~ Drink Up, Me Hearties ~

Chapter 5 – The Compass

The black waters lit up now and then with a lightning bolt, the accompanying thunder muffled to a low rumbling in his ears. As he drifted, weightless, according to the whims of powerful currents, a shoal of small glittery fish darted in all directions just in front of his nose, and upon their golden scales was carved a man’s face — a regal profile, framed with long curls, the features set in a disdainful expression. He made a grab for one of them and missed; his motion caused him to revolve slowly on the spot, and he caught sight of her.

Her long skirt and hair floated about her slender form, dark eyes fixed on his face, a slight smile curving her lips upwards. As he watched, she reached up and coiled her fingers around the small chain around her neck, then tugged, causing it to break. She extended her arm in a slow, deliberate motion. A golden locket dangled from the chain wrapped around her fist, close enough for him to touch.

Another lightning bolt lit up the ocean and threw into sharp relief the snake carved on the locket. The Horcrux pulsed with a pale-green light, and as if in answer, a searing pain shot through his chest. The girl laughed, the sound high-pitched and devoid of warmth, her smile widening to show teeth as pointed as a shark’s while her dark eyes glowed red. Harry lifted a hand to shield his face, his other hand clutched to his heart. The water around him turned cold as ice.

His eyes shot open, then squeezed shut again as his whole body shook with an uncontrollable shudder. The night wind pierced the thin blanket that had been thrown over his shoulders, chilling him to his bones; with a groan, he snuggled deeper into whatever warm and soft thing his head lay on, his right arm groping about clumsily to bring the warmth closer.

Someone squeaked. Close.

“Um… Harry? You’re awake?”

There were two, maybe three seconds during which Harry wondered why his pillow was vibrating with Hermione’s voice — then as realisation hit him, he straightened up with a start and hit the top of his head against something hard.

They both said “Ow!” at the same time, Harry bringing a hand up to massage his skull while Hermione rubbed her chin.

“Well, I’ll take that as a yes,” she said with a feeble giggle.

“Sorry,” Harry muttered, somewhat hoarsely, as he looked around. The night was pitch black and he was missing his glasses, but it was obvious that he had been sleeping somewhere on the main deck, leaning against the rail — and with his head pillowed by Hermione’s chest.

Heat crept up in his neck and cheeks and he cleared his throat loudly. “Where’re my glasses?”

Hermione pushed them in his hand and he nodded to thank her, unfolding them with a distracted motion of his right hand and putting them on his nose. He was taken unawares by a sudden pain in his shoulder at the routine gesture, and could not quite hold back a startled curse.

“You shouldn’t move your arm,” Hermione immediately said in a worried tone. “It doesn’t look too bad, but it’ll never heal if you break the stitches.”

“I noticed,” Harry replied, carefully feeling the bandage around his shoulder. It felt dry and solidly wrapped. He dropped his hand to his arm and rubbed it vigorously as the cold made his teeth chatter. “H-How long was I asleep?”

“I don’t know… Couple of hours, maybe less. I was going to wake you up anyway, it’s not good sleeping outside when the wind’s that cold.” There was a rustling sound and the shadows shifted as she got up, silhouetted black against the starry sky. “It’s Ratlin’s watch,” she said. “He said you should join him for the rest of the night and get some rest tomorrow. I’ll be up at the first hours of the morning, so…”

Harry nodded as she trailed off. “Yeah, go to bed. I’ll join Ratlin.”

“Okay…” She bent and retrieved something from the deck. “You should take the blanket then. I have another one in my hammock.”

He took the blanket from her and wrapped it around his shoulders. “Thanks.”

There was a strained silence, as if Hermione was readying herself to tell him something important, but in the end she just sighed and murmured, “See you tomorrow.” She brushed past him on the way, walking towards the distant, barely visible lantern swinging back and forth near the foot of the mainmast. Her dark silhouette vanished through the hatch and into the hull.

Harry shook his head to clear his mind and got to his feet, staggering a little as the soft rolling of the ship caught him off-balance. The blanket slid from his shoulders and he barely caught it in time; his hands folded over it with difficulty, numb and stiff as they were — partly from the cold and partly from the painful abrasions and blisters covering his palms and fingers. He straightened up with a grimace of discomfort and looked round.

His eyes were adapting to the obscurity now, and he was able to take his bearings and head off towards the foremast where he usually took his watch. He spotted Ratlin at once, leaning against the mast, in a pool of light cast by the lantern hanging over his head. The golden-skinned pirate met his eyes and nodded at him.

