Holly had a problem, an undeniable, slightly annoying, eye-catching problem. A problem, by the name Portgas D. Ace.

Holly and Ace had started to purposely invoke Voldemort's name to 'gather information from the enemy,' as Ace said. And Holly, who could handle Snatcher's alone, could destroy them with Ace, invisible and immune to magic, assisting her. Which was an excellent thing and not her problem; no Holly's problem was the fact that Ace, due to his state as an astral projection - that happened to be able to fight - appeared as his body currently existed. Which meant how he looked in prison, basically Ace was shirtless, twenty-four seven.

Most wouldn't have precisely considered having a massively attractive man shirtless around them as a problem; especially once he started to fight. Ace, buff as he was, had muscles built for gawking, as he twisted and fought his body would smoothly move into these poses that she just- and what was she talking about again? Oh yes. Holly wasn't most people; she wanted to be able to fight, defend, and duel with the snatchers to keep up her training, to ensure she didn't become too comfortable when she would have to fight Voldemort soon. But every invocation of Voldemort's name caused Ace to fight, and Holly couldn't keep her train of thought once he did so.

Holly stared, she could admit it. Ace was a god of war, body moving elegantly in practiced movements. His hair would swing, strands laying against his skin as he worked up a light sweat before they started. And the smile, the smile was enough to knock her out. When Ace fought, this expression would cross his face, one she never saw outside a battle that was just- she didn't have words for it. It made her heart skip a beat, made her mouth drop open, made her entire focus vanish into the wind-

The form, the stretch, the kick, the punch, she stared and stared and stared- and sidestepped a spell heading for her head, trying to get back into the battle- and then Ace rushed across the field right past her.

So yes, Holly had a bit of a problem focusing. To be fair to herself, the Snatchers were incredibly inbred, and frankly, they were weak; they couldn't hold her attention for long, not while Ace was doing all that.

"Alright there, Holly?"

"Err, yeah?" she snapped to attention as Ace knocked out the last Snatcher and her gaze snapped up to meet his- and bloody hell, he'd noticed. He was looking at her in intense amusement, and stretched- yes please, thank you- Ace snorted as she blanked her expression trying to recover a small amount.

"You should work on that distraction, do that in a large battle and you'll get someone, like yourself, killed." And there went her good mood. Holly forced the corners of her lips up, but the smile she plastered on her face got nowhere close to her eyes. As was true every time Ace cautioned her about her weaknesses in battle and the potential costs, he always used her life in danger as the warning, and Holly knew it wouldn't really matter if she filled in those holes in her defenses. They existed for a reason, those holes were the same ones Dumbledore had purposely left in when he'd trained her, the same ones she thought in her darkest moments perhaps had been left there on purpose.

"I'll try." She lied and hated that she had, Holly put a lot of effort into staying as honest as possible with Ace. But her impending death and the Horcruxes, those alone she kept to herself, Holly refused to allow Ace to take that burden on. Refused to allow him to find out the truth of her fate; he didn't need to know, he wouldn't be around to see it happen.

"Good." Ace strode toward her side, "If you didn't I might have to teach you the basics of observation haki… would help with your aim and dodging."

Holly perked straight up. Haki, all the versions of it, had highly interested her. Doubly so when Ace explained that it was willpower and anyone was capable of using it. She knew it could help immensely with the fight against Voldemort; it could also be 'the power the Dark Lord knew not,' and she was most eager to learn and see if that was true. "Now, who do you want to start with?" Ace made a bit of a hand motion copying the general movement for casting a spell. Holly inclined her head, focusing on the real reason they were out there and strode toward the closest Snatcher stooping beside them.

"Right, let's see what we get." Holly peeled open the man's eyes and leveled her wand in front of them before casting: "Legillimens." Holly's eyes glazed over slightly as she dove into the man's memories.

Ace squatted beside her keeping his expression as blank as he dared. The memory reading didn't overly bother him, it was fairly obvious when she was doing it, so he felt secure in the knowledge that she wasn't reading his mind. Ace was aware that if her ability was real and she could read his mind, then she too was real; while Ace highly doubted a Marine creating this entire thing could also read minds. So at most, the Marines or Holly would only get information from his loose tongue or expression, both of which were growing increasingly difficult to control around Holly. Thankfully, on the reverse, Holly was basically an open book to him, and that wasn't just because of how much he was watching her; which he was, a lot.

