Chapter 3: A Day on the Knight Boat

Severus Snape lay in a hammock in the passengers' quarters as the Knight Boat sped through the water. He didn't care where the boat was heading, as long as it was away from the British Isles, away from Hogwarts, away from the Shrieking Shack. It was twice now that he'd faced the fangs of a Dark creature in that shack, twice that he'd barely escaped death there. He wished he'd had the presence of mind to Incendio that filthy hovel before he'd left.

Despite the phoenix tears and an assortment of his own potions, he still felt awful. The hellish snake had injected him with a considerable amount of venom, in addition to tearing out half of his throat. He'd been taking antivenin for months before the attack, of course, and he'd taken a full dose of Felix Felicis when Lucius had summoned him to the Dark Lord, too, but all of his precautions had barely been sufficient. He was surprised that he was still alive.

It wasn't completely clear to him why the Dark Lord had suddenly turned on him like that. It was some nonsense about owning the Elder Wand. The man was totally mad. The Elder Wand was just a myth, wasn't it?

He remembered how he'd been terrified that he'd die without being able to reach Potter. He'd thought all was lost, but then the boy and Granger had suddenly appeared out of nowhere. He didn't believe in miracles; it must have been the Felix Felicis, kicking in at last.

It wasn't clear why the phoenix had come to him, either. He'd sacrificed everything to carry out Dumbledore's plan, of course, sometimes against his better judgment, but despite the fact that he had risked his life repeatedly in the struggle against the Dark Lord, he knew that Albus Dumbledore had never really cared for him. Fawkes must have come of his own accord. Perhaps that was the Felix Felicis, too.

He wondered what had happened at Hogwarts after the snake had attacked him. He supposed that Potter was dead by now – he was surprised how much that thought pained him – and he passionately hoped that the Dark Lord was dead, too. There was nothing more he could do now, in any event. He was too weak. He never would have made it to the boat if it hadn't been for the phoenix.

He'd expected the bird to leave after it had flown him out of the shack, but the phoenix had stuck around. It had shepherded him to the lake, and squawked at him until he'd stuck out his wand to call the Knight Boat. When the boat popped up out of the lake, the bird had accompanied him on board, and it was probably still around somewhere. He knew that because he'd heard someone in the galley yelling, "That darned bird ate all of our after-dinner mints!" It could only have been Fawkes. Owls don't like mints, and the captain's parrot probably didn't, either.

Well, it didn't matter. Fawkes was an extremely powerful and nearly immortal magical creature, but he was still a bird, and his brain was probably a bit smaller than a wet teabag. There was no point in trying to make sense of him.

Severus listened to some of his fellow passengers betting on a game of chess as he slowly went back to sleep. He wondered if he'd have any more weird dreams like that one about Merlin in King's Cross station. Where had that come from, anyway? It must have been delirium, from the poison and the potions.

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The Knight Boat looked somewhat like the Yellow Submarine in the old Beatles cartoon, except that it was red, the Fab Four were nowhere to be seen, and the crew sometimes tried to talk like pirates, even though most of them were from places like Pittsburg. Usually the boat stayed submerged, but today it was running on the surface because the weather was good and there were no Muggle vessels in the area.

The captain – Captain Clark – had invited the new passenger with the black robes to stay on board for as long as he liked, after the fellow had hexed a swarm of doxies out of the bilge. "Them darned things been down there for a couple o' decades," he remarked to the cook, "and nothin' anybody did ever fazed 'em in the slightest. Then that bloke comes along and he runs 'em off like there's nothin' to it, just because their buzzin' annoyed 'im. A bloke like that could be handy to have around if there's trouble."

Doxies are remarkably curse-resistant, of course, but they didn't stand a chance against a wizard who'd spent many years in the service of the Dark Lord. Not that Captain Clark or his crew knew much about the Dark Lord. None of them were British, and although they'd heard that there was some sort of wizarding war going on there again, they weren't much interested in it and hadn't bothered to follow the news.

"That feller, he says his name is Slade. Solomon Slade. Do ya suppose that's his real name?" said the cook, who insisted on calling himself 'Seabiscuit.' "He's got that vacant look, ya know, like folks get when they've lost everythin'."

"Well, he'll fit right in with our bunch then," Clark said. "They all start off like that. But that bird o' his is a real nuisance. It keeps peckin' at the navigational charts. It's startin' to wear a hole in one of 'em. It's a phoenix, I know, but still …"

Seabiscuit laughed. "I know; it ate all o' me mints, too. Maybe it's just tryin' ta show ya where it wants ta go. But a phoenix ain't somethin' that ya pick up at yer local Owl Emporium. The phoenix chooses the wizard, after all, not vice versa. Which just shows ya how powerful that feller must be. Most wizards 'ave never even seen a phoenix. This guy's got one that follows him around."

Captain Clark nodded. Yes, bird or no bird, Mr Slade would be a good man to have aboard.