“Since you’re here I’ll take me watch on the top,” he said when Harry reached him. “You’re no good for climbing with that shoulder.”

“It should heal quickly enough, it’s not deep,” Harry said as he took position near the mast, which slightly shielded him from the wind.

“Aye, and good thing, too. You got a good pair of eyes, always useful up there.” Ratlin pushed himself off the mast and stretched. “No need for that right now though, we’re going to shore.”

Something clicked at the back of Harry’s mind; he sharply looked up at Ratlin. “We are?”

“Aye, with what we got tonight we can spend a little time on the land. We been at sea much too long. Not many ships lately, and the ones we found had already been emptied.”

“Emptied? By another pirate, you mean?”

“Nah. Poachers. Troy and Hawkins are both sailing about these waters, and they don’t care about the Pirate Code.” The pirate scowled. “Anyway, never mind them, we got our loot. We can get decent food, rum, women… or men, if you’re into that.”

Harry snorted, but his grin froze into a grimace as he caught Ratlin’s sly glance.

“Wait,” he blurted out, “what? No!”

“Just saying,” Ratlin said. “Got nothing against that. You do what you want.”

“I don’t — I’ve never — what the bloody hell? What made you think—”

“Okay, okay… No need to shout,” the pirate said, shrugging a shoulder. “Told you, ain’t nothing wrong with that. Here, I gotta go now. See you in the morning.”

He cracked his knuckles as he ran over to the shroud with light steps, hauling himself up and climbing swiftly out of sight, as if the fight of the previous evening had barely tired him at all. He left in his wake a stiff and aching Harry, shocked into silence.

It was a few moments before Harry found his voice again.

“What the hell,” he muttered under his breath.

“Probably got something to do with you respecting the girl,” a lazy voice drifted from the other side of the mast.

Taken by surprise, Harry whirled about and took a few steps back, his hand automatically coming to rest on his still-sheathed cutlass. He repressed a wince as his shoulder stung again.

Captain Jack Sparrow stepped around the mast, grinning nonchalantly, white teeth — and a golden one — gleaming in the light of the lantern. He leant one shoulder against the mast and looked Harry up and down without haste.

“You’re respecting the girl,” he repeated. “I noticed. They noticed. So either you’re not interested in women or you still got delusions about how to treat them. I saw a few of your sort in me day.”

“Hermione? She’s just a friend,” Harry said, a little more sharply than he intended.

Sparrow looked thoroughly amused. “Whatever you say, kid.”

Harry had half a mind to keep protesting, but beside the fact that it would be unwise to annoy Sparrow, who was well-known for his unpredictable reactions, he remembered there was something more urgent he needed to ask; and he had to ask it now, or never. Chances were he would not have another opportunity to speak to the captain anytime soon.

He licked his dry lips, barely noting the now familiar taste of salt, before he tentatively spoke up. “Captain? Ratlin said we’re going to land.”

“Did he now?” Sparrow said, unconcerned.

Harry repressed just in time an impatient move. Damn the captain and his eternal vagueness.

“In such case, sir… I was thinking of, maybe, leaving the Pearl with Hermione.”

Sparrow didn’t even seem to be paying attention anymore. He left the shelter of the mast and passed by Harry without glancing at him, one hand distractedly resting on the butt of his pistol, his gaze fixed far beyond the rail onto the blackness of the Caribbean sea. Hands clenching and unclenching in irritation, Harry watched him walk over to the starboard rail and lean his palms on it.

“Captain?” he called again.

“When we land, you go wherever you want,” Sparrow said without turning to look at him. “And we take off again when I decide. You come back, or you don’t. I don’t wanna know.”

“Of course sir, but I was wondering—” Harry swallowed. “I’m… trying to find my father, and—”

“And you want me to tell you how to find him,” Sparrow completed. “Tell me something, kid… Why would I do that? I see no interest in there for me.”

Harry opened his mouth to answer, couldn’t find anything to say and closed it again. His heart beat loudly in his ears; the noise seemed to echo in his blank mind as it would in an empty box. He just stood there and stared stupidly at the captain’s back.

“Five years,” Sparrow said.

Harry frowned at the back of the captain’s head.

“Hum. Beg pardon, sir?”

“Five years of service aboard the Black Pearl. No questions. No personal profit. No leaving for another ship. And no obeying Barbossa.” Sparrow turned to face him at last, leaning back against the bulwark. “That my price. You give me your word, and I find your father for you. Do we have an accord?”

Harry’s heart skipped a beat, then promptly started beating a charge against his ribs. His first impulse was to accept right away — finally, finally, seeing his father again sounded within his reach; it was an old dream, a child’s hope, and for the first time it was realisable.