He'd noticed her staring, saw the attraction she was blatantly showing him, and he knew it was returned. He wanted nothing more than to further ruin her messy black locks, to devourer her lips, to see what was under that robe of hers. But he didn't have a physical body, he was trapped within Impel down, and as attracted to her as he was, he could not forget that information. Perhaps once he was free, when he was back with his family and safe, when her war was won, and they were both free. Maybe then they could look into what they shared and explore a relationship.

But until he knew he could trust her Ace wouldn't allow their relationship to go anywhere but allies working together. Allies that hopefully did not end like most pirate allies did.

No matter how much Holly kept thinking to herself: 'maybe just once, before I-'

Holly winced and blinked several times as she ended the spell on the Snatcher. Rubbing her eyes lightly, she put away her wand and turned toward Ace.

"So, what did you see?" he asked.

"Well…"

Holly fell into the memory like she would have a pensive, landing lightly in Knockturn Alley she found herself surrounded by shady figures and shadier buildings. Holly rolled her eyes skyward wondering not for the first time why people of Knockturn Alley dressed that way. The average shopper went out of their way to dress like thieves in the Alley; they had no need to do so Holly knew, she'd been in the Alley herself multiple times and was well aware there were perfectly legitimate shops within; like the location Hagrid got his gardening supplies, and where she personally went for her dueling gear.

The Snatcher she was reading the memories of stalked through the Alley, and she followed idly noting the wanted posters hanging everywhere. Holly saw Ron and Hermione were still wanted in the memory, as were many of her school-mates that she knew had been Muggle-born. Her own name was out and about as well, her face looking down at her; it was covering every surface in the Alley as if people had forgotten what she looked like. The Snatcher bypassed these all and strode into a new shop that had been opened after she'd gone on the run. The shop was marked by a large death eater symbol, and Holly made a face at it before following the man in.

Inside was a restaurant looking area coupled with a bar, one wall was covered in wanted posters, and the Snatcher walked straight toward it to peruse. Holly personally allowed her eyes to scan and felt her heart sink as a pair of younger snatchers entered the building. Struggling between them was a young girl, perhaps sixteen, a Ravenclaw Muggleborn Holly realized. The girl was carted forward in tears begging to the pair she clearly recognized as her own upperclassmen to let her go. The girl went ignored as the snatchers exchanged a few words with the bartender before the girl was dragged to the back and out of Holly's sight.

Holly grimaced as she realized what this place was and yanked out of the Snatcher's memories.

"A bounty building," Ace surmised when she finished describing what she'd seen, "they're putting out wanted posters to people of 'Muggle' descent, then collecting them there. Unfortunately, there's no telling what happens to anyone captured after they've been brought there, I can imagine it's far from pleasant." Ace had a nasty taste in his mouth over it, he could make a few educated guesses, and each was worse than the last. Worse because Ace had seen some deplorable things in his own world and those were saved for actual criminals for the most part; Ace wondered however if Holly had any inkling of what he did.

Regardless he said: "Not exactly the big fish we're looking for though." He could make it work; if they followed up the chain one person to the next, they'd eventually end up with a sea-king. He knew she could handle Snatchers just fine, dodging them even while distracted. They were both frankly sleeping when it came to fights with the grunts, so a level up would give him a better idea of the scale for wizards and for Holly as well. Though ideally, he'd spar with her before they did anything too dangerous; such as, for example, destroying a bounty building where her enemies gathered.

"We could… we could save them? Destroy the building and…" she trailed off angrily, and it reminded him of Sabo, of Sabo's great desire to help people and yet being too weak, too young, and too alone to do much.

"They'd build another building," Ace countered her even as he started to plan around her suggestion, "and with magic, they'd do it quickly."

