HARRY POTTER AND THE SHIP OF DREAMS
Chapter Seven

April 14, 1912
10:30 PM

Fleur had already gone to bed at ten PM. Harry sat with Ron and Malfoy in the Smoking Lounge on B-Deck.

"Like I said, if the Germans keep it up, the muggles will be at war," Malfoy said, taking a puff of his cigar.

Up on the boat deck, the officers were doing their best to keep warm.

"Thermometer says twenty degrees," Lightoller said to Murdoch in the wheelhouse.

"Moonless night. It’ll make the bergs hard to see," Murdoch commented.

"Indeed. Has any bleeding soul seen the lookout’s binoculars?" Lightoller complained.

"Haven’t seen them since Southampton," Murdoch replied.

10:28 PM

Lookout Fleet in the crow’s nest spied an object whiter than night in the distance.

"Jesus Christ! An iceberg!" he screamed, ringing the lookout’s bell three times, signaling.

Fleet picked up the telephone connected to the wheelhouse.

"Is anyone there?" he screamed into the receiver.

Murdoch picked up the phone. "Yes? What do you see?"

"Iceberg, right ahead!" he shouted.

"Thank you," Murdoch replied, hanging up the phone and running to the window. What he saw made his heart stop.

"Hard to starboard! Full astern!" he shouted to the seaman.

Quickly the seaman turned the wheel hard-over, and Murdoch went to the engine telegraph and signaled the engine crew to do a full reverse of the propellers.

The crew acted quickly, but it was no use.

10:30 PM

"She’s gonna hit!" cried a seaman.

The iceberg bumped its way along the side, popping rivets and bending steel, making a large gash.

"Hard to port!" Murdoch yelled.

They turned the wheel, moving away from the iceberg.

Almost immediately, the captain was up on deck.

"What have we hit, Mr. Murdoch?" he asked.

"An iceberg, sir. I put the wheel hard to starboard and the engines full astern, but she hit and…" he said frantically.

"Close the watertight doors," the captain said, acting fast.

"The doors are closed, sir," Murdoch said.

After a brief meeting with Thomas Andrews, the ship’s architect, they concluded that the ship would sink in about two hours and began to get the passengers ready.

"Bloody hell! What was that?" Ron yelled.

"Don’t know," Harry said.

"Idiots! They’re trying to kill us or something!" Malfoy commented.

After they found out what happened, Harry rushed to his suite to awaken Fleur.

"Fleur! Fleur, dear, wake up!" he shouted, shaking her.

Fleur bolted up in bed into his arms and asked, "What? Harry, what is it?"

"The ship hit an iceberg. The ship is going to sink," he said shakily, getting her coat wrapped around her nightgown.

"What?" she asked, taken aback.

"Yes! Come on!" Harry said, carrying her out of bed and into the hallway.

He took her up on deck, where they met Ron, Hermione, Malfoy, and Ginny.

"Nice lifebelts, Potter," Malfoy teased.

Harry asked Lightoller, "Can my wife and I get into the lifeboat?"

"Oh, Mr. Potter! I’m sorry. Women and children only at this time, sir. Best wait until they call for us," Lightoller said, putting more women into the boat.

"I’m not leaving without you, Harry!" Fleur said, tears in her eyes. It appeared that Hermione and Ginny were giving the same speech to their husbands.

"You must! Go! I love you so much," he said, kissing her on the forehead.

Hermione, Ginny, and Fleur were put in a boat with Luna.

All Harry, Ron, and Malfoy could do was stand there helplessly and watch their wives disappear.

"Right, men! Lower away!" Lightoller said to the crewmen lowering the boat slowly into the water.

Harry went over to Lightoller and asked, "Sir, what boat number is my wife in?"

Lightoller said, trying to direct the women into a boat, "Number 7, Mr. Potter!"

"Potter! Where did Weasley go?" Malfoy asked.

"There!" he said. "He got in that boat," Harry said turning towards the door to the grand staircase.

"Bollocks," Malfoy muttered.

They walked down the grand staircase and sat in some chairs next to each other.

"Well, Potter, we’re dressed in our best and are prepared go down as gentlemen," Malfoy managed to say in his sadness, watching hundreds of people trying to get onto the boat deck and into a boat.

Malfoy persuaded a steward to get them glasses of brandy. He obliged.

11:45 PM

The water was at their calves as they sat alone, sipping their brandy and shivering from the twenty-seven degree water.

"H-here’s, P-p-potter, to a new life," Malfoy said, raising his glass in tribute. Harry raised his glass. They tipped their glasses and drank the last of their brandy.

Water was up to their chests.

"See you in paradise, P-Potter," Malfoy said with a strained breath.

"See you in a minute, Malfoy," Harry said, smiling.

*****

The ship was almost perpendicular. Under so much stress, the ship split in two and went down at about 2:20 AM on April 15, 1912, a Monday morning.

At first light, the Carpathia rescued the lifeboats.

Fleur and Ginny were heartbroken when their husbands were not on the list of survivors in the boats.

Ron couldn’t say a word. He and Hermione went into a stateroom and slept as much as they could. Ron didn’t sleep. He wept.

He wept for Harry and Malfoy, his friends. He should have died with them. Ron would be haunted by the memory of leaving Harry and Malfoy on the Titanic until the day he died.

Hermione was also haunted by the loss of her friends until her death.

Mad-Eye Moody never got a chance to get to a boat. He and many other third class passengers were locked below decks to drown while the other passengers got to the boats.

The man Moody told Harry to search for was never found. His name was never found on the Titanic’s passenger list.

Fleur Delacour-Potter never got over her husband’s death. She gave birth to their son, James Delacour-Potter, six months later. She never re-married. She mourned her husband until she died.

Ginny moved on to establish the Malfoy Museum of Magic, which today has the largest collection of wizarding treasures in the world.

Harry and Draco were never found. Most people liked to think that their bodies were still in their chairs with their brandy glasses, waiting for the pearly gates of heaven to open and welcome them to paradise.

Their souls joined the other fifteen hundred souls of the lost and forgotten in heaven. They were all casualties of the greatest wizarding maritime disaster in history.

But their memory lived on.

The End.

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