Now And Forever
Chapter 31
By Abraxan
Author Notes:
Many thanks to my brilliant Brit-picker, Kelpie, and my fabulous betas, Alexander, Asad, Iris and Rich! Thanks too to Mark Anders Harrison for help with a Latin incantation, and Mike McKean for his help with a sports question!
NOW AVAILABLE!!! "Star Sons 1 - Dawn of the Two" an original fantasy novel by Abraxan (Lynda Sappington)! Go to Amazon or Barnes & Noble to order! If you want an autographed bookplate, send a business-sized SASE to:
Whimsy Hill Publishing,
15401 Eaton Pike,
West Alexandria OH 45381.
"What’s a catamaran?" Ginny said as they carried their small tote bags filled with sunscreen and spare clothes toward a pier where a whole row of boats were docked.
"We’ve seen them — those are the boats with two hulls. I was told the ride is smoother, so I thought we’d enjoy it more than one that was
rough," Harry explained.
Ginny frowned. "I don’t know about this, Harry. Wizards aren’t supposed to do well on the water."
"Merlin told me that’s an old witch’s tale," Harry said with great assurance. "And I bought special wrist bands at a Muggle apothecary for us to wear that will help keep
us from getting seasick. This is the best way to see the whales up close, and we’ll be snorkelling over a reef by Lanai, too. It should be fun!" He studied her face, noting the uneasiness
still there. "If you don’t want to go, I’ll cancel it."
Ginny chewed her lip for a moment, then blew out a nervous breath. "No, I want to do it. It would be a shame to go home without seeing the whales and the reef."
A short time later, their ship left the dock. Some of the passengers looked eager, some looked a bit nervous, a few looked a wee bit greenish. The crew brought around snacks and told the passengers
they would find ginger ale and ginger pills downstairs in the galley, either of which would help with seasickness.
"Do you need ginger pills or ginger ale?" Harry said, watching Ginny closely. He had his arm around her, holding her tightly to his side, hoping to make her feel safe.
When she turned to him, her smile had no signs of nervousness. "No, I feel fine, actually. These wrist bands seem to be enough. And it’s fun. I’m enjoying the ride."
Greatly relieved, Harry kissed her forehead. "I’m glad."
The boat’s captain, who introduced himself as Captain Mark, looked about ten years older than Harry and Ginny. He was energetic and funny and kept the passengers laughing with his stories.
Whenever he’d see whale activity, he’d turn the ship toward the animals and point them out, but he was careful to keep at least a hundred yards of water between his ship and the
frolicking animals. Each whale sighting was greeted with cheers and yells and lots of people trying to take photos of the momentary appearances of the giant beasts.
When the wind kicked up, the crew hoisted the sails and turned off the ship’s engines. The catamaran skimmed across the waves in silence and at a speed that had Ginny’s ponytail streaming
out behind her.
"This is great!" she said. She and Harry were seated on the deck in front of the cabin, with the ship’s two trampolines sitting empty in front of them. The boat was bounding over
big waves now, its bow dipping and lifting in an exhilarating rhythm. The captain emerged from the cockpit and ran out onto one of the trampolines. Every time the bow lifted, it threw him up in the
air and he whooped with joy.
"Can I do that too?" Harry asked the captain.
Captain Mark looked at Harry’s athletic build and nodded. "If you promise to stay in the centre of the trampoline, sure. I’d hate to have to fish you out of the water."
"You’ve got it!" Harry said, a huge grin on his face. He turned to Ginny. "D’you want to try it?"
"I suspect it’s safer if there’s only one person on the trampoline at a time," she said. "You go on. I’ll wait my turn."
"OK." He kissed her on the nose, then stepped out onto the trampoline. The ship’s motion promptly threw him on his back, making Captain Mark laugh.
"You all right?" the captain called.
"Yeah, just need to find my sea legs," Harry said, getting to his feet again. He watched the captain and noticed he rode with his knees slightly bent, his arms extended for balance. He
mimicked that posture and soon found his balance. When the boat hit the next trough in the waves, he and the captain were both thrown up in the air. Harry shouted with delight, remembering just in
time to keep his knees bent when he landed. He managed to keep his feet, earning an "All right, my man!" from Captain Mark and cheers from Ginny and the watching passengers.
After riding through several troughs with the captain, Harry turned to his wife. "Your turn!"
"Cool!" Ginny said. She ran lightly out onto the trampoline and watched the captain as Harry had done. Unlike Harry, she never lost her footing, but kept up with the captain as they rode
the waves, earning cheers from the rest of the passengers and crew.