"I'll just destroy that one too." Holly's hand reached up and brushed the locket ever aware of the priceless item around her neck. If she was captured doing this then it might get stolen which would be beyond a disaster but- but that girl was sixteen, sixteen, she was only a year younger than Holly was. "I can't just leave people my age and younger too-" she couldn't finish, Holly didn't want to imagine what the Death Eater's had done to that girl and younger. She shook her head, sending her hair flying.

"Alright," Ace said, placing his hands on his waist, "a bounty place should be simple to break into, and the people that run it will have much more information than these lot." He jerked a thumb at the unconscious Snatchers. "They won't stand a chance against you, let alone me. We just need a disguise for you to get to this place; not one with magic though, they can probably see through that," he eyed her, "you ever tried dyeing your hair?"

Holly's eyes went a bit wide, she'd thought… why did she keep thinking Ace was going to ridicule her impulses and ideas? He worked with her, adjusted to match her, and covered her weaknesses without complaint. He hadn't judged her for not killing, had planned around what she wanted and needed. It was about time she worked with him in return and stopped assuming he was going to dismiss her like so many others.

"I'd like to spar before we go though," Ace continued, "to get an idea of your strength, speed, and weaknesses when you have a stronger opponent. Out of fairness, we'll call a spell going through me a point to you." He cracked his hands and neck, "fifty fights a day should do it."

"What?" Holly recoiled a bit as Ace stepped over a Snatcher toward her, "now?"

"No time like the present." Especially considering how little time he had left, "on the count of three. One-"

"Ace hold on what about the Snatchers-"

"Two."

"More could show up, and I'll have to clean the entire area of magic when we're done, it'll take forever-"

"One- GO!"

Holly wrenched her wand up, hurling a shield between herself and Ace aware now of how quickly he could move. A split second later Ace's fist cracked against it, and the entire glittering wall shuddered and gave way. Holly quickly re-estimated how much power she'd have to put into her shields to ensure they didn't collapse under Ace's influence before she started to chain attacks. From his speed, she knew it would be incredibly difficult to hit him, and she knew running from or dodging him was highly unlikely to work, he'd just catch her. Instead, she'd have to work on swiftly casting as many spells as she could in a wide arc to force him away from her since one hit was a point to her.

One spell coated the ground in ice, another started to layer wards directly around her, a third sent Ace twisting out of the way, and Holly didn't even pay attention to his state this time; she was focused on winning. On dueling someone worthy and powerful, on fighting with someone who challenged her as no one had since Dumbledore's death and everything changing. Lights flashed as Ace dodged between them- until the last one she cast, which he just took.

Ace skidded to a stop and swore. "Forgot I wasn't fire! Okay, let's go again that's a win for you." He retook his spot and started to countdown-

"What the hell does that mean 'forgot I wasn't fire,' what?!" she said before he got to 'two.'

"It's my devil-fruit power."

Holly snapped her fingers: "Okay that I remember, but you didn't say anything about fire, how does it work? What does it do?"

"It makes me fire, I can transform into it, I can breathe it, use it, live in it. Fire is me, and I'm fire." Ace explained to her loosely, his hand circling vaguely in the air.

"But you haven't used it here."

"Can't." He shook his wrist at her, and remembered a moment later that his chains didn't come with him to this world, "in prison they have these chains, sea-stone, they're used to prevent a devil-fruit user from using their abilities. I have… a couple of them." That was an understatement by a large margin, he was bogged down by them. "With them, I can't use my fire in any way."

"But you're made of fire." Holly, as always, went straight to the point, "isn't that like cutting off a part of you?"

Ace rubbed the back of his neck trying to hedge an answer, to not admit how bad it really was. In the end, Holly had been, as far as he knew, honest with him, so he was honest with her. "Yeah, it's… painful. I'm constantly cold, and it feels like someone cut me in half. But there's not much I can do about it while I'm wearing them… it's better here though, I can't quite feel it and the fire you have out at nights helps a lot."