Then Sparrow’s words rang in the middle of his euphoria like a jarring note. Five years.

He hadn’t expected to spend more than a few months here, and even that had been his most pessimistic estimation. Five years from now, assuming he survived the fights — or the storms, which could finish him off just as quickly — he would be twenty-two. It sounded impossibly far away… And in the meantime, back home, Voldemort would be free to kill, abduct, torture, and enslave all those who tried to fight him. Ron was the only one left that knew about the Horcruxes; and even supposing he managed to find and destroy them all, there was one he would never get.

Harry had taken Slytherin’s locket with him, then lost it, in an age that had long passed by the time Voldemort was even born. He had, in fact, effectively made Voldemort invincible.

A memory of his dream flashed before his eyes and a phantom pain shot through the left side of his chest. He unconsciously lifted a hand to rub at the spot where the Horcrux had left a round scar, when it had burnt him in his parents’ ruined house.

He couldn’t afford to spend five years here. On the other hand, finding his father might be his only chance to discover a way back to his time. Trying to do it on his own could well take much longer than that… After all, in sixteen years, James Potter alone had not been able to come back.

Sparrow cut in his meditation. “Kid, I don’t have all night.”

“Five years’ a long time,” Harry said in a low voice.

“Matter of perspective. Tell me, do you care a lot for this?”

And from the inside of his coat Sparrow drew a long golden chain, coiling it around two of his fingers so that most of its length swayed gently with the night wind. Harry’s jaw dropped in shock.

Before his eyes, within reach of his fingers, Slytherin’s golden locket — Voldemort’s Horcrux — swung back and forth in the lantern’s yellow glow.

“I thought so,” Sparrow softly said. Before Harry could say a word, the Horcrux vanished into his sea coat again.

“Captain, that thing’s dangerous,” Harry blurted out. His blood pounded fast into his ears. The scar on his chest burnt again, as if it had sensed the proximity of the locket.

“The men have been talking,” Sparrow went on, ignoring completely what he had just said. “From what I heard you been looking for this thing all over the place. I’m offering to give it back to you — after you completed your five years.” The captain’s eyes went flat. “Last chance, kid. Take it or leave it.”

Harry forced his gaze away from the pocket where Sparrow had just slipped the Horcrux and looked up into the captain’s face.

Well, at least his dilemma had been solved.

“I accept.”

“Good,” Sparrow said, retrieving his usual light, lazy drawl with such suddenness that Harry blinked in confusion. The pirate idly flicked an imaginary speck of dust from one of his sleeves and pushed himself off the rail, striding across the desk with the slight sway Harry was accustomed to see in his step. He did not even glance at him when he negligently dropped the words, “You stay on watch for the night, and tomorrow morning we’ll have a talk.”

The captain’s shoulder brushed against his as he walked out of the pool of lantern light, and the night swallowed him.

Harry stared after him. Then, shaking his head in puzzled exasperation, he turned around and took a step towards the foremast.

He noticed immediately the absence of a familiar weight against his hip — his pouch, full of Lady Beckett’s gold. Stopping dead in his tracks, he groped about his belt for several panicked seconds then turned to scan the deck, in the hope that the pouch would have somehow come off his belt. But it was nowhere in sight.

Harry returned his gaze to his belt and, on closer inspection, found out the strings that had held the pouch in place had been neatly severed by a sharp blade. The list of potential suspects was extremely short.

Cursing profusely Jack Sparrow’s name, Harry resumed his watch.

***

The stars had long dimmed to dull white points in the paling sky, when a crewman came to relieve Harry of his watch and inform him that Captain Sparrow was expecting him. Few sailors were up at this time of the day. One of them was Hermione, who was scrubbing bloodstains off the deck with a thoroughly disgusted expression, the dwarf Marty working in silence at her side. Harry waved at them as he made his way astern as quickly as his battered, exhausted body allowed him.

Despite the theft of his pouch, which he tried not to dwell on for fear he would burst in imprecations again, his spirits were considerably higher than they had been in the past weeks. The Horcrux had been found — robbed, if one wanted to be technical — and that was much more important than the loss of a little gold. Especially since he didn’t have to worry about being unemployed, as he was now facing a five-year long stay aboard the Pearl. The price to pay was high, but in the end, he didn’t have any better alternative.

Now he just had to make sure Sparrow didn’t sell the locket away before the five years were up. From what Harry had heard, that wouldn’t be beneath him to try.

