Gellert arrived on the shingle outside Middlesbrough. It was the spot they agreed to meet before their flight.
The North Sea pushed in slow, cold swells. A hard wind kept poking at their cloaks.
He checked the shoreline first. Then the dunes. Then the smear of road and streetlights far behind them. Only after the third sweep did he hook two fingers under the edge of his invisibility cloak and pull it back far enough to show his face.
Vinda watched him do it in silence. Her mastery over Dark Arts dulled many of her feelings, but not her devotion and love towards the owner of those mismatched eyes. Her wand stayed ready to eliminate anything with the potential to harm him.
Arcturus gathered them with a small motion of his hand. Twenty three figures closed in until sleeves brushed and brooms tapped lightly against boots. Close enough to move as one, far enough that nobody stepped on anyone's heels.
Vinda flicked her wand once. A thin shimmer tightened around the group, linking them like a loose belt.
A harmless tether charm used for toddlers now served as the invisible link between a pack of old wolves.
Grigori leaned close enough so the sound of the wind and waves did not drown his voice.
"Next time, pick a beach that does not hate us."
McDuff gave a sound that could have been agreement.
Gellert's mouth twitched. "England does not do beaches. It does damp punishment and calls it scenery."
Arcturus raised his hand, and the talking stopped.
They mounted their brooms and rose together. The tether let them feel each other and not get lost as they were all under their cloaks. They stood in a tight cluster as they cut over the water, low and fast. There was no need for altitude. Their cloaks and charms did the rest.
Ahead, the French carrier appeared like a slab of certainty.
Clemenceau.
Even from a distance, the shape gave her away. A long flight deck, an island tower, and lights placed with military stubbornness. The tricolour at the stern snapped in the wind like it resented the weather more than Grigori did.
They approached from the starboard side where human eyes went lazy. The group settled onto the deck near the island, boots meeting cold steel.
A deck crewman walked below, head down, cigarette ember bright for a heartbeat. He never looked up.
Vinda pointed two fingers toward a service hatch set into the deck. A keypad beside it and a camera monitoring the hatch.
Alohomora did not care if the lock was electronic or not.
The lock clicked. The hatch eased open with the slow reluctance of something meant to resist crowbars and explosives, not some broken Latin and a wooden stick.
They slid into the carrier's belly.
They moved without haste and with utmost attention to everything. For them, Muggle technology was simple and nothing but tricks, seeing the carrier... It would be an understatement to say their worldview has tilted a bit.
A single watchman sat on a stool, mug between his hands, eyes half on a monitor. His attention was drifting. His mind was worse.
Gellert stepped close, and only the tip of his wand got out of the cloak as he whispered, "Legilimency." The mind of the guard opened to him like a badly written book. It was similar to the structure of their language, messy and all over the place. In addition, there were no logical links between the codes, routes and the interior of the massive ship.
It took Gellert nearly ten minutes to get all the information he needed and many more he did not, yet they were linked to each other. Names on duty rosters. Which officer liked to shout. Which officer liked to nap.
Gellert withdrew cleanly and put the man to sleep.
He turned his head a fraction toward the rest. "Operations centre is two decks down. The Starboard passage is protected by two sentries."
The group waited for him to lead.
They walked down the tight stairwells in a line, the tether keeping them grouped in the narrow spaces. Fluorescent lights buzzed overhead. Pipes ran in disciplined rows. Labels in French stared down at them as if offended.
At the door, the sentries looked young and alert. Vinda stepped into the space between them. Her wand lifted with a calm, precise motion.
"Regardez moi."
Their eyes snapped toward the voice.
Imperius settled over them like a well fitted collar by two of the Alliance members.
They did not sway or drool. They simply became helpful.
One keyed the panel and opened the door. The other shifted to block the corridor, casually, as if protecting the entrance from the air itself.
Inside, the operations room hummed with quiet competence. Screens. Charts. Headsets. A constant low thrum from the ship's bones. Men and women moved in practised loops, passing paper, tapping keys, saying things that sounded romantic because of the language.
Arcturus took it in once, then let his gaze flick to a wall display listing crew complements by department.
He stared at it a beat longer than the rest. When he understood the meaning of the numbers on the chart, he tapped on it twice so the others would notice it too.
Carrow followed the sound and did the same.
They moved toward a silent corner and started to whisper.
"Thirteen hundred," Carrow murmured, eyes narrowing.
Grigori's grin widened. "We brought twenty three."
Gellert did not waste time on irritation. He did not ask who had provided the wrong number. He did not scold reality for refusing to cooperate.
He looked at the room again.
"Take the captain and the command cadre first," he ordered quietly. "Sigibert, take communications. Arcturus, take propulsion control. Freeze everyone else who is not required to keep this ship moving."
The next few minutes were basic target practice for them.
The control room lost control in every meaning of the word. They took their cloaks off when the room was secured.
Gellert walked among them like a man checking seating arrangements. Minds with new loyalties opened under his gaze.
Vinda moved with the certainty of someone who had been giving orders since before these sailors learned their first salute. Her French cut clean.
She took the captain on the bridge next, a broad shouldered officer in a dark uniform with gold braid. He stared at her with steady eyes. Ready to do whatever she orders.
He turned to his executive officer and gave orders with the calm voice of a man who believed he was doing his duty.
Sigibert slipped into the communications pit and took the senior operator. The man's hands stayed steady on the controls. His voice stayed calm.
