Alfred had been all for doing this the old fashioned way, with only minimal magical help. He'd come to rely more on things he could touch and see during his adventure abroad than on spellwork, which had become increasingly unreliable as he'd struggled with the wand that didn't care for him. Besides, there was nothing particularly difficult about hoisting a lifeboat into position on the side of a ship. A few well-tied knots in some lengths of rope, two pulleys, and a handful of strong men (all of which were available in abundance on the docks) were all it took to get just about anything out of the water and into the air. He might have used a quick spell to help with the knots, but he would have preferred to do it mostly the Muggle way. Alfred, however, had been outnumbered by a few officers who thought they could work smarter, not harder, and look how that had turned out.

The boat had been in the air for thirty minutes, nowhere near where it was supposed to be on the side of the Ophelia (though at approximately the right height, so he had to give them that). A few people had tried casting spells at it, to no avail. The majority of the crew — primarily composed of uneducated men whose experience with magic was limited to only the most practical and pragmatic aspects, and many of whom did not even possess a wand of their own — was content to watch with curious interest as the officers, the ones who were supposed to solve problems, went on to make everything worse. It hadn't started out with the little backwards waterfall beneath it, nor any of the other debris that had accumulated around it in the interim, but that was the progress they had made. Alfred, despite outranking nearly all of them, was largely doing the same thing the uneducated men were doing — watching the boat curiously and wondering whether it would eventually come down of its own accord.

He was interrupted from this admittedly not very helpful process by a familiar voice, though when he turned to see who it belonged to he was rather surprised to find Miss Zelda Fisk on the other side of it. A tinge of color went to his cheeks, which he hated himself for but couldn't help. He hadn't seen her since the mistletoe incident, and in the meantime he'd thought that incident over and over in his head and was largely convinced that she must hate him for it. Not that it had been his fault, but if she had to blame someone he was the likeliest candidate, and he had perhaps accidentally let on that he'd enjoyed kissing her more than he should have. Besides, he had no idea whether that little interlude had gotten her into any trouble or not, and was rather afraid to bring it up now to ask.

"It's one of them," he admitted. "But that wasn't my idea," he continued, with a gesture towards the sailboat's current status of levitation. He glanced back at it as though it required his attention, mostly because he wasn't sure he wanted to look at her. He didn't know whether he could trust himself not to say something stupid if he looked at her. Unfortunately, it seemed he couldn't trust himself not to say something stupid, anyway, because with hardly any real pause at all he turned back to her and asked abruptly, "What are you doing here?"