Harry spotted Captains Sparrow and Barbossa on the quarter deck, in deep conversation beside the ever-impassive helmsman, the mute Cotton. He made his tired, aching way up the stairs to the deck, nodded at the old sailor, and loudly cleared his throat.

Sparrow and Barbossa fell quiet and glanced at him; Barbossa’s face twisted in a scowl that was even less friendly than usual, causing Harry to shift his weight uncomfortably from one leg to the other. As one who had openly challenged Barbossa’s authority, he had the nasty suspicion that he would do well to be on his guard from now on, lest an unfortunate accident should dispose of him.

Sparrow, in contrast, greeted him with a wide smile. “Ah, Mr. Potter! There is some business I would like to discuss with you.”

“Yes sir,” Harry muttered, avoiding Barbossa’s eyes.

Sparrow shot at Barbossa a significant look; the second captain glared at him but gave a curt nod in answer, then walked past Harry to the stairs, taking care to bump into his injured shoulder on the way.

Harry gritted his teeth over a scream of pain. Sparrow snorted lightly at Barbossa’s broad back and took two steps forward, his eyes on Harry, one hand playing with a kind of cubic box at his belt.

“You lost your pouch,” he negligently noted.

Harry’s expression probably betrayed him, for the captain bared his teeth in a smile and pulled a couple of golden coins from a pocket of his coat. “Here,” he said, tossing them to him. “Should last you till we get to shore, then I’ll give you some more. You don’t need to have that much gold at your disposal, now, do you?”

Indeed, it was much easier to control someone when they depended on you for subsistence. Harry pocketed the coins, repeating himself that yelling insults at Sparrow on his own ship was a bad idea. “Is that all you needed to tell me, Captain?” he bit out instead.

“Actually it isn’t. I need to fulfil my part of the bargain.” Sparrow tilted his head a bit to one side, considering him. “Your father,” he said. “You want to find him more than anything else in the world?”

Harry’s throat went dry. “Yes.”

“You’re sure? That’s what you want?”

“Yes.”

“Good.” Sparrow plucked the cubic box from his belt and showed it to him. “That a compass,” he said in answer to Harry’s puzzled look. “It doesn’t point north, but north isn’t what you’re trying to find, is it?”

Harry wasn’t sure how to answer that, mostly because he wasn’t sure Sparrow was in his right mind — assuming he ever had a right mind — but before he could open his mouth Sparrow seized his wrist, placed the compass in his palm, opened it, and took a hurried step backward.

The hand quivered, turned once around the dial and settled again, pointing very firmly to the south-west.

“Mr. Gibbs,” Sparrow said. “I believe we are changing course.”

***

You could tell a sailor’s value by the number of pirates who dreamt of hanging him from the highest yard of their ship.

Lord Beckett had been one of those. More a tradesman than a man of the sea, he had been despised by most great captains of the Caribbean; yet he alone had ever managed to enslave Davy Jones, and be to the pirate lords a threat comparable to that of the great goddess Calypso. His glorious end was still mentioned in hushed, respectful voices by pirates themselves: gunned down on his ship, the Endeavour, by the two most feared pirate ships of their age — the Flying Dutchman and the Black Pearl.

Similarly, you could tell a pirate’s value by the number of towns that had gallows expecting him. It was a safe bet that neither Jack Sparrow nor Hector Barbossa could set foot in any respectable port of the Caribbean archipelago.

Despite this, pirates and sailors of the Royal Navy had for each other a kind of grudging esteem — and they both hated and scorned the third kind of men who roamed the seas, the true scum of the ocean, the scavengers without faith nor law that sailed in the great pirates’ wake without respect for the Pirates’ Code.

Those were also called the poachers, and Meunier, at thirty-seven years of age including twenty passed at sea, was one of them. Not particularly proud of it, either, but life’s life — you couldn’t always choose which colours you were to sail under. A lifetime of misery had brought him on the deck of the schooner Gull, as the quartermaster, under poacher Hawkins’ orders. He had to admit it could have been worse. Hawkins was a good captain, an experienced and pragmatic sailor, and smart enough to avoid vindictive pirates and righteous ships of the English Navy alike. Or at least, he used to be.

Meunier ran a hand through his sparse, prematurely greyed hair, his eyes wandering over an ocean that the morning mist made livid. A dull malaise had tainted the crew’s mood for the past couple of days; they didn’t like the way the Gull lingered in this part of the Caribbean. The Black Pearl was said to be sailing nearby, and crossing the captains of the Pearl had never caused anyone anything but trouble. The kind of trouble that only ended with a ship sunk and a lot of dead.

