I remember the splashing impact, the sudden bubbly quiet beneath the surface, the heavy roar when I came back up, everything cold and chaotic as my brain began to process and then scream at me, What the hell? You’re in the ocean!

The water was rough, and the rain drummed on my head. By the time I got my bearings, the Galaxy was a good fifty yards away. I saw dark smoke starting to billow out. I told myself I could still swim back to her, and part of me wanted to, because, even wrecked, she was something solid in the otherwise empty sea. Her decks remained lit, beckoning me. But I knew she was doomed. She began to list, as if lying down for a final sleep.

I tried to see if a lifeboat was being released, or if people were jumping off the sides, but the constant crashing of waves impaired my vision. I tried to swim, but where was I going? I remember things drifting past me, things that had been blown off the Galaxy just as I had, a couch, a cardboard box, even a baseball cap. Gasping for breath, I wiped the rain from my eyes and spotted a lime-green suitcase floating just a few feet away.

It was the hard-shell kind that apparently doesn’t sink, and I grabbed that suitcase and clung to it. Then I witnessed the Galaxy’s final moments. I saw her decks go dark. I saw eerie green bulbs light her frame. I watched her slowly drop, lower and lower, until she sank out of sight and a swooshing wave passed overhead, mopping the surface of her last remains.

I began to weep.

I don’t know how long I was in the water that way, crying like a little boy, for myself, for the others who were lost, even for the Galaxy, which I felt strangely sorry for. But I tell you again, Annabelle, I had no part in destroying that ship. I know what Dobby wanted, and the things I may have inadvertently helped him plan. But I was thrown into the sea with nothing but the clothes on my back, and I tossed in those frigid waves for who knows how long. Had I not found that suitcase, I would be dead already.

I began to hear voices of other passengers in the water. Some were howls. Others were clear enough to distinguish actual words—Help me! or Please!—but then, in a rush, the sounds disappeared. The ocean plays tricks with your ears, Annabelle, and its currents are so strong that someone could be a few yards away one moment and gone for good the next.