Hero came awake with a start, unsure for a second what had troubled her subconscious.

"It's still the middle of the night. Go back to sleep," her companion drawled.

Then the puzzle pieces began to fall into place. "But the engines have stopped."

"I know. We'll wait off the coast and then dock in the morning."

Hero was already looking for clothes.

The lump in the bed at her feet turned over and gave a groan. "You're determined to go up on deck and look, aren't you?"

There was no audible answer, but Seraph knew that his ward was grinning. He grabbed his robe from where it hung at the foot of the bed and put it on as best he could under the covers before getting up and taking the clothes he had prepared for the following morning through to the suite's parlour and getting changed.

By the time he returned to the bedroom, Hero had lit the bedroom lamps and was just exiting the bathroom fully dressed.

"You are an impossible young woman," Seraph muttered as he held open the cabin door and followed her from the room. He pretended not to hear her equally sotto voce response.

"But you love me anyway."

After all, it was simply Gryffindor glibness. He admitted he had developed a slight fondness for the girl. Even he was not so hard of heart as to watch her distress, to bask in the warmth and trust she offered freely, and remain unmoved, but it was a long way from there to love. Even a father's love for a surrogate daughter. An image of Tobias Snape drawing his leather belt free of his jeans flashed through Seraph's mind. Especially a father's love.

There was little to see in the darkness. Mist blanketed the ship from stem to stern. However, the raucous calls of seagulls proved that they were near to land, and just occasionally Hero thought she caught a glimpse of light from the shore before the breeze rearranged the vapours again.

"They will let us in?" she whispered as she stood at the rail, knuckles white with tension.

"I could take umbrage at that question, Miss Grayson."

Hero gave a brief snort of laughter and lifted a hand to cover her mouth. "No, please, never take Umbridge. Just the mental image... Besides, you're far better than that."

"Good grief, girl. Your mind is an open sewer. It must be Weasley's influence. Remind me to write a letter to his mother," Seraph scolded, though his tone belied his words, as it often seemed to these days. He dropped his voice so low that Hero had to lean in to hear him. "I could take offence at your lack of faith in my work. Our Muggle documents are perfect even if I do say so. I had a vast sufficiency of examples to work from. The Ministry must have commandeered the paperwork of every Muggle-born and Half-blood in the M.L.E. department. Our other identification, whilst all recently issued, is perfectly genuine. Finance is not a concern, and, so far, I have detected no obvious indicators that you carry any communicable disease. Your eyes are clear and I haven't noticed a cough, so neither trachoma nor... consumption are indicated. I believe those are the most common problems. And judging by what I saw in that Pensieve, you never had a chance to catch those parasites from Weasley."

"What?"

Her eyes really did bug out quite amusingly, but at least she was no longer worrying about whether she'd get turned back at Ellis Island.

"You beast!" She aimed a reproving slap at his upper arm, though it hit lightly enough. "You shouldn't tease like that, you evil man."

"You shouldn't be so gullible. As if Poppy Pomfrey would ever disclose those sort of patient details. That said, there aren't normally too many people in the hospital wing at any time, and I do— did check her potion stocks weekly."

"You mean he did...?"

Seraph smirked. "You knew the boy and Miss Brown far better than I. What do you think?"

Her mouth twisted into a pout and for a few seconds her face contorted into various expressions of extreme concentration before she finally huffed out a breath. "I think that you're a totally impossible man."

Seraph didn't dare to say it, didn't want to hear it contradicted, but a small voice in his head that sounded far too much like Hero's filled in the addendum anyway.