Meunier hesitated for ten more seconds before he spat a curse and set off, striding along the deck of the slender schooner while looking left and right in search of her captain.

“Mr. Meunier?” a sailor called him on his way. Meunier’s head snapped to the right and his gaze fell on a tall and thin man, with a fine scar along one cheek and alert eyes, who was merely known as Jim. Meunier instinctively gave him his full attention. Jim rarely talked, and when he did, it usually was worth listening to.

“Are we finally getting out of here?” Jim asked.

“No idea.”

“You’re going to ask the captain?”

Meunier frowned. “Maybe I am. Something wrong?”

“Nothing… specific,” Jim said, rolling a shoulder in a shrug. “You have news about the Pearl?”

“Nope.”

There were a few seconds of silence.

“She better not find us. There wouldn’t be enough left of this ship to make a toothpick.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Meunier growled; not that he disagreed, but this kind of talk was dangerous for the crew’s morale — dangerous enough to lead to mutiny.

“I would know, sir,” Jim said in an even voice. “I sailed aboard the Black Pearl once. Met Barbossa there.”

He shrugged again and stepped back; the mist blurred the edges of his silhouette as he went back to work without another word. Meunier watched him go with his stomach clenched and the taste of bile on his tongue. Shaking his head, he let out another vigorous volley of curses, as if to avert the fear, then resumed his search of the captain.

He found Hawkins standing still near the prow, looking through a telescope over the port bulwark.

“Captain, sir,” he said, stopping at a short distance.

Hawkins glanced aside at him. “Meunier. What’s the matter?”

“The crew’s nervous, sir, and so am I to be honest. How long do you plan to stay around here?”

“Why? What are you nervous about?”

Meunier shifted his weight from one leg to the other, the subconscious motion bringing him imperceptibly closer to the captain, and he lowered his voice to answer. “The Black Pearl has been seen around here lately, captain.”

“So she has.”

“Barbossa is no friend of ours, sir.”

“Indeed he isn’t.”

Meunier bit back an exasperated imprecation. “Don’t you think we should turn tail and flee before they find us? Sir?” he said, his voice maybe a little sharper than he wanted it.

“Sparrow likes making deals,” Hawkins said. “If he finds us, his first move won’t be to gun us down to the bottom of the sea.”

“I hear Sparrow’s not the true captain of the Pearl anymore, sir. Barbossa’s been sailing on that ship longer than he has. And Barbossa likes cannonades.”

“And Barbossa hates Sparrow, Meunier,” Hawkins retorted. “If Sparrow is still on the Pearl, it can only mean that part of the crew is following him — enough that Barbossa doesn’t dare getting rid of him.”

“Allow me to doubt that, captain.”

“Well, you’ll be able to ask them yourself.”

Meunier’s blood ran cold.

“How so, sir?” he asked after a little while. Apprehension made his voice hoarse.

Hawkins gave him the telescope and jutted his chin out at the misty sea. “The Black Pearl’s heading our way.”

***

The Pearl’s prow cut through the morning mist, sending it rolling in fleecy balls along the hull. The mist clung to the water, crawling white and thick over the ocean as far as the eye could see, so that the Black Pearl seemed to be sailing upon a sea of cotton wool. A couple of yards above it, in the clear and fresh air, Hermione sat boldly astride the bulwark and tried her best not to squeeze the aged wood between her knees. The cool of the sea crept up the hull and sent shivers up the leg that swung back and forth outside the ship, like cold, slimy fingers that would grip her ankle and send her tumbling into the depths of the Caribbean sea…

Hermione interrupted her line of thought and stared resolutely ahead. She was not going to fall. There was no logical reason why her balance should be broken. She was stable. She was certainly not going to fall.

All the same, she hoped the mist would lift soon. There was something intensely disturbing about this cloudy mass hugging the water. It spread everywhere… Everywhere…

Hermione blinked, then felt her eyes widen. Something like a hundred yards ahead, a tall, thin mast broke the mist and rose into the pale sky. It bore sails, ghostly patches of white with blurred edges, and drifted above the mist in absolute silent. There was no hull in sight. Just this one mast — wait, two. There was a second, shorter mast, following the first one like a child his mother.

“Marty?” Hermione called in an uncertain voice.

The dwarf was sitting on the deck, his ear level with Hermione’s foot, busying himself with some delicate work on a fishing rod. At her call, he heaved a sigh to let her know she was disturbing him then lifted his head. “Yeah?”

“Can you see that?” Hermione said, pointing at the distant apparition.

Marty got to his feet with another all-suffering sigh. “See what?”

