The landing was anything but graceful.
Harry felt as if an enormous hand had slammed him hard onto wooden decking.
His knees struck something unyielding, and the half-bitten, rock-hard baguette slipped from his mouth, rolling away into the dark.
A freezing sea breeze laced with salty spray rushed up his nose, sending him into a coughing fit.
Beneath him was no solid ground, but an undulating, pitching surface.
“Get up!
Quickly, ‘Arry!” A familiar voice rang out above him, laced with naked urgency and a thick French accent.
Harry scrambled to look up.
Under the dim, swaying lights, he saw a mane of silvery-blonde hair whipping wildly in the gale.
Fleur Delacour was no longer wearing the delicate silk robes he remembered from Hogwarts.
Instead, she wore a rugged, dark blue windbreaker, tight denim trousers, and thick-soled leather boots.
Her hands weren’t holding a wand; they were gripped tight around a massive, helm-like wheel.
“Where are we?” Harry struggled to his feet, realizing he was on the deck of a small speedboat.
Surrounding them was pitch-black, churning water, with only a few distant lighthouse beams piercing the dark.
“Strait of Dover, edge of international waters.” Fleur didn’t even glance at him, her hands darting across the control console where several golden magical dials were spinning frantically.
“Don’t just stand there!
Hold the rail!
We are going full throttle!” “Wait, Fleur, I—” “No time to explain!” she yelled over the crash of waves against the hull.
“How do you think you got out?
That short, fat man squatting in your aunt’s hydrangea bushes only just left!” Harry froze, a cold dread creeping up his spine that bit deeper than the sea wind.
“What?
Someone was in…
the hydrangeas?” “Always!” Fleur hauled back on a lever.
The boat’s engine let out a low, guttural roar that sounded less like machinery and more like a slumbering beast waking up.
“If I had not spent three days studying their shift rotations, I would never have found a gap!
That short one—smelling of cheap tobacco and stale whiskey—I lured him away with an offer on a batch of scrap cauldrons!” “Whatever his name is, he used Apparition ten minutes ago,” Fleur said, her voice sharp and cutting.
“That was the only window, ‘Arry.
Once he returns and sees you are gone, or if some alarm at your aunt’s house is tripped—” Before she could finish, a razor-thin red streak sliced across the distant sky, followed by a dull, thunderous crack.
Fleur’s face instantly hardened.
“Damn it, faster than I expected.” Gritting her teeth, she wrenched the wheel.
“That is the signal that a tracking charm was severed.
Dumbledore knows.
He will be on us in seconds.” “Albus Dumbledore?” Harry gripped the railing, his knuckles turning white.
“You mean…
he knows I’m gone?” “Of course he knows!
Wake up, ‘Arry!” Fleur turned, her azure eyes blazing with fierce clarity in the gloom.
“Did you think that was protection?
That was surveillance!
They locked you in a cage with bells tied to the bars!” The hull tilted violently, banking sharply against the water.
Harry was nearly thrown overboard.
A jet of eerie blue magical flame erupted from the boat’s stern, rocketing their speed to an impossible pace as the craft sliced through the black waves like a blade.
“Hold on!” Fleur shouted.
“We must break through before they seal the coastline!
Once we enter French waters, the jurisdiction of the International Confederation of Wizards takes effect.
Even Dumbledore cannot cross borders to arrest people as he pleases!” Harry held fast to the side, watching the British coastline recede into the distance.
It was shrouded in black, yet it felt as if a colossal, invisible net was tightening over it.
All this time, he had thought he was simply forgotten at Privet Drive.
He hadn’t been.
He had been watched every second.
The furtive figures lurking beneath his window, the letters that offered nothing, the suffocating isolation…
none of it was an oversight.
It was a meticulously designed imprisonment.
Fury flared in his chest, driving away the chill of the sea spray.
“How fast can this boat go?” Harry yelled, his voice no longer trembling, filled only with reckless resolve.
Fleur glanced back at him, a feral smirk curling her lips—an expression he had never seen on her during the Triwizard Tournament.
“This was my father’s old smuggling boat, ‘Arry.
A bit slower than a Firebolt, but fast enough to leave those old relics from the British Ministry of Magic and their broomsticks in our wake?” She slammed the throttle all the way forward.
