The island was exactly as Lysaro had promised—nothing but rocks, seabirds, and a cove deep enough to hide a ship from casual observation. They anchored the *Salty Pearl* as dawn painted the eastern sky in shades of copper and blood.
Harry stood at the rail, watching the sun rise over waters that had never known the North Sea. His hands ached from holding the water-wall, a bone-deep exhaustion that came from bending reality to his will. The Unspeakables had trained him to push past pain, but they'd never quite managed to train it away entirely.
"You need to sleep," Septa Sarya said, appearing beside him with the silence of someone used to moving through kitchens unnoticed. She held a cup of something that steamed in the cool morning air. "Drink this. Willow bark for the pain, mint for clarity, and something else I'm not going to tell you about because you'll worry."
"Should I worry?" Harry asked, taking the cup.
"Only if you don't trust me." Her smile was serene. "Which would be foolish, considering I could have poisoned you a dozen times by now and haven't."
"Comforting." But he drank anyway. The liquid was bitter, then sweet, then something that made his tongue tingle in ways that had nothing to do with temperature. The ache in his bones began to fade, replaced by a gentle warmth that spread through his chest.
"What was the third ingredient?" he asked.
"A mild stimulant from the Summer Isles. Koro told me about it once, back when we were both prisoners in different ways. He said his people use it to stay alert during long voyages." She took the empty cup back. "Sleep for four hours. Then you can start your rune work. But if you collapse from exhaustion before carving your magic symbols, all of this becomes significantly harder."
Harry wanted to argue. The Unspeakables had trained that impulse away—sleep was a luxury, weakness was death, rest was for people who weren't weapons.
But he wasn't a weapon anymore.
He was a captain. And captains who ignored good advice tended to get their crews killed.
"Four hours," he agreed. "Wake me if anything happens."
"Nothing will happen," Septa Sarya said with the confidence of someone who knew poisons and prayers in equal measure. "The Crabfeeder's men are still looking for us near the fortress. And our friends..." She looked toward the horizon, where the fortress would be. "Our friends are very good at what they do."
---
Harry dreamed of the Department of Mysteries.
Not the real one—the one that existed in actual space and time, with its revolving doors and its rooms full of terrible knowledge. This was the other one. The one that existed outside of time, in the spaces the Unspeakables used for training.
In the dream, he was young again. Seventeen, fresh from the war, still raw from watching friends die. The Unspeakable standing before him had no face—they never did in the time room—but her voice was patient as she explained how to unpick reality like a seam.
*"Magic is a language,"* she said. *"Most wizards only learn a few words. 'Fire.' 'Light.' 'Fly.' Simple concepts that reality accepts easily. But you, Harry Potter... you're going to learn to write essays. Novels. Epic poems that make the universe pause and reconsider its fundamental rules."*
*"Why me?"* he'd asked, still stupid enough to think he'd had a choice.
*"Because you're already broken,"* she'd said with terrible kindness. *"The war broke you. Voldemort broke you. Loss broke you. And broken things can be rebuilt into new shapes. We're going to rebuild you into something that can protect Britain from threats she doesn't even know exist yet."*
*"What if I don't want to be rebuilt?"*
*"Then you would have refused the first time we asked. But you didn't. You said yes because you're tired of being helpless. Tired of watching people die. Tired of being too weak, too slow, too limited."* The faceless Unspeakable had placed a hand on her shoulder. *"We're offering you strength, Harry. All you have to do is let us take away the parts of you that are holding you back."*
*"What parts?"*
*"The ones that remember how to be happy."*
In the dream, young Harry had nodded. Had agreed. Had walked into those timeless rooms and let them carve away everything soft until only the weapon remained.
In the dream, he couldn't remember why he'd thought that was a good idea.
---
He woke to Lysaro shaking his shoulder and the sun already past its zenith.
"Sorry, I know Sarya said four hours, but it's been six and we've got company." Lysaro's manic energy was subdued, replaced by something focused. "The good kind of company. Probably. Maybe."