When the captain stepped off the trampoline, he offered Ginny his hand to help her get back to the deck safely. "You and your husband are quite the athletes," he said. "I’ve
never had anyone who could stay on their feet the whole time before. Good job!"
"Thanks!" Ginny said, taking Harry’s hand to get to her seat. "That was brilliant!"
"You’re brilliant," Harry said, pulling her to him and kissing her as they slid down the bulkhead to their seats.
She leaned toward him and whispered in his ear, "Who says wizards can’t cross water?" then giggled.
"Whale ho!" someone called. "Two whales astern! Six o’clock!"
Everyone moved toward the back of the boat to see what the whales were doing. Harry noticed that the normally cheerful Captain Mark now looked worried. The whales were close to the boat and getting
closer, just following it with their backs showing above the water.
"What are they doing?" someone asked a crew member.
"I expect they want to see who we are. Since we’re sailing, we’re much quieter than boats usually are. Whales can be curious. They’re just taking a peek at us."
While the crew member’s voice was calm and reassuring, Harry noticed the man glancing nervously astern from time to time.
The captain called for the sails to be dropped. As the crew members clambered onto the top of the boat to lower and secure the sails, Harry watched the captain, who was keeping a close eye on the
whales following the boat. The engines rumbled to life and the boat began to pull away from the whales, but they kept following it.
Ginny was watching the captain too. "He’s worried about them, isn’t he?"
"Looks like it." Harry asked a passing crew member, who looked frightened, what the problem was.
"No problem, sir. Everything’s fine," the woman replied as she continued on her way, hurrying to do some task or other. She was unable to hide the tension in her face.
"You don’t suppose they’ll ram the boat, do you?" Ginny murmured.
Harry frowned. "I don’t know why they would."
"Maybe they think we’re an enemy of some kind."
"Maybe." Harry walked to the stern, staring at the whales still close behind them. He focused on the whales, tilting his head and frowning in concentration.
"What are you doing?" Ginny said, staring at him.
"I’m listening to them."
"Can you understand them?"
"Not really." He could feel something tingling in the ends of his nerves as he concentrated on the whales. Something was happening. Something was coming. It was imminent. What was
it?
With a gasp of shock, Harry ran to the cockpit. "You need to turn the boat!" he told the captain.
"What? Why?"
"Turn left! Hurry!" Harry insisted.
The captain just stared at him. With a small push of magic, Harry twisted the wheel out of the captain’s hands and spun it. He grabbed the wheel and held it there as the boat veered left. When
he turned to look behind the boat, he saw the two whales blow through their spouts and dive.
Captain Mark saw this too. He blanched under his tan, took the wheel and held the wheel in the turn Harry had begun as he opened the throttle on the engines. The passengers held on as the boat flew
through the water. A moment later, two whales appeared on the surface again, this time ahead of the boat, but off to the right.
"What just happened?" someone said.
"Dunno," Harry said, shrugging and backing away from the captain before anyone questioned him too closely. He and Ginny sat down on a bench on the starboard side deck.
"What happened, Harry? Why did you tell him to turn?" Ginny said.
"I got an impression of . . . hang on." He stood up and gripped the rail, squinting into the distance. "Look there, Ginny!" Two whales swam along the surface, while two more
followed a much smaller object that finally blew a tiny spout of water. "She just had her baby. They were trying to protect her, so she could get the baby to the surface to
breathe."
"How do you—?"
He turned to her. "I just . . . I got an image of it in my mind, sort of. It was shadowy and dark, but I thought I saw a baby being pushed to the surface by a big whale. And then I sensed there
was danger of some kind. I just knew we had to turn away."
"Why left?"
He shrugged. "Why not?"
Ginny wrapped her arms around his waist and gazed up at him, her eyes full of love. "You amaze me, Harry Potter."
Warm pleasure washed over Harry. No matter how often she told him she loved him or complimented him, it still gave him the same thrill it had the first time she’d done such a thing. He pulled
her close and grinned. "Good to know."
A few minutes later, the captain walked by. "Sir, I have to say, your quick action was a help back there. But if you ever grab my ship’s wheel again, I’ll have to court-martial you
. . . or something." He grinned.
Harry returned his smile. "I’ll remember."
Captain Mark sat next to Harry. "Seriously, sir, why did you grab the wheel? How did you know what to do? Are you a marine biologist or something?"
"No," Harry replied. "I’m, um, a little bit psychic. I had a . . . a vision."
The captain clapped Harry on the shoulder and stood. "You may have saved us from a real problem. Thanks. But don’t do it again—just warn me. If the warning’s coming from you,
I’ll certainly listen."
"I’ll remember."