“More than enough.” The vessel leaped high over the waves and slammed down hard, throwing up sheets of white spray.
Miles behind them in the night sky, several sharp cracks echoed across the water—the sound of multiple wizards using Apparition to reach the shore.
Powerful beams of light swept frantically across the sea, searching for the escaped bird.
But Harry Potter was already gone.
He stood on the deck, letting the sea spray soak his glasses and mat his hair.
Watching the chaotic beams of light dance wildly behind them, he felt not a single trace of fear.
To hell with the prophecy.
To hell with the Savior.
Right now, he was nothing more than a fugitive running for his life with a mad Frenchwoman.
And it felt bloody brilliant.
Along the shoreline behind them, the scattered beams of light converged, frantically sweeping across the water like cyclopes that had lost their quarry.
Faintly carried by the wind, Harry could hear magically magnified shouts—Remus Lupin’s voice, strained and frantic with worry.
“Harry!
*Harry!*” The voice echoed over the churning waves, sounding feeble and powerless.
Steering with one hand, Fleur glanced back at the chaotic scene, her silver hair whipping against her face.
She suddenly burst into laughter—bright, wild, and unrestrained, full of a fierce freedom that would never be permitted in the rigid halls of Hogwarts.
“Look at them!
Scrambling like Nifflers that lost their galleons!” Fleur shouted, freeing one hand to smooth her windblown collar, her eyes glittering with mischief.
“Well, Monsieur Fugitive!
Are we just leaving like this?
Don’t you want to leave a souvenir for the great, all-knowing Headmaster Dumbledore?
A ‘heartfelt’ farewell letter?” Harry glared at the distant searchlights sweeping the dark water.
*Heartfelt?* A cold laugh escaped his throat.
The crushing weight that had sat on his chest for weeks was crumbling with every violent jolt of the boat against the waves.
In its place rose a thrilling, intoxicating rush.
For over a month, he had hovered by the radio like a fool, begging for scraps of news, begging for a shred of the truth.
All he had received was silence and hollow platitudes about “his own good.” *Now* they wanted to talk to him?
When he had no interest in listening?
“You’re right.” Harry snatched up the greasy brown wrapping paper from the deck and shouted into the wind, “I do have something to say!
Do you have a pen?” Fleur pulled an eyebrow pencil from her jacket pocket and tossed it to him.
“Quick!
Twenty seconds before we clear the British magical border!” Pressing the paper against the wet railing, Harry dragged the blunt pencil across the rough surface.
He didn’t deliberate over words or hesitate; his anger poured out in raw, jagged strokes.
He wrote in large, sprawling letters that nearly tore through the paper: *I’m gone.* *Don’t look for me.
Don’t worry.* *Keep your bloody secrets and go choke on them!* *— H.P.* “Done!” Harry hastily folded the scrap into the shape of a paper airplane.
“Give it to me!” Fleur took the crude flyer.
Without using a wand, she leaned down and blew gently onto the tip of the plane.
Her breath carried a faint, silvery mist—the innate magic of a Veela.
“Go on, little one,” Fleur whispered, then hurled it with a flick of her wrist.
The paper airplane shot forward as if propelled by a rocket, whistling through the gale and trailing a streak of mocking silver light through the dark, flying straight toward the disorganized cluster of wizards behind them.
“Hold tight!” Fleur laughed, wrenching the wheel.
“We’re crossing the line!” *Crash—!* The speedboat felt as though it had broken through an invisible membrane.
The stifling pressure in the air vanished in an instant, and that sticky, suffocating sensation of being watched was gone.
Harry looked back.
He saw the silver paper plane plunge squarely into the center of the searchlights.
A moment of commotion followed, someone seemingly catching it, followed by a profound, heavy silence.
The British coastline vanished entirely into the darkness.
Harry Potter slumped onto the deck, panting hard, his face wet with seawater, grinning like a delinquent who had just blown up the entire school.
“I reckon,” he murmured, staring up at the brilliant canopy of stars, “that’ll give Professor Snape another excuse to take points from Gryffindor.” Fleur hummed an unfamiliar French tune, flicking a mint into Harry’s lap.
“Welcome to the free world, Gabriel.”