Harry was on his feet instantly, the last cobwebs of sleep falling away. He'd slept in his clothes—old habits from hunting Horcruxes—and his cutlasses were within arm's reach. "They made it?"
"See for yourself."
On deck, Marro and Septa Sarya stood at the rail, watching a small boat approach across the crystalline water. Three figures rowed with synchronized efficiency, and a fourth sat in the stern with the stillness of someone conserving energy.
As they drew closer, Harry could make out details: two men who could only be brothers—same sharp features, same calculating eyes—and a woman with short-cropped hair and knives visible at her belt even from a distance.
And in the stern, the Summer Islander.
Koro was tall, taller even than Marro, with skin dark as volcanic glass and tribal scars that formed geometric patterns across his bare arms. His hair was worked into dozens of thin braids decorated with shells and colored glass. He wore loose trousers and nothing else, and his eyes—gold as coins, unsettling as a predator's—fixed on Harry with uncomfortable intensity.
The boat bumped against the *Salty Pearl's* hull.
"Permission to come aboard?" the woman called up. Her accent was pure Westerosi, the Fingers specifically. "We've got your navigator and a liberated slave who may or may not murder us all in our sleep."
"I would not murder you in your sleep," Koro said, his voice deep and musical despite the edge in it. "I would wake you first. It is only polite."
"See?" the woman said. "Polite murder. We're bonding."
Lysaro laughed and threw down a rope ladder. "Come on up, Jarla. Brothers. Koro. Welcome to what may be the worst decision you've ever made."
They climbed aboard one by one. The brothers—Timoro and Varro—moved with the efficiency of men used to working as a unit. They were lean, weathered, with the calloused hands of oarsmen and the scarred knuckles of brawlers.
Jarla came next, moving like a cat and evaluating the ship with a merchant's eye. She was maybe twenty-five, with the kind of face that would be pretty if it ever stopped looking for threats.
Koro came last, and his presence changed something about the deck. He was simply *there* in a way that made everyone else seem slightly less real by comparison. He looked at the ship, at the crew, at the water, and finally at Harry.
"You are the mage," he said. It wasn't a question.
"I am," Harry confirmed.
"You made water into a wall. Held back a war galley with magic I have never seen." Koro's golden eyes never blinked. "Where I come from, we have stories of those who speak to the sea. Wave dancers, we call them. They are myths. Legends. Things that do not exist."
"I'm not from your world," Harry said. "I'm not from this world at all."
"Yes." Koro smiled, and it transformed his face from intimidating to merely unsettling. "I can see that. You move wrong. Stand wrong. Even the way you breathe is foreign." He tilted his head. "What are you running from, wave dancer?"
"Myself," Harry said honestly. "And failing."
"Good." Koro's smile widened. "Men who run from themselves make the best sailors. They understand that some things cannot be outrun, only outlived." He looked around the ship again, his evaluation more thorough this time. "This vessel. She is old. Tired. She has been a merchant's ship, fat and slow and careful. But Lysaro tells me you will make her into something new. Something impossible."
"That's the plan."
"Then I will sail her." Koro placed a hand on the mast, and something passed between man and wood—some recognition or promise that Harry felt but couldn't quite name. "I will teach her to dance. And in exchange, when we face the Crabfeeder, I will be there when he dies."
"You'll have to stand in line," Septa Sarya said mildly. "I've already claimed his poisoning."
"I do not want him poisoned," Koro said, his voice going flat. "I want him staked to a beach at low tide. I want him to feel what he has done to others. I want the crabs to eat him alive while the water rises and he cannot even scream properly because his lungs are filling with salt and blood."
The deck was very quiet.
"Right," Jarla said eventually. "So we've got: carpenter with missing fingers, septa with poisons, mad engineer with explosives, wave dancer from another world, and Summer Islander with very specific revenge fantasies. This is either the best crew ever assembled or the worst."
"Why not both?" Lysaro suggested brightly.
