Chapter 758: Underwater Voyage

After a year together, you couldn’t exactly call Hogwarts and Ilvermorny friendly. The tension between them was obvious to anyone with eyes.

It didn’t matter whether you were a competitor, a professor, or the headmaster. When the two schools passed each other in the Great Hall, the students didn’t even bother with a hello. Mostly they just glanced over, then stepped around each other with stone faces.

Dumbledore’s rampage in New York had already earned him plenty of hatred. Some of the people he’d injured were probably parents of these very students.

The only reason the Ilvermorny kids had stayed this long was because they wanted to win one back for their school and beat Hogwarts at something, anything. In the end they got nothing. They lost the duel, lost the Triwizard Tournament, and didn’t even win at Quidditch.

And now Agilbert Fontaine had announced he’d be staying at Hogwarts for a while. That set everyone’s imagination running. Had Dumbledore done something again? Was he forcing Fontaine to stay?

Whatever Fontaine had or hadn’t done elsewhere, he still stood pretty high in the students’ eyes.

“Professor, don’t we look like the villains right now?” Tom leaned in and whispered to Dumbledore.

A wry smile crept onto the old man’s face.

He honestly didn’t care much what outsiders thought. The wizarding world called him an old fool and a senile codger, and he’d never bothered to defend himself. But the ones glaring at him with suspicion and hostility now were a bunch of kids, and that stung a little for a man who had always loved students.

These children didn’t even know what had happened. They were simply standing by their headmaster on instinct. Dumbledore could handle enemy wands, but he wasn’t so good at handling looks like these.

Worst of all, they’d guessed right. Fontaine was being kept here by force, and wasn’t that his and Tom’s doing?

Even if he made public everything Fontaine and the Sun Chasers had done, the students probably wouldn’t believe him. They’d just assume it was an excuse. Not only would he fail to explain himself, it would only rile the Ilvermorny students up more. Better to let Fontaine say it himself. ⅇℓ.

“Your turn to perform, Mr. Fontaine.” Tom’s voice drifted straight into Fontaine’s mind without his lips moving.

Fontaine drew a slow breath, his face giving nothing away. He pressed his wand to his throat so his voice would carry to every corner of the hall.

“Everyone, stop guessing. I’m staying here to work out next steps with Headmaster Dumbledore. We had a long talk that night, and we agree that the exposure of the wizarding world was somebody’s scheme. That’s why I need to stay a while.”

“When you get back to school, your professors will send you home by Floo Network. Every one of you will report to your house head once a week. You don’t need to say anything important. Just let them know you’re safe.”

Fontaine went on to lay out a few more arrangements. He spoke in an orderly way, with no hint of nerves and no hidden messages, and the Ilvermorny students finally relaxed.

Afterward, Tom followed them down to the edge of the Black Lake. Several light orbs floated up into the sky and lit the lake’s surface as bright as day.

The cabins that had been set up along the shore were packed away one by one by the professors. The New Mayflower pulled up to the bank, and the students began boarding.

Tom didn’t go in right away, though. He stood at the bow instead.

The night wind blew in off the lake, damp on his face. Lamps on the ship lit up one after another, lighting the deck clearly.

He was curious how the ship would get from Hogwarts back to Ilvermorny.

“You’re in for a treat in a minute,” a playful voice said behind him. Tom turned and saw a girl with a round face and big eyes.

“Ivy, how are you?” Tom said with a smile.

Ivy Warrington was one of Cassandra’s few close friends at Ilvermorny, the real deal, best-friends-forever kind. Her most striking feature was those big, bright eyes. Look a little longer, though, and you’d notice she was always zoning out, which gave her a slightly dopey air.

She was pretty good in a duel, though. Aside from Cassandra, she was probably the strongest girl in their year.

She was a bit of a tomboy, easygoing and loud, and Tom got along with her well enough. Mostly it worked because she had no filter. She said whatever came into her head and didn’t tense up the second she saw Tom like the other students did.

Shame that, cute as she was, her looks just weren’t quite up there, and Tom had no interest in her that way. But that was exactly what made it possible to be only friends with someone of the opposite sex.

“I haven’t seen Cassandra. She’s really not going back to America?”

“Not for now,” Tom said. “As a friend, I’d advise you to leave for a while too.”

“Is it really that bad?” Ivy’s round face scrunched up. “I talked to my mom today and she said everything’s normal. We just can’t go back to New York for now. The Muggles there have gone nuts, hunting for wizards everywhere, but the other cities aren’t so tense.”

Tom shrugged. “That’s just my opinion. Believe it or not.”

Ivy looked him up and down for a few seconds, then gritted her teeth. “I’ll try to talk my parents into it. I hope they’ll listen.”

She didn’t sound very confident. She clearly knew it wasn’t easy to get your parents to suddenly leave their home. But Cassandra’s whole family was staying in England, and she couldn’t just pretend she hadn’t heard.

Even if Tom wanted to trick someone, he wouldn’t start with his own people. So Ivy leaned toward trusting his judgment.

Wooooo!

The New Mayflower’s horn let out a low, droning blast. The ship began to move and the anchor was drawn up.

The lights on the shore slipped farther away, and the ripples along both sides of the hull started to change. A surge of magic rose from beneath the deck and spread over the whole ship.

A ring of blue light wrapped around the hull. With a slight lurch, the ship slowly sank.

The invisible barrier worked like a giant Bubble-Head Charm, holding the water back at a distance while jetting out streams of bubbles to push the ship forward.

The giant squid and other creatures of the Black Lake drifted past both sides of the ship like the residents of an aquarium. It all felt a bit dreamlike.

“Pretty, right?” Ivy had forgotten whatever she’d been worried about and was grinning again. “Ilvermorny doesn’t have a lake full of magical creatures like this. When we first came to Hogwarts, everyone was stunned.”

Tom nodded. “It does have its own charm. Did you come the whole way underwater?”

“Of course not!” Ivy shook her head. “It’s a fun view here, but ordinary waterways are boring. Once we’re out of Muggle waters, the ship surfaces and we sail back to America across the sea.”

The lake wasn’t stagnant. It had several channels leading to the outside world, like the one Hagrid used to bring the first years to Hogwarts. But that one only led to an inland river, and the New Mayflower had to cross the North Atlantic to get back to America.

“Watch a bit longer, then you can go to bed. If you get bored, come play cards with us.”

At first there were some glowing magical creatures to see, but the farther out they went, the more the windows filled with nothing but darkness. Staring at it too long just made you sleepy, and there wasn’t much to see anyway. Ivy didn’t plan to watch any longer either, so she said so to Tom.

“How long does the trip take?” Tom suddenly thought of a question he’d overlooked, and an uneasy feeling rose in his chest.

Judging by the speed, this was no faster than an ordinary ship. If they kept this pace the whole way, who knew how much time it would waste.

Ivy tilted her head and thought. “It took us ten days to get from Ilvermorny to Hogwarts, I think. And half of that time we had classes on the ship. Luckily it’s vacation now, so all we have to do is eat and sleep, sleep and eat.”

That cheered her right back up. She rubbed her little belly. “Now that you mention it, I forgot, it’s dessert time after dinner. Maybe some cake and bacon. I’ll eat a bit less today…” 𝚏𝗋ℯⅇ

Tom’s vision went dark. He couldn’t hear a word about dessert or bacon anymore.

All he remembered was the number she’d said.

Ten days?

He was going to spend ten days on this rust bucket?

No way. Absolutely not.

He would never waste ten precious days of his life on this wreck.

That’s right. Less than half an hour after boarding, Tom Riddle was already plotting his escape.