drifted slowly downward through the water.

Snape startled. The tension he had just barely begun to release wound tight again.

He dove, grasped at empty water several times, and finally caught Lucas by the hand.

Lucas had lost consciousness entirely.

An unconscious wizard was dead weight underwater. Absolutely dead weight.

Snape released a heavy stream of bubbles.

Holding Lucas by the arm alone wasn't enough to haul him to the surface.

No one else around. The Potions professor's expression went dark. He stiffly pulled Lucas against his shoulder, got him braced, and swam upward.

Slow. But moving.

---

Lucas slept deeply.

When he woke, he was covered by a sheet of yellow plastic.

He had been laid out flat on his back, both hands folded over his stomach, legs straight and together.

A perfectly standard pose for someone who had departed this world.

Lucas sat up. He recognized it, the life raft he had brought off the ship. Muggle life rafts were made in that vivid yellow on purpose, so rescue crews could spot them at a glance.

He looked over at Snape.

His hair had dried, but without any care it had gone oddly full and loose.

Snape was sitting propped against the side of the raft, reading the compass bearing with the expression of a man nursing deep and ancient grievances.

"How long was I asleep?" Lucas felt a prick of guilt at the sight of that calm, half-dead look.

"We don't generally call passing out from magical exhaustion 'sleeping,'" Snape said, and as expected, the moment he opened his mouth it landed like a blow.

But he answered all the same. "It is now the last day of the seven. We are nearly ashore."

A full day and night.

Snape had been almost entirely unable to sense Lucas's emotions through the heartstring bond.

They had, in fact, already returned to a zone where Apparition was possible. The Gillyweed solution had worn off as well. The apprentice contract was all but complete, Apparating back now would throw away everything they had earned.

Snape had assessed Lucas's condition. His magical reserves were steadily recovering.

And so, in case the ritual refused to recognize broomsticks or flying carpets, Snape had retrieved the life raft, pulled Lucas into it, and sailed alone until now.

➤ Next: We've Made It to Shore