Captain Jack sat behind her desk. Harry, Ron and Hermione sat on the other side in a row of chairs. Hermione was reminded of all the times that they stood in front of McGonagall's desk, just like this, waiting for their detention sentences. Captain Jack didn't hand out detentions though. Hermione wondered if pirates in this world made people walk the plank. She shuddered. Mazu's Glory was a flying ship. Walking the plank would be deadly.

"What am I going to do with you?" Captain Jack asked. It seemed to be a rhetorical question since she continued before letting anyone answer. "I've got a full crew already, not that any of you look like you've worked a day in your lives."

"We're students," Harry volunteered. "Or we were. We quit school just before we arrived here."

"Why would you have done that?" Captain Jack asked. "School is important."

"Well..." Harry looked at Ron and Hermione. "We have an important mission, that's why we quit. See there's this man in our world – well, he's not really a man, he's more of a- a thing, I guess and-"

Hermione cut off his ramblings. "Basically, when Harry was a baby he killed a man who was in the process of taking over the world. Now that man has come back to finish what he started, both with taking over the world and having revenge on Harry."

"People come back from the dead in your world?" Captain Jack asked, horrified. "Damn. Glad I live here."

"Says the sky pirate with a flying ship," Ron muttered.

The Captain laughed. "True enough, Red."

"It's Ron."

The Captain ignored him. "So you quit school and you're on the run. How long d'you figure you could keep that up? The world is only so big."

"We were trying to kill him, that's the mission," Harry said. "He split his soul into seven parts and put each of the parts in an object. We can only kill him if we destroy all the objects first. Otherwise, he'll come back. That's how he came back the first time."

"And they can be any objects, anywhere in the whole world?" the Captain sounded doubtful. "If you don't mind me saying, you three have got a snowball's chance in hell of finding your seven."

Harry sighed. "We know but we have to try. And we've already destroyed a few so we're almost there."

"But you're here now," Captain Jack pointed out. "In this world, people don't split their souls or comeback from the dead like that."

"We know. That's why we have to go back."

"Go back? No one ever goes back once they've come here. There's no way to do it."

"What?" Harry gasped. The students stood in silence for a moment. They were stranded? Forever? But what about their world? Their friends, families? Who would destroy the Horcruxes if they were stuck here?

"We can't stay here," Harry jumped up. "We need to get home. We need to find the Horcruxes and stop Voldemort."

Ron and Hermione looked at him without getting up.

"How?" Ron finally asked. "How are we supposed to get home? We don't even know how we got here."

"And the Captain just said there's no way to get back," said Hermione.

"Well," Captain Jack started. All the Hogwarts kids jumped. "There are rumours that the Valencians have been working on something. Apparently they've been working with the Malian Empire on some tech that can send people back to their own worlds."

"Well that's great!" exclaimed Harry. "We can go find it and be home by February."

"Whoa, slow down. These are just back alley rumours. I have no idea of whether this is real or if it would even work."

"But there's a chance it could."

"Yeah, sure. But there's also a chance that it would send you to the wrong world or trap you between worlds or just plain kill you!"

Harry looked at Hermione and Ron. Hermione chewed her lip. They could die. But there was nothing new in that. But if they stayed...

"We have to risk it," Hermione said. "Yes we might die, but we can't give up."

"Hermione's right," Ron said. "We have to try."

"Harry turned to the Captain. "How do we find it?"

The Captain gawked at them. "Did you three miss the part where I said this tech might not be real?" None of the Hogwarts students moved. They kept staring, expectantly. The Captain sighed. "Your best bet is to head to Marrakesh. That's where I first heard the rumours. We've gotta stop in Renata first but we can head to Marrakesh when we're done."

"How far is it?" Hermione asked.

The Captain pulled a book off the shelf and opened it to a map. The students gasped. The physical geography was the same as in their world. The map showed the north part of Africa and Europe as far as the North Sea. Hermione reached out a hand and touched the British Isles. It felt so close.

The only differences were the names and the locations of borders. Hermione noticed a few major differences right away. The British Isles and Normandy were one country, called Anglia. The country called Valencia encompassed the entire Iberian Peninsula and most of the rest of France that wasn't Anglia. All of North Africa, other than Egypt, was entirely one country, called the Empire of Mali. They were the ones working with Valencia on the "tech."

"We're here." The Captain pointed to the southern extreme of the map, on the West African coast near where Nigeria was in their world. They were just outside the border of the Empire of Mali. "Marrakesh is here." The Captain pointed again. Marrakesh was in the same place in both worlds, in Morocco. "If this tech exists, they'll know in Marrakesh. The business in Renata won't take more than a day. We'll be in Marrakesh by Tuesday."

It was Friday. Four days until Marrakesh. Hopefully they'd be able to get home.

"Thank you, Captain," Harry said. "We'll be out of your hair in Marrakesh."

Captain Jack's eyes widened. "You didn't think I'd just leave you in Marrakesh, did you? You three don't know where to look for info on something that don't exist. No, I'll take you around; make sure you meet the right people."

Hermione could see Harry's suspicious mind at work. "Why would you do that?" he asked. "Why would you help us for nothing?"

"Nothing?" the Captain laughed. "Did you forget that I'm taking your stuff to sell? Besides, it's so obvious you're interlopers. The Malians would nail you and it'd get around that you'd been on my ship and then we'd be in trouble. No way am I letting that happen to my crew. You stick close when we reach Marrakesh. We'll look after you."

The Captain dismissed them and the students went to Harry and Ron's bunk to talk.

"She's hiding something," Harry said immediately. "She's a pirate. There's no way she is helping us out of the goodness in her heart."

"Of course she's hiding something," Ron snorted. "She doesn't know us. Do you expect her to pour out her soul?"

"Ron's right," said Hermione. "She hasn't told us everything but we haven't told her everything either. She knows that but hasn't asked questions."

Harry had on his "I-don't-like-this" face.

"Come on, mate," Ron said. "The Captain has agreed to help us for now. I say we wait and see what happens. If things turn nasty we can always run."

Harry sighed. He clearly didn't like the situation. But Hermione agreed with Ron. The devil you know, and all that. They really didn't know Captain Jack or the crew but the saying still rang true. The Captain didn't seem like a bloodthirsty pirate. If she was going to kill them, she'd have done it on the deserted island. She wouldn't wait and kill them in a populated city like Renata or Marrakesh, right?