Only his allegiance changed.
The carrier kept functioning. That was the point.
Arcturus watched the board update as the captain, speaking through Vinda's control, issued routine reports.
Muggle military bureaucracy loved everything in order.
Then Arcturus did the arithmetic again. Twenty three. Ten Imperius each, if they pushed it. Two hundred and thirty bodies.
They need more witches and wizards. He turned to the group and started to explain what he had in mind.
"Nagel, Abernathy, McDuff, and Voss. Go back and bring more. Use this room as the anchor. Apparate with them in pairs. We will repeat this process until we have enough."
Gellert nodded in agreement. "In the meantime," he turned to Vinda. "Ask him to give us the bare minimum required to move this swimming island," he motioned to the Captain, who was standing ready.
The four vanished, and Vinda started to interrogate the officers.
They returned with the first set after some minutes, each newcomer held by the elbow like a reluctant cousin at a family gathering.
After the new arrivals memorised the place, they turned to Gellert.
Memorise this room, every corner of it. Fix it in your head. You will return here, and you will bring more. Do not attempt to arrive elsewhere unless you want to test the thickness of French steel with your ribs."
The cycle repeated.
They used the operations room to brief the newcomers and continued until the room and the corridor leading to it were filled. Their number reached one hundred and twenty five.
Gellert, Arcturus and Vinda arranged and organised the teams based on the information the Captain gave.
Teams broke off.
One team took weapons control. Another took flight deck operations. Another took the medical wing. Another took armaments and the men who could turn keys that made things explode. The Imperius targets stayed narrow. Essential personnel remained awake and functioning. Everyone else was guided to bunks, seated, and dropped under coma curses.
Everything went as smoothly as possible.
Just a carrier that stopped belonging to France.
When Arcturus received the final confirmation, he allowed himself one second of satisfaction, then moved on.
"Set course," he ordered the captain through Vinda. "Our destination is Azkaban."
The captain's mouth shaped the order, and his officers obeyed.
Grigori leaned against a console as if this were a pub, not a seizure of state property.
He looked at the communications officer.
"Do you know the sea shanty?" he asked, voice thick with amusement. "Hoist the Colours."
The officer blinked, then gave his answer under Imperius. He nodded like a man who had always wanted to contribute musically to geopolitics.
Grigori gestured.
"Sing."
The officer did so, and after a while, he told Grigori that it sounded better if it were sung by a larger crowd. Fifty throats joined him under Grigoris' expert supervision. The Imperius steadied them into a miserable kind of unity.
The chorus hit, and the one line that landed clean was the only line Grigori cared about.
"Yo ho, all hands. Hoist the colours high."
French naval command broke in demanding an explanation for the manoeuvre.
They received more singing.
Spanish command demanded course and intent.
They received the chorus again, plus a verse Grigori found especially entertaining, even if he did not bother to translate it.
Portugal tried to cut in with warnings about international law.
They received harmony.
Grigori listened with the pleased expression of a man reviewing a choir.
"Again," he ordered. "Broadcast it wider. Military and civil. Everyone gets to sing."
The communications officer complied.
In a civilian station, some poor clerk on a commercial channel listened to the chorus and stared at his headset like it had betrayed him personally.
In a French command room, officers with neat haircuts watched their screens and heard a pirate song instead of a status report. One of them slapped the side of a console. Another asked if it was a prank. Nobody laughed.
A second report arrived through normal channels.
Jeanne d'Arc was following.
The captain delivered it with the same calm voice as before.
Then he reported again.
Spanish and Portuguese frigates had joined the wake.
Grigori's grin turned sharp.
"Tell their headquarters we appreciate the escort," he ordered the communication officer to convey a message to the rest of the vessels. "Add them to the choir."
Every vessel joined.
A Spanish officer listening in Madrid went rigid when he realised one of their frigates in the contact list carried a royal name. He did not enjoy the timing of a particular line. "The king and his men stole the queen from her bed." This was the message he received from Reina Sofía.
On the American carrier that was sent to monitor the developments in the region, the watch caught the broadcast as noise at first.
Then it resolved into words.
The communications officer turned his head toward his commanding officer and waited for guidance.
The officer in command listened for a full breath, then another. He leaned closer to the speaker as if proximity could turn nonsense into intelligence.
His face pulled into a grimace.
"They have a heavy French accent," he muttered, and the contempt in his tone suggested the real crime here was pronunciation.
He jabbed a finger toward the comms bank.
"Turn it off."
A pause.
His mouth twitched.
"Actually, no." He looked around as if the idea had just occurred to him and offended him. "Get a few hundred of our boys. We will teach them the song properly. If we are going to be dragged into this absurdity, we will at least do it in proper English."
Five minutes later, the American carrier's own comms carried the same chorus back across the sea, louder, cleaner, and delivered with the confidence of people who could weaponise enthusiasm.
National pride was a strange thing. It may manifest in the most uncommon ways. The captain even got a "Hurrah" from HQ.
Then, one by one, the French, Spanish, and Portuguese contacts vanished from radar.
Their blips disappeared as if the ocean had swallowed them.
They went radio dark at the same time their signals were gone.
The American carrier kept singing and felt proud that the others stopped their musical murder after hearing what it should have been.
"Yo ho, all hands."
"Hoist the colours high."
"Heave ho, thieves and beggars."
"Never shall we die."
That was the last message from the vanished vessels.