His eyes barely came level with the bulwark when he stood on tiptoes. Without ceremony, Hermione bent over, seized him under the arms and hauled him on the rail before her. As per usual the dwarf glared at her, then, all appearances being preserved, deigned looking in the direction she was indicating.

“Yep, that a schooner,” he said, sounding unimpressed. “Small ship. Hull’s concealed in the mist. It was spotted a while ago.”

“Are we… attacking it?” Hermione asked in a tiny voice.

“Ship that small?” Marty snorted. “Not big enough to contain merchandise of any kind. It’s either a fisherman or a small-time pirate. No good for us.”

“Oh. Good.”

“They’ll probably get out of the way real quick, if they’ve seen us. Get me down.”

Hermione complied and Marty gladly went back to his fishing rod. Hermione straightened up, glanced once at the schooner’s masts, then her gaze turned back to sweep the deck of the Black Pearl; most sailors worked in silence, shooting furtive looks from time to time at the slender silhouette that pierced the fog ahead. Twisting her body to look behind her, Hermione caught sight of a large, yellow and blue piece of cloth, tattered and patched up but mostly clean, that undulated in the feeble breeze from the line it was tied to.

“What’s that flag?” she asked Marty.

Marty looked up and followed the direction of her eyes. “Ah,” he said, sounding surprised. “Hadn’t seen that. It means we want to talk to the schooner’s captain.”

“The Devil eat me raw if I understand why,” growled Gibbs, who was just within earshot. He turned to them and went to lean against the rail, right behind Hermione, who shuffled forward to put some distance between the bosun and herself. “I’ve seen that schooner before. I’ll bet you my rum ration that this is Hawkins’s ship.”

“Hawkins?” Hermione asked.

Marty spat on the ground in anger. “That goddamned poacher.”

“Hawkins is what we call a poacher, or a scavenger,” Gibbs told Hermione. “To the Royal Navy they’re just another sort of pirates, but they’re not — not really. They don’t follow the Code, don’t recognise the authority of the Pirate Lords, and they hunt on others’ grounds. Most of the ships we’ve come across to this month had been emptied by poachers. Most of them don’t last long… Too many people out for their blood. The most polite way to treat with them is to gun down their ship and hang every survivor from the highest yard of the Pearl.”

Goosebumps erupted on Hermione’s arms and legs and she shuddered. Her eyes were irresistibly drawn back to the schooner, which did not seem to have reduced her speed despite the pacific signal. Clearly, the poachers were cautious — and if she was to believe Gibbs, with good reason.

The ships followed one another for a little while; the Pearl was gradually picking up speed, and every time Hermione caught a glimpse of the schooner, it seemed to her as if they would catch up with the poachers in a matter of minutes.

Then the schooner vanished.

The crew started murmuring, and the sound swelled to a low, ominous rumbling. Even with the feeble visibility — and if Hermione was to believe the dark muttering around her, the fog was lingering unnaturally — the schooner had had to manoeuvre practically under their nose, and they had been none the wiser. Some were already whispering about angry goddesses and ghosts who would be the poachers’ accomplices. Others recalled Hawkins’s sailing history, and claimed he was capable of that kind of manoeuvre.

Captain Barbossa had just given the order to take down the flag, however, when the poachers’ masts appeared suddenly straight ahead again. The first man who saw them was standing rather close to Hermione, and his shout half-deafened her before it was relayed all over the ship, shaking the sailors like an electric discharge. The crew got excited at the idea of pursuing and annihilating the poachers; suddenly the Pearl’s shrouds swarmed with life, the deck vibrated as the heavy guns were rolled into position underneath, and laughing, screaming pirates started checking their weapons.

The schooner disappeared twice more, but the men’s good mood remained; and in fact, both times, the Pearl found her prey again. Hermione was consumed by curiosity. The poacher ship was smaller, lighter, and consequently much faster than even the legendary Black Pearl. It was also considerably more manoeuvrable; it should have been able to vanish completely in the fog and never be found again. How did Sparrow and Barbossa do it?

And where they really the ones determining the course?

Hermione swung her leg back inside the ship and let herself slide down the rail and onto the deck. She made her way through the busy pirates with light, quick steps, now used to this kind of exercise, and soon reached the quarter deck where the helmsman stood. And she stopped dead in her tracks.

The helmsman wasn’t Cotton. Jack Sparrow himself stood behind the helm; and besides him, head lowered to stare at a small object he held in his cupped hands, was Harry. As Hermione watched Sparrow appeared to ask him a question, and he nodded, then pointed ahead and slightly to port — and Sparrow, in turn, nodded and turned the helm accordingly.