Harry looked at them—these eight people who'd agreed to crew an impossible ship on an impossible mission for reasons ranging from profit to revenge to simple survival. They were broken, every one of them. The Crabfeeder had seen to that. The world had seen to that.
But broken things could be rebuilt.
He'd learned that in those timeless rooms, even if the lesson hadn't quite worked the way the Unspeakables intended.
"Right," Harry said. "Introductions first. I'm Harry Potter, and I'm not from this world. I was sent here by accident, and I have no way home. I'm trained in combat magic that you won't have seen before, and I'm going to use that magic to turn this ship into something the Crabfeeder can't sink, can't catch, and can't survive."
He pointed to each person in turn. "Marro—carpenter, knows ships inside and out. Septa Sarya—healer and poisoner, don't cross her. Varos—engineer, currently working on something called cannons that will revolutionize naval warfare. Lysaro—navigator, talks too much, hasn't gotten us killed yet. And you three..."
"Timoro," said the first brother, raising a hand. "Good with knots, better with math."
"Varro," said the second. "Good with violence, better with silence."
"Jarla of the Fingers," said the woman. "Good with blades, better with numbers. Former smuggler, current opportunist, always practical."
"Koro of the Summer Isles," said the tall man. "Sailor, wave reader, and patient architect of creative revenge. I have sailed swan ships through storms that would break normal men, and I have killed my captain with my bare hands. I do not regret it."
"Lovely," Lysaro said. "We're all traumatized and talented. Perfect combination for piracy."
"This isn't piracy," Harry said quietly. "This is war. The Crabfeeder thinks he controls these waters. Thinks his cruelty makes him strong. He's wrong. We're going to prove it. But before we can face him, we need to make this ship into something that can survive the attempt."
He pulled out his sheaf of sketches and spread them across a crate. "These are runes—symbols of power from my world. I'm going to carve them into the hull, the masts, the deck. They'll make the ship stronger than oak, faster than wind, and nearly impossible to sink. But it's going to take time. Weeks, probably. And during that time, we're vulnerable."
"The Crabfeeder will be looking for us," Marro said.
"Let him look," Koro said simply. "This island is small, unremarkable. The kind of place patrols pass by because there is nothing here worth finding. We can hide here, work here, and emerge only when we are ready."
"What about supplies?" Jarla asked, ever practical. "Food, water, materials for the runes and the cannons?"
"There's a smuggler's cache on the north side of the island," Lysaro said. "I may have used it once or twice for... storage purposes. It's got hardtack, salted meat, and a truly unfortunate amount of cheap wine. Not luxury, but it'll keep us alive. As for materials..."
"I'll need bronze for the cannons," Varos said, speaking up for the first time. His eyes still had that manic gleam. "Good bronze. And sulfur, charcoal, saltpeter for the powder. And tools—a forge, bellows, proper metalworking equipment."
"The ship has a cook's stove," Marro offered. His damaged hand moved as he spoke, and Harry noticed how he held it—protective, self-conscious. "It's not a forge, but if we modify it, add better ventilation..."
"It could work," Varos said, already calculating. "Not ideal. Dangerous. Might explode. But it could work."
Harry was still watching Marro's hand. The missing fingers. The way the carpenter compensated for the loss with unconscious adjustments.
An idea formed. Dangerous. Possibly foolish. But...
"Marro," Harry said quietly. "Your hand. Show it to me again."
The carpenter's expression shuttered. "Why? You've seen it."
"Because I might be able to help."
The deck went silent. Everyone turned to look at Harry.
"Help how?" Marro asked, his voice carefully neutral.
"Magic," Harry said. "There's a spell—a very old, very dark spell—that can regenerate lost limbs. I saw it used once by the darkest wizard of my age. He used it to give a follower an entire hand. Silver, not flesh, but functional. Perfect."
"Dark magic," Septa Sarya said, her voice sharp with warning.