* * * * *
The bow of the boat swung toward Lanai. In a short time, Harry, Ginny and the rest of the passengers and crew were ashore, their things dropped in chairs on the beach
while all the tourists were outfitted with snorkels, masks and flippers.
Harry was amazed that the crew had a mask with a lens that made it possible for him to see clearly without his glasses. He and Ginny paid close attention to the instructions of the crew, then walked
into the surf, tightening the straps on their life vests before going into the deeper water. Before long, they were floating lazily above an absolutely gorgeous sight. Fish of all sizes and colours
flitted below them, swimming around the beautiful coral formations of the reef. Harry held Ginny’s hand so the current wouldn’t separate them. Every so often, a crew member sitting on a
surfboard passed by as they kept tabs on the snorkelers.
Harry turned his head a bit so he could see his wife. Her hair fanned out around her, looking like flames with the sun behind it. He wished they could swim with their gills here, but he wasn’t
going to take a chance on making either of them ill on their honeymoon. They’d have plenty of chances to swim unfettered by worries about surfacing to breathe in the pool in their basement at
Grimmauld Place.
Below them, a two-foot-long parrotfish munched on the coral, the sound travelling clearly through the water. Some small fish poked its head out of a crevice in the coral, nabbing something smaller.
Harry was startled to see a man wearing a snorkel, mask and flippers but no life vest, swim by down near the coral. He’s obviously a better swimmer than we are—or else he has saltwater
gills. Harry almost smiled, amused by his thoughts.
Ginny tugged on his hand and pointed at a school of bright yellow fish swimming as if they were tied together, turning as one, their colour flashing in the sunlight filtering down through the water.
The whole experience was simply incredible.
When they tired, they turned and swam for shore, stopping partway out to remove their flippers. They walked onto the beach hand-in-hand.
"What did you think of that?" Harry said.
"It was brilliant! I’m so glad we did it!"
"Me, too."
* * * * *
Dinner was barbecued chicken, corn on the cob, baked beans and other delicious food cooked by the captains of the various ships belonging to the same tour boat
company. The captains made quite a show of serving the food, telling funny stories and teasing each other and the rest of their crews as they distributed the meal. Harry and Ginny were grateful for
the shade of the picnic shelter overlooking the beach. Their suntan lotion hadn’t protected them much when they were swimming, and both of them had slight sunburns.
Harry passed his hand behind Ginny’s back, trying to ease her pain wandlessly. "Better?"
She rested her cheek on his shoulder and murmured, "A bit. I wish we hadn’t left the essence of dittany in our room."
Harry sighed. They hadn’t wanted to carry the potion with them for fear of breaking the bottle. The potion wouldn’t keep well in a plastic bottle, and they’d been warned to not
bring anything breakable on the trip. "We’ll be back in a couple of hours. We’ll use it then." He gently kissed the part in her hair, which was fiery red with sunburn.
"You’re such a redhead," he teased.
"And that’s one of the many reasons you love me," she said with total confidence.
He laughed. "Right in one."
* * * * *
As they traveled back toward Maui, the passengers were startled to hear what sounded like a cannon shot not far away.
"What was that?" Ginny stood at the rail next to Harry, staring across the water like he was, looking for the source of the sound.
"Dunno." Harry saw something moving on the water at a distance, just before another BOOM reverberated between the islands. He squinted and tried to make it out, then recognized the
distinctive shape. "It’s a whale! It’s hitting the water with the flat of its tail."
Captain Mark throttled down the boat until it sat still in the water. "There’s a mother and calf over there," he called, pointing toward the whale that was still hitting its tail on
the water in a steady rhythm. Ginny counted twenty-three "booms" before the whale stopped and dove. When she came up and breached, much closer to the boat than before, her calf was right
beside her. They leaped above the water side by side, crashing back into the waves together.
Harry chuckled. "That’s something you don’t see at home."
Ginny leaned against him. "You take me all the best places."
Harry felt her shiver. "Cold?"
"A bit."
"Come here, then." He wrapped both arms around her and pulled her close against him, rubbing her bare arms as he cast a wandless warming charm on her. "Better?"
"Mmm, yeah." Ginny sighed contentedly. "I love you, Harry."
He grinned. "Because I’m comfortable to lean on, or because I warm you?"
"Those reasons and loads of others."
"Do you have a list?"
She looked up at him. "I’m working on it. Remind me again how much I enjoy your kisses."
"If you insist." He slid his hand around the back of her head and pulled her to him, his light kisses warming to more serious ones before he remembered that they were on a boat in the
Pacific surrounded by strangers. He kissed her nose and then her forehead and smiled at her. "Was that okay?"
"Not bad. You do need to practice though."
"I promise to do loads and loads of practice," he agreed.