A/N: Hey again, everyone! Or, at least, everyone who reads these notes, which is probably not many since it's before the chapter, and seriously, you're more interested in what happens next! That's why you're here.

So okay, fine, I don't have much to say, anyway. Although, I would like to mention, as I forgot to earlier (I forget to do a lot of things, damn), that I've never read the seventh book of Harry Potter. *gasp* Yes, its true, I'm actually writing a fic about after the war without even knowing how the war ended :P I know some, from Harry Potter fanfictions, but in case any issues comes up, feel free to point it out, but otherwise, if the first chapter didn't make it clear, the war in this story didn't exactly end as well for Harry as in canon and thus most likely was fought completely differently, so most problems can just be attributed to that.

Chapter Four

Meeting People

Winter finally arrived. Spaz was a bit calmer now and stayed indoors most days, though if that was because of the weather or because of what happened last week, Harry wasn't sure. Just because the villagers were too dense to see water bounce off him more than a centimeter before it reached his skin didn't mean Spaz was too.

"What the heck is that?" As soon as the words left his mouth, Spaz's eyes widened in regret for his impulsive question, afraid that he had broken their silent pact to keep personal questions off-limits. Harry just smiled, and said, "A power from a different world," and left it at that. Harry had no intentions of pursuing the issue, or using it as a reason to ask questions of his own, but Spaz seemed nonetheless bothered by it, and stopped joining Harry for training sessions.

It was his own fault really. It had been a month since that first rain, but he put his guard down amongst the less observant villagers and quit working on it after shortening the distance to half a centimeter, which is easily noticeable by anyone trained to look for abnormalities. Spaz was apparently part of that group.

It wasn't a huge deal, not having Spaz around as much. Harry didn't have much more he wanted to experiment with when it came to his weakness with water – he could shorten the distance of his water repulsion by himself safely with magical propulsion to rid the water of its draining properties. Hopefully when snow settled on him in the coming days it wouldn't float too noticeably high off his shoulders. And if Spaz had questioned further, well, Harry had nothing to say, really.

During explorations, Harry found a nice area along the shore near the now deserted docks that no one else seemed to visit, so it became Harry's new training area. Sword training was what he did most days now.

Three years. The war had ended when he was eighteen, and Harry hit himself with the green light just five days after his twenty-first birthday. During those three years, Harry dabbled in many things – he lived in the wild for a few weeks and picked up a few survival skills; he tried to learn a musical instrument and eventually managed to play the fiddle passably; he joined the dojo for his sword style two years ago but treated it as more of a side hobby after his first experience with secondary magic half a year after that; hell, Harry had even taken art lessons and woodwork classes and dance workshops and visited countless countries. Three years with a need to keep moving, and no job, little social life, and even less sleep due to insomnia and nightmares made Harry jack-of-all-trades, master of none. Except magical battle from the war, which became useless both back home and here in this new world – many spells and strategies are useless when your opponents don't attack with magic.

So here he was, trying to polish the one skill he learned that might actually be useful now and maybe rework his magic to suit the new situation when he noticed someone had beaten him to the normally vacated beach. This someone had come in a small boat and just docked. It was a girl, mid-teens – looked about Spaz's age. Her black hair was in a pony-tail and her clothing was of a rather revealing cut, showing her to be well-endowed and quite pretty. She was tying her boat to a pole when Harry approached.

"Hello. It's not often someone shows up by sea in the winter."

The girl turned suddenly, her blue eyes snapping up, and for a moment her face looked familiar.

A small town, a young girl, rain, tears, unique but forced laughter.

Before Harry could think any further about the subject, however, arms sprouted from her shoulders as she formed a defensive stance, another arm appearing from the pole and holding onto the boat.

"Whoa!" Harry held his hands up to show he had no intentions of attacking, but couldn't help his curiosity for what he was seeing.

"Are you, a Devil Fruit user?"

The girl seemed to contemplate him a bit, before finally her extra arms shimmered out of existence, though the arm holding the boat remained so that her full attention was on Harry.