"Yes," Harry admitted. "But magic isn't inherently good or evil. It's what you do with it that matters. The wizard who invented this spell used it to reward cruelty. But I could use it to restore what cruelty took away." He looked at Marro. "It won't be easy. I'll have to modify the spell significantly—it was designed to create an entire hand, not two fingers. The mathematics of it will be complex. And it will hurt. A lot. But when it's done, you'll have your fingers back."
Marro stared at him. "You can give me my fingers back."
"I can try. No promises. I've never actually performed this spell myself—only seen it done and studied the theory. But the Unspeakables made me learn every dark spell they could find, just in case. And this one..." Harry's jaw tightened. "This one might actually do some good for once."
"What's the cost?" Jarla asked, ever practical. "Magic like that always has a cost."
"Pain during the casting. And afterward..." Harry hesitated. "The original spell required a sacrifice—bone from the father, flesh from the servant, blood from the enemy. But that was for a complete limb. For two fingers, I can simplify. Just Marro's own blood, his bone from the stumps where the fingers were, and his will to make them return."
"My own pieces," Marro said slowly. "To rebuild myself."
"Exactly."
The carpenter looked down at his ruined hand. "How long?"
"An hour to prepare. Maybe two for the actual casting. Then several days of healing before you can use them properly."
"And if it fails?"
"Then you're no worse off than you are now. The worst that happens is pain and nothing changes." Harry met his eyes. "But I don't think it will fail."
Marro was quiet for a long time. The crew waited, watching. Finally, he held out his damaged hand.
"Do it," he said. "I want my fingers back. I want to feel whole again."
---
Harry set up in the ship's hold, where they'd have privacy and space. He sent Jarla to fetch supplies from the smuggler's cache—salt, wine, a silver bowl if she could find one. Septa Sarya provided bandages and a pain-dulling draught. Lysaro cleared the area and stood guard above.
Koro appeared at the last moment, silent as always.
"I will watch," he said. It wasn't a request. "I have never seen dark magic. I should know what our wave dancer is capable of."
Harry nodded. He understood the need to know your crew's capabilities, even the frightening ones.
Marro sat on a barrel, his damaged hand resting on a crate. Harry had him drink the pain draught first—it wouldn't eliminate the sensation, but it would take the edge off.
"This will be different from any magic you've seen," Harry warned. "Darker. More visceral. If you want to stop at any point—"
"I won't," Marro said flatly.
Harry began by examining the stumps with both his hands and his magical senses. The bones had been cut cleanly—the Crabfeeder had at least used a sharp blade. The flesh had healed over them, creating rounded scars. But beneath that, Harry could feel the phantom memory of what had been there. The magic remembered.
That would help.
He took out Jarla's grandmother's silver knife and sterilized it in wine. "This is going to hurt," he warned.
"Everything hurts," Marro said. "Get on with it."
Harry made careful incisions at the base of each stump, opening the old scars. Blood welled up, and Marro hissed but didn't pull away. Harry caught the blood in the silver bowl Jarla had found—tarnished and dented, but still functional.
Then came the difficult part.
He had to expose the bone. Just the tips, where the fingers had been severed. He worked with surgical precision, using magic to numb the immediate area while keeping Marro conscious and aware. The Unspeakables had taught him field surgery alongside combat magic—you couldn't always have a healer available.
"Talk to me," Marro said through gritted teeth. "Distract me."
"The spell I'm about to use was created by one of the darkest wizards in my world's history," Harry said, still working. "His name doesn't matter. What matters is that he understood something fundamental about magic—that creation and destruction are two sides of the same coin. He used this spell to reward a servant who'd proven his loyalty through betrayal and murder. But the magic itself is neutral. It simply... rebuilds. Makes whole what was broken."
"How does it work?"
"It uses your body's memory of what it was supposed to be. Every cell remembers. Your blood knows it should feed five fingers, not three. Your bones know they should extend further. Your nerves know they should reach and feel and respond." Harry exposed the bone tips—pale white against the red. "I'm going to remind them. Force them to remember so strongly that they have no choice but to rebuild."
