A/N: Hey guys :)

Chapter 7: Taking a Break

The next three days were almost boring if one ignored the weather spasms. English lessons continued with Beckman, as well as potato peeling with George, spars with Roller, random hours of listening in on Wrackspurt 3, and navigation lessons with Addams. It was interesting to observe that the stars – when they could be seen in the sky that seemed to be throwing tantrums with clouds and precipitation erratically – were organized in completely flipped formations from the world back home. This was incredibly confusing at first and resulted in many counterintuitive observations, not least of which was the South Star replacing the North Star. Still, it was better than needing to restart his astronomy knowledge from scratch.

Harry also started up an early morning friendship with the night lookout Greg who had insomnia, which was noticeable from his consistently black-bagged eyes, and was on passably good terms with everyone in the crew except maybe Alvin, who was holding a grudge for Harry's teasing of his acorn hat after the keep-away game. Lucky Roo was a bit tricky to judge since he always seemed happy and hungry, but he seemed reasonably accepting of the wizard's presence.

Interaction between Harry and Shanks lowered to a minimum. The first two days out on the Grand Line was a dramatic weather rollercoaster of snowstorms, high winds, and cloudless skies highlighted by a summer sun, thus there was little time for flirting. The following day was calm as the ship finally entered Bloom Island's stable climate zone, but every free hand on the ship was recruited into bringing the empty water barrels on deck once Bombay rolled them out of storage.

"I think we missed it," Addams grumbled, glancing quickly between the mid-day sky and his notebook he was scribbling in with his new favorite quill. "It rained yesterday. We'll have to wait another two days."

"I guess we'll stay all day tomorrow on the island then, to pass some time until the next rain," Shanks decided.

Harry sat on a covered barrel and joined the conversation, interested to know how Shanks would treat him now after the three day break from flirting. Would the pirate continue to ignore his propositions or finally have a response? "Why is waiting for the rain here so important?"

"Rainwater of Bloom Island is some of the best there is, and it falls in an almost regular three day cycle," Beckman explained, before turning back to Shanks. "Should I go ahead and tell the crew to prepare for a day's dock at Bloom?"

"Sure. Freddy and George should be glad to know," Shanks said, before turning to Harry with a cheeky grin. "Sorry Harry, you couldn't see me wet at Reverse Mountain and now you'll have to wait even longer now at Bloom."

Harry smiled. "Oh that's alright," the wizard drawled in a tone of voice he was proud to claim was a stolen prize from Draco Malfoy. "If I get too desperate there's always the option of simply tossing you overboard."

"Dahaha, only if you dare! If I don't drag you in with me, my crew will kick you off from the railings."

"What a ridiculous notion," Harry replied, blatantly buffing his fingernails on his robes with an exaggerated bored expression. "I had originally planned on jumping in with you of course. How else would you get the chance to see me all soaking wet?"

Shanks laughed and walked away, blushing lightly. Harry liked to imagine that with each step, the pirate captain was thinking naughty thoughts about a certain wizard dripping sea water. At the very least, he knew Shanks was interested in participating in the flirting from now on. Harry almost pitied the man – he was clearly inexperienced in wooing and Harry had a rather long resume.

"Do you mind if I tag along?" Harry asked, as Freddy and George – so different from the last Fred and George pair the wizard knew – prepared a rowboat with containers for everything they hoped to collect on Bloom Island.

"What for?" the doctor asked, tossing some spades, clippers, and pots into the boat.

"I'd like to see what kind of plants I can find and maybe harvest a few. I've a little experience with potions brewing and I'd like to see if there's anything I can try making," the wizard explained.

"Potions, huh? Well, I don't do much medicine making myself. It's mostly poultices that are useful on this ship what with all the fights we get into, but if you can make some cold draught, it might be useful in the future."

Harry smiled, finding a bit of amusement at Freddy's ignorance. Muggles, after all, only knew of potions as another term for consumable medicine or poison, not the magical brews Harry was familiar with. "Is that a yes, then?"

"Sure," Freddy agreed, "if George is okay with it. George?"

George glanced up from the bee-hat netting he was patching and grunted.

"Great," Harry said, clapping the chef on the shoulder, "thanks George."

The ship set anchor a few hundred meters off shore and several rowboats were lowered into the water. A few members of the crew stayed behind, not interested in the flowery island, but most of the pirates took the opportunity to stretch their legs.

The island was beautiful. Flowers of every color imaginable were blooming on the spring island where the climate was perfect for year round blossoms. When the rowboat was pulled onto the beach, Harry could see that the plants were all dewy from the water left behind by the recent rain.