"You're new."

What an odd statement to make. "Do you mean to this island? Yeah, how'd you know? Did you used to live here?"

"Hmph. If you were here when I was, you'd have run off already."

"From a pretty girl like you?"

For a moment, she seemed flustered by this statement, but her eyes narrowed as she replied coldly, "Do not think to underestimate me for it. To answer your earlier question, yes, I am a Devil Fruit user." Wow, and to think he thought his own Devil Fruit ability was weird.

"Cool, so am I." A tingle through Harry's fingertips followed this statement, alerting him to the fact that right now he was immaterial again. He wasn't quite sure if this was a good thing or a bad thing in his current situation with this girl who could apparently sprout extra limbs from not only her own body but also from inanimate objects around her. Probably good, right? This was also the girl from his vision. Looking closer at her as she was taken aback by his confession, Harry couldn't help but notice that this too was a youth who had known hardship. What was this world he had entered? For a bit, the naïve villagers reassured Harry that the humans here were still pretty similar to home if a bit less advanced (except for that time he could have sworn the innkeeper used a snail as a telephone), but once more here was evidence that not everywhere was so peaceful. This girl is not yet completely mistrustful towards the world for she had relatively easily accepted Harry's position to not fight, but her caution could be seen by her choice to keep her eye on Harry rather than continue to tie up her boat and she seemed cynical of public response to her Devil Fruit abilities.

Crying in the rain. She was how old in that vision? Nine? Ten? And already laughing through her tears alone. It reminded Harry of his days in his cupboard, though he never laughed, only cried silently.

"So what are you here for?" Harry finally asked, breaking the strange silence.

"Stocking up on supplies, mostly. Then I plan go to sea, maybe join a pirate crew."

"Join a pirate crew?" This pretty young woman of maybe only 16 years was going to join a pirate crew? Is this kind of behavior common?

"What, going to call the marines to let them know the Demon of Ohara plans on joining another pirate crew? I'm afraid you won't get much money for that. With 79 million on my head for sinking six Marine warships, knowing that I joined a crew isn't going to do you much good."

"Demon of Ohara? 79 million? Is this well-known in the area because I'm afraid I've never heard of such things," Harry muttered bewilderedly. This world was old-fashioned, sure, but somehow Harry never though too much about the bounties he read about, assuming – rather naively now that he thought about it – that they were only for the cruel, pirate captains who came in large ships and pillaged small towns for gold and resources. And Demon? This girl was powerful with her strange Devil Fruit power, sure, and probably quite cold in personality as a result of her harsh life, but it was a bit much to call her a Demon. 79 million! That must be more than half a million pounds – what for?

The girl seemed amused by his confusion. "Fufufufu, you're so clueless it's almost cute. I'm afraid that won't save you though. I have places to be, and you're an unknown, and thus a risk." Hands sprouted from the ground next to Harry's feet and reached towards his knees, probably with the intention of forcing him to the ground and holding him there so she could pass safely, but as he was still immaterial, the plan failed. As the arms slide through his body, the girl could only stare at him in shock – maybe she didn't believe him about his Devil Fruit ability?

"What is your name?"

"R-robin," she stuttered, "Nico Robin."

"It was nice meeting you, my name is Harry," and here Harry paused a bit as he reminded himself that in this new world, the family name came first like in most Asian countries back home, "Potter Harry. Do you have a dream, Robin?"

"Of course. I'm an archeologist; history is my dream and ambition!" At these words, Harry could see a glint of passion in her otherwise cold expression, and he felt a sense of relief. He knew very little about Robin, but he couldn't help but be glad that she had a healthier pursuit than vengeance. Suddenly, his body felt like it was swelling with the need to say something, and he opened his mouth to let it out, magical power flowing over his tongue.

"It is a good dream. You will have friends one day who will support this dream." This statement seemed to shock her further and her eyes glazed over a bit, like she was thinking about a long ago memory. Finally, she asked,

"Where are you from?"