Hermione contemplated the scene with wide eyes.

Harry was guiding the Black Pearl straight to the poachers’ schooner.

***

Under Meunier’s horrified gaze, the mist parted again before the slim, enigmatic-faced siren that was carved in the blackened wood of the Black Pearl’s prow.

“They found us again,” he breathed, his voice rough with fear.

A dead silence fell on the Gull’s crew. Throats tight, the men watched the imposing silhouette, black as the darkest night, yet again emerging from the mist with the implacable patience of a predator.

“It’s a curse!” someone screamed.

“I hear Sparrow made a deal with a witch…”

“That ship is piloted by demons!”

“They’re using something on the ship as beacon,” Hawkins murmured, low enough that no one but Meunier could catch his words.

At precisely the same minute, an old sailor whispered, in a voice grating like an ancient door on rusty hinges, “And they said every one to his fellow, Come, and let us cast lots, that we may know for whose cause this evil is upon us… So they cast lots, and the lot fell upon Jonah…”

The men exchanged looks, eyes wide in realisation and fear.

“Hell,” Meunier breathed.

“We have a Jonah,” the old, wizened man said. “Why else would Fate hound us so?”

“We have a Jonah,” the men repeated in hushed voices.

“Someone here is guiding this ship from Hell to us!”

Meunier looked round for Hawkins, who no longer stood by his side, and in doing so his eyes fell on Jim. He was stock-still and deadly pale, his anxious eyes attached on the Black Pearl’s advancing prow, his lips moving soundlessly. He was behaving like a culprit, Meunier realised in a surge of panic. If any of the terrified crewmen noticed him—

“You, Jim,” someone suddenly called. “You sailed aboard the Pearl, right? Under Sparrow’s orders?”

The buzzing of the poachers’ voices quietened as suddenly as if Meunier had turned deaf. Eyes shone in Jim’s direction, hands tightened on the handles of cutlasses and the butts of pistols. Meunier saw the muscles in Jim’s bare shoulders shift and tense as he looked left and right, only to meet suspicious faces; his lips pressed into a thin line, but he didn’t breathe a word in reply.

Meunier opened his mouth to call out to the men, attempt to soothe the murderous rage that often comes with terror, when Hawkins’s voice cracked like a whip in the stifling silence.

“Enough of this nonsense — bring the ship about, load the guns! Now!”

The men started as if they had been roused from a deep slumber, and for one second, all turned to glance at the enemy ship — then they scattered in all directions as Meunier started shouting orders, relieved that the decisions were no longer theirs to take, relieved that they could drown their fear in activity, and, despite their disastrous disadvantage, impatient to make the Black Pearl pay a dearly price for her attacking their ship.

And so, Meunier grimly thought, the last hour of their lives was beginning.

***

“They’re coming about!”

“They want to fight!”

“We’ll show them how real pirates fight!”

“Send them down to Davy Jones’ locker!”

“Death to the poachers!”

Dazed by the shouts, pushed this way and that by the running pirates, Hermione strived to get to the quarter deck and find Harry at least — and with Harry, an explanation for the current situation as well as for his strange behaviour of the past few days. No longer perched on a yard or climbing the rigging, he had spent most of his time at the helmsman’s side; in fact, they had barely talked at all since the boarding of the Spanish ship. His newfound closeness with Jack Sparrow did not fail to worry her, either. It was high time they had a talk.

To her great surprise, she met him halfway up the staircase leading up to the quarter deck.

“Hey,” she said between two panting breaths.

“Hey.”

He looked worried, she noted. His eyes kept darting to the schooner, which had turned around and now resolutely charged the Pearl despite its much inferior size.

“What’s going on?” Hermione asked, shaking him out of his reverie.

“Looks like we’re going to fight again…”  

“You were guiding Sparrow, weren’t you?”

He looked at her from the corner of his eye.

“Kind of.”

“Harry.”

“Not here,” he hissed, seizing her arm and dragging her down the stairs, then under them. “Sparrow has a magical compass,” he whispered to her.

“A — he’s a wizard?”

“No… I imagine he stole it from a wizard…”

“Was that what you were holding?”

Harry nodded. “He lent it to me just after the boarding. The compass apparently points to what you want the most. Leads you straight to it.”

He licked his lips, then looked again at the schooner, his face drawn with anxiety.

“And he led you straight to that ship,” Hermione completed. She did not understand, and Harry did not give any explanation; he was still staring at the enemy ship. She studied his face — he was paler than what she remembered, his cheeks were hollow, his eyes circled with dark rings. Was using the compass physically draining? Or had he lost sleep and appetite over worries he had never shared with her?