George split off from the group quickly, wearing his hat, carrying jars under his arm, and holding a bucket of varying tools for collecting honey. Freddy pulled on thick gloves and grabbed his own box of things he prepared before turning to Harry. "Will you need anything or you just feel like looking around on your own?"

"I'll be fine, thanks," Harry said, and waved goodbye as Freddy left as well.

"Mmm," Harry breathed, stretching lightly. The soreness was gone, which was good because he would need a lot of magic today. The wizard was sure he could find plenty of herbs used often in potions, but whether they would retain all their properties growing in a magicless world was another matter. Back home, ingredients found in magic-deficient areas were stored in vials charged with a current of magic. Harry was hopeful the same would work here.

The wizard pulled a wooden chest from his robes. He had bought it originally because his travels sometimes brought him into situations where he could collect rare potions ingredients, like Nundu breath, and it was a convenient place to put expensive emergency potions like Felix Felicis. Harry chuckled as he enlarged and opened the chest, pulling out an empty jar. To think that now even daisy root was an ingredient he'd have to harvest himself. He lightly tugged a few daisies from the ground, snapped the stems from the roots, and placed them into the jar, sealing the lid on tight. With his wand, the wizard etched in a series of runes in circles around the glass before channeling his magic into the inscriptions. When the jar began to glow, he put it back into the chest and moved on.

The island was a gold mine of useful plants. After finding goosegrass, aconite, scurvy grass, fluxweed, dandelions, asphodel, knotgrass, baneberry, star grass, belladonna, wormwood, snakeweed, and peppermint, the wizard spent an extra hour circling the edge of the island to ensure he'd be able to apparate back the next full moon. His greatest find, however, came afterwards just as he decided to find George and maybe acquire some honey to make honey water.

Atop a small hill where the soil was drained naturally by gravity grew a small patch of pink flowers. A more careful inspection revealed that the flowers were actually pink-colored leaves growing in an overlapping pattern, protecting the delicate light purple flowers inside.

"Dittany," Harry whispered to himself in breathless excitement. Hurriedly, he dug up some of the soil and grass to the side and created two small piles that he transfigured into clay pots. Carefully, he transferred two of the dittany plants into the pots and, as an experiment, carved runes into the pot of one and channeled magic into it. A glamour layered over the runes hid the glow. Perhaps this would reproduce the conditions of growing in a magical world, but until results were noticeable he could harvest the dittany from the other pot and store it in a jar like the rest of his ingredients.

The wizard wove his magic into long strands to conjure lengths of twine and crude rope. Tying the pots into simple twine nettings and attaching them to the thicker lash, Harry slung the rope over his shoulders so that the pots dangled upright at his side.

He met up with George shortly after, still wearing his hat with the protective netting but with bee stings on his arms and jars of honeycomb in his hands.

"Wow," Harry said, bending over to look into the jars, "you just took the honeycombs whole, huh?"

"Easier," George replied. "Didn't have smoke, so I couldn't buy time to take just honey."

"What do you use the honey for, anyway?"

"Preserving meats and fruit. Bombay asked for some to use on the sails."

"The sails, really?" Harry asked, interested. "I'll have to ask him about that. And the comb?"

George shrugged.

"Can I have it when you're done?" Harry requested.

"Is that dittany?" came a voice.

"Freddy!" Harry called, turning to look back at the doctor who was walking towards them, dragging a full wooden crate behind him. "Quite a lucky find, I think. Would you mind if I keep the pots in the infirmary? Not many other places get as much sun as your office."

"I don't know if they'll survive well," Freddy frowned. "Weather aboard a ship is pretty unpredictable. Bird Island is a summer island and Yappa is a spring island, so the coming week or two should be alright, but the Grand Line could bring anything from hail to fog and a winter island would kill it off right away."

"Meh, I'll give it a lamp on darker days to tide it over," Harry shrugged, lifting up one of the pots to get a better look at the delicate flower and velvety leaves responsible for saving his and Ron's life during the horcrux hunt, "and if worst comes to worst, we'll just make tea out of the whole thing."

"Then sure," Freddy agreed, hefting the crate up a little before turning around. "Let's go then."

The rest of the day passed quickly. There was no game to hunt on the island, nor trees to harvest for limber, so all the pirates returned to the ship before the day was over for lack of anything better to do.

After putting the dittany under the watchful eye of Freddy onto his desk in the infirmary, Harry helped George out in the kitchen where the silent man taught Harry the joys of eating cubes of raw honeycomb while preserving food for long-term storage. The wizard left with several slabs of almost empty honeycomb that he put away into his potions chest to process later.