He arranged everything carefully: the blood in the bowl, Marro's hand positioned precisely, his wand—no, he didn't have his wand anymore. He'd have to do this wandlessly.
That would make it harder. More intimate. More dangerous.
But also more powerful, if he could control it.
Harry placed his hands on either side of Marro's damaged hand, not quite touching. He closed his eyes and reached for the magic—not the structured, regulated magic of Hogwarts, but the raw power the Unspeakables had taught him to channel.
The words came from somewhere deep. Part Latin, part older languages, part pure intent shaped into sound:
*"Osseus memoria, carne renata, sanguine vinculum..."*
Bone memory. Flesh reborn. Blood binding.
He modified the spell as he spoke, adjusting the parameters. Not a whole hand—just two fingers. Not silver—living tissue. Not sustained by sacrifice—sustained by Marro's own will to be whole.
The magic fought him. It *wanted* to create something grand, something dramatic. Harry forced it smaller, more focused, more precise.
Marro screamed.
Harry kept going. He could feel it now—the bones extending, growing from the stumps like plants reaching for sunlight. Slow, excruciating, but *growing*. The blood in the bowl began to glow, rising in tendrils to wrap around the emerging bones.
Flesh followed. Muscle, tendon, skin—layer by layer, building from the inside out.
Koro watched with those unblinking gold eyes, his expression unreadable.
The spell reached its crescendo. Harry's hands were shaking from the effort of controlling so much power in such a small space. One mistake and he could kill Marro, or worse—create something that looked like fingers but didn't work, didn't feel, was just meat shaped like what should be.
*"REDDITUS!"* Harry shouted the final word—*return*—and released the spell.
Light flared. Marro screamed again. And then it was done.
Harry staggered back, nearly falling. Koro caught him with one massive hand.
Marro was breathing hard, staring at his hand.
Where there had been stumps, there were now fingers. Two fingers, complete from knuckle to nail. They were pale, new-looking, but unmistakably real. Unmistakably *his*.
Slowly, testing, Marro tried to move them.
The first finger twitched. Then the second. Then both curled into his palm, forming a fist for the first time in a year.
The carpenter's face crumpled. Not from pain—from something else entirely. He made a sound that might have been a laugh or a sob, staring at his complete hand like it was a miracle.
"They're mine," he whispered. "They're really mine. I can feel them. I can feel *everything*."
"They'll be weak for a few days," Harry said, still leaning on Koro. The spell had taken more out of him than he'd expected. "Don't strain them. Let them finish integrating with the rest of your hand. But yes. They're yours. They're real."
Marro looked up at Harry with an expression of such profound gratitude that it hurt to see.
"Thank you," he said. "Thank you. I—" His voice broke. "I didn't think I'd ever—"
"You're welcome," Harry said quietly. "Just... don't thank me too much. I told you, it's dark magic. The kind of thing the Unspeakables taught me because they wanted me to understand how to unmake people as easily as make them."
"I don't care what kind of magic it is," Marro said fiercely. "You gave me back something I thought was gone forever. That's not dark. That's the opposite of dark."
Koro helped Harry up the ladder to the deck. The Summer Islander's expression was thoughtful.
"That was beautiful," he said quietly. "And terrifying. You could unmake people just as easily, couldn't you? With magic like that."
"Yes," Harry admitted. There was no point lying about it.
"Good." Koro's smile was sharp. "The Crabfeeder should be terrified of you. I want him to know what kind of power he's facing before he dies."
---
Word spread quickly. By evening, the entire crew knew what Harry had done.
They looked at him differently now. Not with fear, exactly. But with a new understanding of what he was capable of. The line between healing and harm was thinner than most people wanted to acknowledge.
Septa Sarya examined Marro's new fingers with professional interest. "The integration is remarkable. No rejection, no corruption. They're taking to the hand as if they'd always been there."
"They were always there," Harry said. "In memory, if not in flesh. I just... reminded his body what it was supposed to be."
"Could you do this for others?" she asked. "Missing limbs, old injuries?"
