"Only thing worse than the rum being gone, is my ship being gone!" Captain Jack Sparrow mourned aloud to the indifferent sea. He raised the Jolly Roger and directed the dinghy in the direction his compass pointed, the next great treasure.
"Where did you say your family was headed for the holiday?" Ron asked through a mouthful of food.
Hermione gave him a look of disgust, "a cruise to the Bermuda Triangle." The three friends were sitting around the table in Harry and Ginny's house.
"You should still let us throw you a birthday party." Harry persuaded. He knew Hermione just wanted a quiet birthday for once; since her eighteenth was kind of a hectic mess towards the end.
"No! Absolutely not! You animals don't need to use my nineteenth birthday as an excuse to go crazy. Especially since George drank so much fire whiskey that he felt the need to give us all a strip tease before falling off the table. Poor Angelina having to deal with him the rest of the night," Hermione said indignantly.
The boys choked on their food at the memory of George's exhibitionist night. "That was more of my brother than I wished to see." Ginny shook her head.
Jack made port at some random place for the night. In the morning he gathered a few supplies, more rum, and set sail yet again; his destination the Bermuda Triangle. Where he would find a weapon of the gods that would grant him power and immortality; since Will had to go and die last time and took over for Davey Jones instead. "Oh well, the Flying Dutchman isn't that great a ship anyways." Jack shrugged and took a swig of rum. He checked his compass, compared it to the horizon and corrected his path. "Care for some? No? More for me." The gull that had perched itself on the side of the dinghy stared at him blankly.
In the middle of his boat a tiny hole had gotten a bit bigger. "Oh dear," Jack regarded the increasing water level at his feet. "What do you suggest?" The gull flew away, "FINE! Abandon your captain in his time of need. I won't be sharing anymore rum with you."
He looked at the hole again. Then he took yet another drink of rum. With it halfway to his parted lips he stopped and looked at the cork in his other hand. He leaned forward and wedged it snugly into the hole. "Good enough. Guess I'll just have to finish the rest of this off," he shrugged and hummed to himself.
"Hermione put the book down and come see this view." Mrs. Granger was standing near the railing of the cruise ship; she was looking out over the water. "We didn't come all the way out here for you to sit in a corner and read."
"So it wasn't so we could get away from everything and relax?" Hermione nudged her mother playfully as she stepped up next to her. "How long does it take to get a couple of drinks?"
"Maybe your father got lost. It is a huge ship you know. I better go and see if I can find him." Mrs. Granger left her daughter alone on the deck watching the stars reflecting on the water's surface.
A sudden flash of light caught her eye and she looked up. There was lighting flashing in what appeared to be a clear starry sky. "Weird," Hermione took a step closer to the railing and watched as the ship passed through a fog that had come out of nowhere. She thought she heard singing coming from somewhere in the distance. It was all a bit eerie to her. Being a witch you'd think she would be sort of used to all this strangeness coming out of nowhere; she rested her hand against the pocket where her wand was hidden.
Thanks to the sudden storm Jack's dinghy was bounced from one wave to the next. Not that it seemed to faze him in the slightest. He rode it out like it didn't even exist; checking his compass or taking a swig of rum every so often while singing to the storm.
Hermione thought she saw a shape moving in the fog. She leaned further still over the railing. "What is that?" She peered as hard as she could into the dense mist. A wave slammed into the ship and she barely had time to latch onto the railing before yet another wave sent the cruise ship rocking. Hermione looked over her shoulder in time to see a giant wave rise up and sweep across the deck of the ship, taking the young witch with it. It all happened so fast that she didn't have time to think of a spell that might have prevented her plunge overboard. Once in the water it was all she could do to stay above its surface.
The storm and the sea were too strong and her limbs quickly grew tired. She was losing her flimsy hold on the surface and the air it provided her. She sank down into darkness...
Jack was thrown from his small vessel when a particularly big wave crashed down on him. He was tossed from one wave to the next; barely managing to keep his head above the surface long enough to get a new lungful of air. It lasted for only a few minutes before it was all too much and Jack's world dimmed to nothing as he lost his grasp on reality...