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It was perhaps on the ferry to Calais that Leck realised she would never truly be a muggle. Stumbling around the deck on a particularly bumpy crossing, she crashed into muggle conversations with as much discretion as she was capable of. Unfortunately, she had by now run the gamut of non-magical chatter, chatting about football, popular muggle music and asking vague questions about the unsuspecting travellers about their holiday plans, even refraining from tapping her toe as they hesitated or failed to give specific questions: she would never have afforded magical folk the same patience. Still, she couldn't shake that cold feeling of dissatisfaction. Even though she had taken a NEWT in their analogue (but increasingly digital) culture, she had somehow failed to integrate. On the way back to the cabin, the ferry rocked and slammed her into a wall and an expletive, the foulest available, erupted from her mouth. A little boy, whose natural bounce and enthusiasm was apparently his own magical little talisman against the uneven British Channel, stared at her with an ashen face and unsure whether to laugh. At first, Leck assumed that he was simply taken aback by her foul language, but realised, as she walked away, with another little lurch, was that he had just seen a mostly-grown woman crash head-first into a wall.

Rolling her eyes at herself, she ferreted in her jeans pocket for keys to the cabin, and burst through the door as the boat tipped her yet again, “Christ, it stinks in here,” she said, glaring accusingly into a thick fug of cigarette smoke floating above, within which she could just make out a human silhouette. She waved her wand and muttered the vanishing incantation to reveal Michael Adams sitting on the bed, poring over a book on some intricate aspect of, well, [i]something[/i] and still frantically scribbling notes directly into it even as he looked up to her apologetically. He had the same expression, Leck couldn't help but notice, as her French bulldog when caught red-handed stealing food. The smoke detector, hanging limply by its wires, lifeless and not a little battered-looking, directly above Michael's head, didn't help, nor did the slightly yellowed pallor of his already pale face. Her inner critic conjured thoughts about the effects of smoking, but she was feeling a little queasy herself and she supposed this bloody voyage was at least partly responsible for his current state, too. A small bucket of something that smelled worryingly of stomach acid sat on the floor beside him and when he caught her looking, he vanished it before she could ask any questions.

“How'd you get on?” he asked, obviously changing the subject, and, in a surprising act of sociability, put the book down. It was propped open on its own pages. She threw herself onto her own bed with a huff, “As well as that?”
“They're not very talkative, are they?”
“If they're having a rough time up there, I'm not surprised. It's not much better down here.”
“But,” she protested, “I did all the stuff you're supposed to. I even tried talking about celebrities to them at one point when I saw one woman reading one of those glistening magazines.”
“Glossy,” corrected Michael automatically, “Glossy magazines. Wait. Were you just going up to complete strangers and talking to them about whatever they were doing?”
“Well, yeah,” Leck threw her head back onto the pillow as Michael shrugged. He didn't need to say anything else. She didn't have the vernacular or the references to proactively ingratiate herself amongst the muggles. By trying to integrate, she was guaranteeing that she wouldn't, “Why did we book an overnight bloody ferry?”
“I booked an overnight ferry,” said Michael, “Because the first rule of Muggle Club is everything takes ages and you might as well learn that lesson now,” it would only be much later that he would reveal that she had made her Galleon-to-Stirling conversions catastrophically wrong and he had practically paid for the journey out of his own pocket.
“What's the second rule?” there was a bitterness in her voice.
“The second rule of Muggle Club? The second rule of Muggle Club is that you don't talk about Muggle Club,” when Leck looked at him quizzically, he shook his head and chuckled into the pages of the book he had, inevitably, returned to.

Michael wasn't her first choice of travelling partner. Well, actually, he had been, but the options had been slim. He was the only person on the pilgrimage with a full muggle-grounding. She had the impression he was muggle-born but didn't know what his story was – his general demeanour didn't really encourage personal questions – but she had figured that if anybody would be able to give her the full experience, he would be her best bet. There were some half-bloods, sure, but they'd be used to the short-cuts. The plan had been that they would do whatever wasn't in their comfort zone: he would book the portkey to Dover while she would book the ferry itself. The plan had somewhat fallen apart when the computer she had had delivered by a team of slightly disgruntled-looking owls required electricity. She supposed that that might be a given for muggles, but the Bellowes' mansion had a distinct absence of those facilities. At one point, she tried to hook it up to a car battery she had forbidden her mother from vanishing, but that didn't work either. In the end, she had thrown in the towel and Michael had agreeably booked the whole damn voyage by himself, insisting it wasn't a problem. He had even arranged to catch the portkey from a hill just five minutes' walk from the Bellowes and met her there promptly that morning, having flown across the county.

Her father had insisted that he accompany her to the portkey, against her violent protestations: he was under the impression that she was flying over the channel with a confident young wizard, not the muggle-tastic ferry specialist Michael. It wasn't in her instinct to lie, but she thought it might have been neater to spare her parents the worry. As it happened, the plan had backfired spectacularly, since her famed lack of broom proficiency had had them up in arms. Her father had announced that he would see her off at the portkey, which he immediately admitted meant he would be checking out her 'flying partner' – who was totally ignorant of the deception at play. She squirmed as they shook hands on the hill, her father jovial, cheerful, and, yes, a little teary, before he shook his head and jabbed her playfully in the ribs.
“Watch out for this one, Michael. She's a dreadful flyer.”
Michael didn't bat an eyelid when he caught Leck's imploring gaze, “I wouldn't worry, Mr. Bellowes. It's not too long a journey and I'll keep an eye on her.”
“Thanks Michael, but call me Regis,” Leck shuddered at that noun, which she knew to be as fake as their surname, “Anyway, it looks like you two had better be off. Remember to hold on-”
“Thanks, Dad. I [i]know[/i].”
“Goodbye Mist-, I mean, Regis.”
“Look after yourself, son. Leck, behave.”
The portkey spat them out unceremoniously on the beach. When they had both recovered, and climbed to their feet, Michael asked the inevitable.
“What was all that talk about flying?”
“My parents don't trust muggle technology,” she answered, diplomatically, and changed the subject.

It took almost eighteen hours for the ferry to cross the channel, and, toward the end, it was even getting to Michael. Eventually, Leck's patience with his twitching, tutting, and drumming fingers, was so thin that she explained to him, in no uncertain terms, that, while it was very gentlemanly of him to abstain from smoking for her benefit, he had better bloody have one. At one point she had made the mistake of challenging him to a game of wizard's chess to distract them, and, although he mated her in fewer than twenty moves, he tended to take about five minutes each turn to finally decide on a strategy, and made nothing-comments about seeing “what she was trying to do” - not that she had a clue herself. When they finally landed in Calais, they sought out the second portkey to take them to Paris, where they awkwardly parted company. She had arranged to meet Grant at the tower, while Mr. Social had an important date with the library – not a fortnight away from school. She was almost jealous of the dedication he clearly had for, well, whatever it was that he did. Slightly tarnished by the journey, she decided to save sightseeing for another day, and headed straight to the Eiffel Tower, finding a bench on the Champ de Mars, not even looking at the metal obelisk behind her, half-wishing that she'd asked to borrow a smoke herself.