"Theoretically. But it's exhausting, dangerous, and requires the person's complete cooperation. And..." Harry hesitated. "I'm not sure I want to make a habit of it. Dark magic has a way of becoming easier the more you use it. More tempting. The Unspeakables warned me about that even as they taught me every curse they could find."
"Yet you used it for good," Sarya pointed out.
"This time. But what about next time? And the time after that?" Harry looked at his hands—the same hands that had carved protective runes and cast healing spells and killed four men without hesitation. "There's a reason they call it dark magic. Not because it's inherently evil, but because it's inherently seductive. It offers easy solutions to hard problems. And easy solutions have a way of becoming the only solutions you consider."
"Then we'll keep you honest," Sarya said simply. "That's what a crew does. We watch each other's backs and pull each other back from edges we shouldn't cross."
That night, Marro sought Harry out as he sat watching the stars.
"I wanted to show you," the carpenter said. He held up his hand—all five fingers extended, all five responding to his will. "They work. Not perfectly yet, but they work. I can grip. I can feel. I can—" His voice roughened. "I can build again. Properly. Without compensating for the missing pieces."
He sat down beside Harry. "My daughters. Back in Tyrosh. The last time I saw them, they were crying because their father had come home broken. Disfigured. Less than he'd been." He looked at his complete hand. "When I see them again—*if* I see them again—I'll be whole. I'll be able to hold them properly. Show them that the Crabfeeder didn't win. That I came back."
"We'll get you back to them," Harry said. "That's a promise."
"I believe you." Marro was quiet for a moment. "What you said about dark magic. About it being seductive. I understand that. But I also think... maybe it's not the magic that's dark. Maybe it's the intent behind it. You could have used that spell to hurt me, to control me, to make me dependent on you. But you didn't. You used it to give me back my autonomy. My ability to choose."
"The Unspeakables would say I was wasting a weapon," Harry said quietly.
"Then the Unspeakables were fools." Marro stood, flexing his restored fingers one more time. "Thank you, Harry Potter. For reminding me what it feels like to be whole."
He left, and Harry sat alone with his thoughts and the strange stars.
Koro appeared from the shadows—how he moved so silently despite his size was a mystery Harry hadn't solved yet.
"You are troubled," the Summer Islander observed.
"I used magic I swore I wouldn't use again. The kind of magic that marks you. Changes you."
"Did it change you?"
Harry thought about that. About the exhaustion, yes. About the cost of channeling that much power. But had it *changed* him? Had he enjoyed it? Had he felt that seductive pull toward easier, darker solutions?
No. He'd felt focused. Determined. And afterward, satisfied that he'd helped someone who deserved help.
"I don't think so," he admitted. "Not this time."
"Then perhaps," Koro said, settling beside him, "the magic was never the problem. Perhaps the problem was always the people who used it." He looked up at the stars—different constellations than his homeland, but he studied them with the attention of a man who'd spent his life navigating by their light. "In my home, we have a saying: The spear does not choose to kill. The hand that holds it chooses. Magic is like that, yes? A tool. A spear. What matters is the hand."
"The Unspeakables said magic was a language," Harry said. "That I was learning to write essays that made the universe pause."
"And what are you writing?" Koro asked.
Harry looked at the ship—at the runes beginning to cover her hull, at the crew sleeping in various corners, at Marro's restored hand that would let him build and create again.
"I'm writing," Harry said slowly, "that broken things can be made whole. That cruelty can be answered with creation. That even dark tools can build light."
"Good," Koro said. "That is a story worth telling. Worth living." He stood, stretching. "Rest now, wave dancer. Tomorrow we continue our work. And soon, we will show the Crabfeeder what kind of story he has stumbled into."
He disappeared back into the shadows, leaving Harry alone with the stars and the gentle sound of water against the hull.
The *Fawkes* creaked softly, settling into her new shape. And Harry sat and thought about hands that could heal and hands that could harm, and how sometimes they were the same hands making different choices.