Holly bit her lip as Ace stretched a bit to get ready to go again. She was stuck though, stuck on picturing someone blocking out her magic and forcing her to live like that; she couldn't imagine it. These sea-stone chains - which she realized Ace had mentioned before - sounded, for lack of a better word, terrible. It certainly explained why Ace sat so close to her camp and house-fire though. If he was made of flames, the source of it being so close had to be soothing. Like being magically drained and sitting on a ley-line. Though she wished she'd known earlier, Holly could alter the tent to leave a fire in Ace's room, and she could triple the temperature inside it as well. Holly always preferred the heat, and she'd purposely kept the tent cooler because Hermione and Ron both liked it cold, Ace it seemed was far more like her.

"Two, one-go!"

"Hey! That's a terrible count!" she hollered as Ace got right into her lacking guard and swatted her head calling his strike a win, though considering what he'd done to the snatchers with a similar blow, he was right to do so.

"Call it haki training," he grinned boyishly at her, "to learn observation I get to blind-fold you and throw rocks at your head until you learn to use haki instinctively."

"That cannot be true."

"Oh-ho it is, Jozu loves training newbies because he gets to do it to them."

"Oh is that so? Three-two-one-go!" she called suddenly and hurled spells at Ace hoping to catch him off his guard; however Ace, unlike Holly, had haki, so he easily dodged. While Holly noted another name to the back of her mind, so far that was five Ace had or almost had dropped.

Holly hid a smile, Ace was beginning to relax around her.

A snatcher groaned and Ace casually trodded on his head, knocking him out again as they continued.

A woman strode through Diagon Alley with her head up and her posture confident. She glared down anyone who looked at her wrong or at all, and most that did quickly looked away. People avoided her eerie blue eyes that seemed unnatural in color, many were convinced they had to be fake, except they had made it past the wards placed around the Alley to remove glamors, illusions, and potions, so they had to be real. The woman flicked her brown hair back revealing her plain forehead as she glanced toward Knockturn Alley, her head tilted as if she was listening to someone before she strode down the street itself and out of sight. Several breathed out in relief having assumed she, like most of those that visited Diagon lately, was there because she'd wanted to join the dark lord. They had little idea that under the wig, the prescription contacts, and the makeup, their savior was standing right before them.

"Reminds me of home." Ace told Holly as he strode beside her through the Alley; he didn't bother avoiding anyone since Ace could go right through them and the fact that he did kept making Holly twitch. He, unlike Holly, could actually look around as much as he wanted, so he scanned the area watching for anyone paying Holly a little too much attention, which none were as of yet. Holly, however, had to keep her focus and confidence up to make it seem like she was another person entirely. For as she'd explained to Ace, generally in magical public areas she'd kept her head down and her hair on her forehead to hide her celebrity status; so when disguising her, they'd done the exact opposite. "Shady enough to be- the island where I'm from, though it's a bit more obviously downtrodden for the richer areas."

Ace glanced toward Holly and smirked when she made an aborted motion to wipe her eyes.

"That's horrible, and so are these." She muttered his way. The contacts had been an ordeal, requiring them to head into the Muggle world to get Holly a pair of prescription color contacts which they'd expedited to have as soon as possible. Holly instantly hated them, and Ace had physically held her eyes open to shove them in to disguise her distinct green eyes. "They're itchy." She whined.

"It's temporary." He teased even though he'd never worn them. He glanced away again amused at her, but still missing the now-familiar green shade of her eyes.

"There it is," Holly said as the building came into view.

Holly continued on not pausing as she made a straight line toward her destination. Ace meanwhile rushed forward to round the building looking for exits and then darted inside having found only one. Since he couldn't be seen and wasn't exactly corporeal, he was the perfect scout. Within he counted the number of people inside, each one they'd have to defeat as quickly as possible, so no one escaped, and no alarms were set off. Once that was done they'd have to discover what was in the back; he'd have to do it later though as Holly was just entering.

She strode in casually dropping a ward stone near the door to prevent apparition; Holly had spent most of the night building it according to one of Hermione's books. Then ignoring the brief looks she got, Holly moved toward the wanted board as if she had been there all the time. Ace moved opposite her to the far side of the room and a table that was out of sight of the others. In a swift strike, he knocked out the pair sitting there and lowered them to their table. Then he moved on as Holly plucked a poster off the wall and turned toward the room. Her first spell caught the bartender by surprise, he slumped over without warning. Following that two people at the back of the room hit the ground as Ace took them out before he launched over a table toward the front door.