"Me? That's a good question." Hah, a good question indeed. Should he tell her he's from a completely different world and was brought here because he committed suicide? Yeah right. But from what Spaz said, that island he first landed on was in the Grand Line. Would that work as a place of origin?

"I guess I'm from the Grand Line." And with that, Harry walked back to town, leaving Robin with her thoughts. He could sword train tomorrow. Now, he was more interested in the subject of his first vision, and maybe even his first prophecy.

Robin came into town later that day and stocked up on supplies, just as she said. Using her powers, she easily cowed the villagers to be cooperative and not a single one dared to call her a demon or alert the marines. Harry watched all this bemusedly and a little bitterly as his Seer abilities gave him flashes of images from the last time she was here as a young girl and how they treated her like a freak. It was an unwelcome reminder of his own past, not only with the Dursleys but with the sheep of the Wizarding World.

She left the next morning and sure enough, joined a pirate crew soon after. Later, when the crew forced her away for reading Poneglyphs, Robin would think back to this strange man she met who hailed from the Grand Line, and it would influence her to enter the dangerous ocean herself at the age of 23 in the hopes of finding the nakama promised her by no longer only one, but two men.

The village was tense for a few days after Robin's visit, but it faded with the holiday cheer as the village prepared to celebrate the tenth snowfall of the winter. It was a local tradition, done only on this particular island, and thus was easily organized around the weather that changed from year to year.

Strangely enough, Harry was witness to yet another vessel to dock at the port of the island in wintertime, this time a rather large pirate ship. The Jolly Roger was proudly raised on its mast, the bones replaced by sabers – or were they cutlasses? – and the skull sporting three diagonal slashes across one eye. It was familiar, though this time not through a vision. Perhaps from one of the books he read? As it pulled up, the villagers quickly spotted the ship and a rush of excitement was felt as people flooded the streets to watch the pirates dock. Spaz was standing wide-eyed near the edge of the crowd, and Harry quickly made his way over.

"So I assume these pirates are special?"

"Special?" Spaz squeaked, "It's the symbol of Shanks, leader of the Red-Haired Pirates! He's a Grand Line Pirate that even the World Government keeps a special eye on! What's he doing here in West Blue?"

The innkeeper cut into the conversation here.

"Don't you know? Shanks loves a good party! He comes here every winter to enjoy our sake during our Snow Festival. He may be a pirate, but we try not to think about that. He doesn't do any harm, and he's technically a local."

"Yeah, not to mention the local marine can't do a thing to him, anyway," yelled out a young man with a large grin. He didn't seem the least bit disturbed about the fact that local law enforcement was helpless against this famous pirate crew, and while it was likely because he was an ignorant little fool, Harry did feel a bit better about how at ease everyone was. Except Spaz, but even he seemed to quickly collect himself and join in the general cheer.

Harry himself was very interested to see these strange, "harmless" pirates. If they were here for the festivities and sake, then he would no doubt meet them if he waited in the tavern, but one good look at that ship wiped his mind clean of such timid thoughts. The ship was the largest he'd ever seen with a gorgeous, stream-lined body, three tall masts, and four proud white sails that were being pulled in as the ship anchored. Harry was a complete novice when it came to the sea, but this was plenty enough to impress him, surpassing the Durmstrang ship from fourth year easily. What would it be like to step foot on a ship like that?

A smile formed on Harry's lips. Well, he'd need to learn more about ships anyway if he was going to have adventures in this world, right? Harry knew exactly where he planned to be this evening while the pirate crew was celebrating.

A/N: I actually like the ending sentence to this chapter :) Though I wonder if any of you hate it because precisely because it is the ending sentence and not a transition to the rest of the chapter? Haha, sorry, you'll have to wait another week! Or another week after that, because the next chapter will actually be a bit of an interlude. Hmm, now I feel bad! Tell you what, I'll post the "interlude" Friday and the next "real" chapter the following Monday, 'kay?

Thanks again to my beta RedValentino!

Twenty-one reviews as of today, October 23, 2010! Wow, thanks everyone!

Kitty says thanks too

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Edited

12/26/10