---
The work continued with renewed energy.
Marro's restored fingers changed something in the crew. They'd seen magic before—Harry's combat abilities, his water-wall, his lightning. But that had been magic of destruction, of defense. This was magic of restoration. Of healing.
It made them believe that maybe, just maybe, they could actually rebuild something from all this brokenness.
The carpenter threw himself into his work with almost manic focus. His new fingers were weak at first, clumsy, but he pushed them. By the third day, he was working almost at full capacity, building cannon carriages with his complete hands and occasionally stopping just to stare at them in wonder.
"It's the small things," he told Harry. "Being able to grip a hammer properly. Feel the grain of wood with all five fingers. I didn't realize how much I missed until I had it back."
Harry carved runes and tried not to think too hard about what he'd done. The spell had worked. Marro was whole. That should be enough.
But a small voice in his head—one that sounded disturbingly like the faceless Unspeakable from his dreams—whispered that he'd just proven to himself that dark magic could be good. That the lines he'd drawn weren't as solid as he'd thought.
He pushed the voice away and focused on his work.
---
The runes spread.
Harry started with the keel—the spine of the ship, the foundation everything else built upon. He carved runes of *endurance*, *permanence*, *return*. Each symbol took hours, the silver knife moving with microscopic precision through wood that had seen decades of service.
The magic fought him at first. This wasn't his world. The rules were different here, subtly wrong in ways he couldn't quite articulate. But magic was magic, and will was will, and Harry Potter had been breaking reality's rules since he was eleven years old.
By sunset of the first day, he had carved a line of runes along the entire keel. They glowed faintly in the dying light, pulsing with a rhythm that matched his heartbeat.
Marro watched from nearby, his restored hand unconsciously flexing. "Those symbols. They're beautiful. Like art, but purposeful."
"They're promises," Harry said, sitting back and wiping sweat from his forehead. His hands ached, his back screamed, and his eyes felt like they had sand in them. "Promises the universe is going to keep whether it wants to or not."
"And the ship? Will it actually be unsinkable?"
"Not unsinkable," Harry corrected. "Nearly unsinkable. Big difference. Enough damage will still destroy it. But it would take an army of dragons all firing at once, and even then..." He traced a finger along one of the runes. "Even then, she'd fight to stay afloat. The runes will make her want to survive. Give her something like a will of her own."
"A ship with a will," Marro said quietly. His new fingers traced patterns in the air, testing their range. "That's either brilliant or terrifying."
"Both," Harry agreed. "Definitely both."
---
While Harry carved, Varos worked on the cannons.
The modified cook's stove glowed red-hot, and the engineer's manic energy somehow translated into meticulous precision. He cast test pieces of bronze, checking them for flaws, recasting anything imperfect. His notebooks filled with calculations—bore diameter, barrel length, powder charges, optimal angles of fire.
"The key," he explained to anyone who'd listen, "is containment. The explosion wants to go in all directions, but we force it to go in one direction by making that the path of least resistance. The ball goes forward, the gases go forward, and the tube stays intact because we've made it strong enough to contain the force."
"And if the tube isn't strong enough?" Jarla asked.
"Then the cannon explodes and everyone nearby dies horribly in a rain of molten bronze and shattered dreams." Varos's smile was manic. "That's why testing is important!"
"How reassuring," Septa Sarya muttered.
But the first cannon began to take shape. A bronze tube three feet long, thick-walled and heavy, mounted on a wooden carriage that Marro built with his complete, capable hands. He worked with renewed confidence, his restored fingers handling tools with growing sureness.
"It's perfect," Marro said, examining his own work with satisfaction. "Better than anything I could have built before. I think... I think having them back made me better somehow. Like I was compensating so hard for the loss that I forgot how to work properly. Now I remember."
The cannon wasn't pretty. It wasn't elegant. But when Varos ran his hands along the barrel, checking for imperfections, his expression was almost reverential.
"She'll work," he said quietly. "I don't know how I know, but I know. She'll work."
---
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