The deck was still covered in barrels, so he couldn't spar with Roller or play with Yassop. Bombay was treating the sails with honey to increase its durability, Freddy was organizing herbs, Beckman was taking inventory in the storage room, George was cooking dinner, Greg was having a long overdue nap, Addams was making plans for 'retirement' on his favorite gloomy island a quarter of the way down the Grand Line, and Lucky Roo was raiding the fridge.

"Mind if I sit with you?" Harry asked Shanks, who was napping on the ship's dragon figurehead, straw hat covering his face from the setting sun.

"No problem," Shanks replied, sitting up and tipping his hat back onto his head.

Harry climbed onto the figurehead and activated his bug transmitter again, and soon the sounds of a scratching quill and rustling paper joined the lightly splashing waves as background noise.

"So what's the plan for the rest of the trip?" Harry finally asked after a few minutes of sea-gazing.

"Well, we'll set sail tomorrow and catch the rain until we leave the climate zone. Sail into Bird Island's zone and make a hard turn towards Yappa in the days after that. There's not much else to worry about, really."

"I've been meaning to ask, actually," Harry wondered aloud, "about the 'zones' and such. So far, I've just assumed you meant a stable climate area centered on the islands. Is that about right?"

"Eh, pretty much," Shanks confirmed, scratching his head beneath his straw hat before he took it off and began to twirl it around. "The bigger the island, the bigger the zone. Bloom Island is a pretty average sized island, so its climate zone is about a day's sail outwards from the shore. The sight of that zone becoming filled with rainclouds is actually quite a sight to see."

"So the reason we aren't going straight to Yappa Island is because it's faster to sail through the more stable climate zones?"

"Exactly!" Shanks grinned. "Man, we're really going to miss the Addagator when he leaves. We'll have to navigate like before without his fancy maths and predictions."

"I heard him talking about retirement earlier. Isn't he a bit young?" Harry asked.

"We only have him under a five-year contract, actually, so for him, it's not so much actual retirement as it is just us letting him go," Shanks explained, placing his hat back on his hand and flipping over to lie on his stomach, legs dangling on either side of the dragon figurehead, his chin propped up by a hand, the elbow resting on the warm wood. "He might do something else afterwards; he's pretty smart after all."

"Very," Harry agreed. Indeed, Addams had a remarkable intelligence with an almost supernatural ability to apply his mathematical knowledge to the real world. It took only half an hour of convoluted explanations on the navigator's method for calculating the best path between islands before Harry started to wonder if even Hermione would ever have been able to follow and understand such a thought process.

There was a moment of comfortable silence between the two men as they sat on the crudely carved dragon head, listening to the gentle waves and quiet sounds of paperwork from the transmission when the sound of an opening door broke through, followed by crisp footsteps and a sharp salute.

"Lieutenant Rango," came a young male voice.

"Petty Officer," the Lieutenant acknowledged, followed shortly by the sound of a pen being set down on a table as the marine turned his attention away from the papers. "Report."

"We have left the climate zone of Cactus Island, sir."

"Is that so?" Rustling papers. "Why do you believe that to be true, Petty Officer?"

"Ah, sir, this is based on the distance labeled on the map stocked in the Navigation Study, Lieutenant."

A short pause as no one spoke up.

"Petty Officer," Rango finally said, "this is your first time in the Grand Line, correct?"

"Yes sir."

"Something you should keep in mind then is that the distances given for the expanse of a climate zone is merely an approximate distance from the experience of previous marines. Depending on from where you set sail and in which direction you sail to, that distance could be greater or less so. Have you already forgotten the weather patterns during the two day sail arriving at this island?"

"Ah, no sir, of course not."

"Of course not," the marine lieutenant repeated in an amused tone of voice. "From now on there is no need to inform me of when we cross the edges of climate zones, Petty Officer. I assure you that whenever we do, the sea itself will inform the entirety of the ship quite effectively on its own. I suggest you return to your post, Marine, and prepare yourself to do your job."

"Yes, Lieutenant Rango, my apologies."

A snapped salute, footsteps, and a closed door followed quickly, and the rustling and scratching of paperwork continued so after.

"Shanks?" Harry asked, when the transmission stopped being informative. "We are currently sailing in a straight line towards Bird Island, which is the same island this Rango person has an eternal pose to, correct?"

Shanks rolled back into a seated position. "Pretty sure that's what we heard last time."

"So then, why is he at Cactus Island?"

A/N: There may be a bit of a wait for the next chapter now that classes are starting up again and all.

Thanks everyone, for all your guesses as to what Laboon said to Shanks!

113 reviews August 28, 2011