She ignored the twinge of resentment that came with that thought. What had the compass led Harry to? What did Harry want more than anything else in the world?

The answer came immediately, and it seemed so obvious she wondered how she could have missed it.

“Your father’s on that ship,” she said. “Right?”

His lips tightened into a thin line. “And we’re attacking it.”

“Most unfortunate.”

Hermione jumped three feet in the air and let out a high-pitched scream when Sparrow’s voice sounded directly behind her. The captain had approached them without a sound, and he was now staring at the schooner with a frown on his face, completely oblivious of Hermione’s near-heart attack. Hermione brought her breathing back under control and backed away from the captain, coming to stand next to Harry.

“Since I can’t leave Barbossa alone on my ship,” Sparrow went on in a light tone, “I think the best thing to do is to send the girl.”

Hermione and Harry exchanged a stunned look.

“I, uh, I’m sorry,” Hermione finally managed to stammer. “What?”

“Mr. Gibbs!” Sparrow shouted.

“Aye sir!”

“You’re going aboard the Gull with miss Granger here, so as to negotiate with captain Hawkins. Any questions?”

“Sir, I—”

“Perfect. Come over here so I can tell you what I want you to say.”

***

Hermione’s heart pounded in her head, louder than the rushing of the waves against the flanks of the gigantic ships, louder than the splashing of the oars entering the water, louder than Gibbs’ flow of dark predictions and sulphurous imprecations. The Gull was looming closer, the mouths of her few cannons gaping, her crew gathered at the bulwark and watching them approach with grim, hateful faces. She may have been more afraid in her life, but she could not remember when.

The two ships, she knew, were out of range of each other’s guns; in theory, no one should start firing unless the “negotiation” failed — but what a strange negotiation it was. No matter how hard she tried, Hermione couldn’t accept the idea of Sparrow generously giving Harry the means to find his father, then going out of his way to make sure everything went smoothly, even as James Potter turned out to be aboard a poacher ship. Harry had told her there had been a price to pay, but even so, Sparrow went to a lot of trouble only to ensure an orphan saw his father again…

They accosted the Gull. A line was cast to them, and for a few minutes, Hermione forgot her fears as she concentrated in order not to make a complete fool of herself — and incidentally, let go of the rope and drown. Shaking all over, she finally was able to grip the rail and haul herself on the deck. Gibbs joined her a second later.

The crewmen of the Gull stood in a solid wall of flesh and tattered clothes, faces hard, calculating, and also surprised. Most were openly staring at her. Her cheeks heated up.

“Gentleman, Miss,” said a tall man in a brusque voice. “I’m captain Hawkins.”

“Quartermaster Gibbs,” Gibbs replied. “And miss Granger. We’re here in Captain Jack Sparrow’s name.”

“And Sparrow can’t come himself?”

“He has his reasons, sir,” Gibbs said, spitting out the ‘sir’ like an insult. A murmur went through the rest of the poachers.

“What does he want?”

“He wishes you to come aboard the Pearl with us, for a talk. We will respect the Code, of course, and Captain Sparrow said he trusts you to respect it yourself.”

Gibbs’ tone was both sceptical and scornful as he spoke, and once again, a murmur ran across the gathered crew. Hermione’s palms were moist with sweat.

“Did he now?” Hawkins said, smirking. He looked from Gibbs to Hermione, and after a couple of seconds, she averted her gaze — only to meet a tall and thin crewman’s feverish eyes. He was staring at her with frightening intensity, one hand clenched in a fist and buried in his pocket. Hermione’s heartbeat grew disorderly. Could this be…?

“I know Barbossa’s way of getting around the Code,” Hawkins was saying. “What guarantees my safety on the Pearl?”

The man was still staring at Hermione. He seemed to be of the right age; his face was bony, scarred, and excessively tanned; it only vaguely resembled Harry’s, but sixteen years at sea had probably altered the incredible likeness between father and son, she reasoned. And the hand in his pocket could well be clutching a wand…

“…still doesn’t explain miss Granger’s presence.”

Hermione started at the mention of her name and her eyes shot back to Hawkins, who stood there looking at her with a slightly amused expression, one eyebrow raised and a half-smile tugging at his lips — his expression so familiar that she gasped aloud in shock, her eyes widening, taking in the details of his face for the first time — and she heard her own voice ring in the silence, although she had never meant to speak the words aloud.

“Oh my God, you’re James Potter.”