All hell broke loose as Snatchers rushed to attack her, not a single one attempting to escape through the door Ace was guarding. Which gave him a front-row seat to the battle.

The coloring was wrong, her hair too light and her eyes too blue. But her smile, the way she lit up when she was dueling, that was the woman he was falling for. Ace watched Holly as she twisted and turned, dodging under spells in a way that he instantly recognized as his own. Their fifty battles for the last few days were helping her drastically when it came to physical fighting. Holly was now correctly dodging and occasionally going for the solar plexus and throat. Holly might not be using haki yet, but by the time he left, she would be-

'By the time he left?'

"Done," Holly called striding into the middle of the room. She flicked her wand casually behind her; a spell struck the wall, and every wanted poster there burst into flames, all but her own which was in her hand. Ace eagerly moved forward and stole it from her fingers curious to see it in closer detail. The image they had of Holly was recent, it had been taken when she'd been leaving Hogwarts for the last time in her sixth year. At the time Luna had amused her and Holly had been between sorrowful over Dumbledore, pensive over her impending death, and slightly smiling because of Luna. It was, Ace thought, a perfect wanted poster.

Teasingly Ace lifted the picture and wiggled it in front of her face: "I do believe I was worth more, but this is certainly a hefty first bounty." Truthfully Ace wasn't sure of the conversion rates from Galleons to Beri, so in all reality, she could be worth anything from a typical East Blue pirate to a yonko.

Holly gave a laugh as her eyes crinkled attractively; her hand reached up as she grabbed playfully at the poster which Ace yanked out of her range. Taller than her he rolled up the picture and then stuffed it into his pants pocket. "I'm keeping it." He declared having no idea if he could or not.

"Ace!" Holly grabbed for it again, forgetting where she was. He did that to her, made her forget how tense the situation was. He made her forget she had been alone, that she was going to die, that the locket was constantly draining at her. Ace made her forget about the war, and it was because of that reason alone that she kept thinking the words: 'I want, I want, I want.'

But life was never that easy, and they remembered what they had to do, and they both focused up. Neither of them needed to speak as they moved toward the back door Holly had seen in the memory. Holly didn't complain or even mention it as Ace automatically took point and stuck his head through the back-door. He ghosted straight through it after a moment, and Holly opened it to follow. The door itself led to a staircase, and soundlessly they descended them, occasionally glancing at each other.

In the basement, they found a hallway with five rooms. Wordlessly Ace and Holly split up, Ace took the left and Holly the right. Ace stuck his head in the first door as Holly opened another and vanished within. The first room Ace discovered was a storage room for the bar and after a quick glance, and resisting his urge to eat everything, he moved on. The next room had him enter it fully once he recognized what it was. A table in the middle of the room with shackles on the armrests. Blood across the table, the floor, the wall behind, and the chains, most was dried but some was unfortunately fresh. It was an interrogation room, and it had been used often. Unfortunately Ace knew then that the people who had been brought here were long gone and the chances they were alive were slim.

Holly would be devastated.

Wishing not for the first time he could use his fire to burn the whole place down Ace left to check the last of his rooms, which was empty. Ace then went for the left wondering why only one of the doors on the right had been opened. "Holly?" he called as he approached, had she found something?

Silence met his question.

His stomach sank, Ace instantly pictured the worst as he sprinted forward. He flew around the corner, his hand on the door and his hair in his face, to look inside. Ace found Holly beside a desk looking at some papers. All color had vanished from her face, her hands shook, and she didn't so much as twitch when he called her name.

"Holly?" He stepped forward, noting the papers on the table spread out haphazardly. Each was a folder on someone who had been through the bounty building, they each had a picture of the person in the interrogation room Ace had seen. Feeling his gut sink Ace leaned up and peered at the papers in Holly's hands and at the names there. He sucked in a sharp breath; he didn't need to see past the first page to recognize them. Their images was all over the room he slept in, their faces and stories were things he'd heard about often when it came to Holly. Their names were often on her lips, and signs of their presence were all over the tent itself.

Right there before them both were the bruised moving faces of Ronald Weasley and Hermione Granger.