A/N: Back, finally!

Chapter 29

Snow

Harry shivered slightly as he tread through the footsteps the pirate crew had left behind on the pristine snow. As far as he could tell, there were no signs of this island being settled. It was a pity really. Despite the white scenery, it actually wasn't even below freezing. His breath still came out in puffs of fog as he took in his surroundings, but the wizard was worried about using a warming charm when wading through drifts of snow – he might leave a river in his wake.

"Harry, Harry! Look!" Spaz yelled out excitedly, waving his arms to draw attention to his mini-snowman army he managed to complete in less than an hour.

"Hahaha!" Harry laughed aloud. "Are you the commander then?"

"Yep!" Spaz confirmed, holding up a large dead tree branch in his hand like a spear. "All shall fear this dread company of merciless misfits!"

"In that case," Shanks butted in as he doubled back towards the ship, "take this!" A snowball was thrown in a flash and impacted heavily on one of the frontline snowmen, knocking it out in a firework of white powder.

"I'll get you for that!"

Not half an hour later, half the pirates were caught up in a massive snowball fight with hastily constructed forts and messily formed teams with traitors popping up equally on both sides.

Harry took this opportunity to sneak off into the forest, tapping at the trees with interest. There were several trees that looked like maple – it was hard to tell when there were no leaves to reference – and Harry was curious to try his hand at tapping a few for sap. He'd tried once when hiding in the Forbidden Forest, but constant temperatures below zero stopped any chance of decent flow.

"Harry?"

The wizard turned to look at Spaz whose face was flushed from the excitement of the snow battle, white powder sprinkled through his hair and clothes. "Yeah, Spaz?" he asked, as the teen drew nearer. It had been several months since Mona handed over Spaz's bounty card and in that time, the boy had continued to mature; his shoulders broadened slightly and his face was dusted with a light beard and moustache. It wasn't a huge change, but Harry was quite sure that no one would be able to link Spaz to his past in just another year.

"Nothing really," Spaz shrugged, bouncing in place to keep warm, his eyes darting around restlessly in wonder of the forest dressed in nothing but shades of black and white. "Just wondering where you'd gone, yes sirree, 'cause Shanks and the rest of the pirates decided to see if there's a lake to go fishing in but I don't know how'ta fish so I thought I'd see what you were up to, y'know?"

Harry smiled and turned back to the maple tree in front of him, brushing off the snow coating the trunk. "Just thought I might try collecting some tree sap. Want to help?"

Spaz beamed. "Of course! I'd love to, Harry, yes sirree. Is it hard? How's it work? Just one tree or – ?"

Harry chuckled as he listened to his friend's ramblings, only occasionally interrupting with instructions as he transfigured the tools he needed.

Spaz had had one of the strangest childhoods Harry ever heard of. With both parents serving as middle ranking CP9 members, he was left at his paternal grandmother's since the age of five. His grandmother, though otherwise clear of mind and strong of body, thought Spaz was a tomboyish girl at first sight. For the first few years Spaz didn't really care much how his grandmother thought of him. Apparently the old woman was fond of the "strong woman" ideology and wanted her 'granddaughter' to be a successful member of CP9 like her daughter-in-law so Spaz started his training early under a female instructor and was kept away from more stereotypically girlish activities like cooking and sewing. As long as he could climb trees and wear pants with the other boys, Spaz didn't care his teacher was a woman or that his grandmother never cut his hair short.

When Spaz was old enough to feel embarrassed about having long hair and pink shirts, he developed a crush on his teacher and chose to continue the act until the day he ran away, which was when he stole his father's old clothes that were kept in the attic and chopped his hair short.

One thing that didn't make much sense to Harry though was the instructor's behavior. Girls hit puberty sooner than boys and even ignoring that, a teacher trained in martial arts should easily be able to recognize a male body after daily contact regardless of maturity. What reason did she have for keeping that secret even after Spaz abandoned their very livelihood?

"Mornin' Mommy!" A blonde, bespectacled young girl, perhaps eight years old, chirps cheerily at her mother who is setting up cloth dummies on wooden crosses. The well-endowed blonde woman turns towards her daughter with a stern expression.

"Kalifa, do you remember what you are supposed to call me when on the training grounds?"

The little girl, Kalifa, crosses her arms over the book in her arms with a pout. "Sorry, Sensei."

The woman smiles and runs a hand through Kalifa's hair. "That's my girl." She looks over to the other early arrival – a long-haired brunette, a few years older, with brown eyes and dirty, scuffed clothes. "Hello Shelly, been playing with the boys again?"

'Shelly' blushes. "Yes Sensei."

"It's good that you get along so well with them. This evening's training will also be co-ed so play nice with them, Kalifa."

The little girl sticks her nose into the air with a huff. "Boys are stupid, 'cause they can't see how pretty I am."

"Harry. Harry?"

Harry blinks away his vision see Spaz holding a bucket awkwardly below the metal tube protruding from the tree.

"How do I hang the bucket for collecting the sap?"

"Hmm," Harry thought for a bit, before taking his wand a transfiguring a hole towards the top of the bucket for the draining tube, then covering it all with a wooden lid transfigured from a fallen branch. It was all crudely done and the grain of the wood was still visible in the transfigured bucket, but it would do the job and that's all that mattered.

"Do you know how long Shanks wants to stick around here?" Harry asked.

Spaz shook his head. "Although, I did hear Lucky Roo found a lake in a cave that was frozen a whole foot, and, and, there's this Sou person who wanted to spend tomorrow moving ice blocks into the ship's storage space to help preserve the fresh vegetables and fruit the pirates got from the trader raided yesterday. That will probably take awhile."

"Ah-choo!"

Harry and Spaz spun around from the next tree they were drilling a hole into towards the unexpected sound. Approaching them from the vast plain of snow opposite where the pirate ship had docked was a tall figure wearing a thick fur coat, followed by two others. After moving the handkerchief away, the figure was shown to be a man with striking blue eyes.

"Roxy Blue," Harry sighed. "Do you have any idea how creepy it is with you stalking me like this?" Ever since retiring from the Marines, the former Vice Admiral showed up at every island the Red-Hair Pirates landed on, easily traveling the mild waters of East Blue on his rowboat with his former subordinate, now fellow retiree. "And Mona, don't you have bounties to hunt?"

The girl frowned, bounded forward before hopping up a tree, and then shoved a large drift of snow onto Harry's head. "It's all your captain's fault, you know," she said over the wizard's spluttering. "He scared off all the other pirates from the seas. The pickings are too slim now that every middle-ranked name is hiding out in captured islands and such. And I can hardly go after your bunch!"

"Harry, darling," Blue interrupted once Harry dusted off most of the snow. "Surely there must be something your magic can do for this dreadful cold."

Harry rolled his eyes and returned to the tree. "It's not that cold here, considering how much snow is on the ground. You just want to see another spell."

"Hey, Korr, what's up, I haven't seen you in ages, you know, 'cause we haven't docked in weeks but it's been pretty fun anyway, yes sirree. So, has Mr. Blue been doing anything stupid recently, huh, huh?" Spaz bounced around the remaining man who had yet to break his stoic expression.

"He challenged a seagull to a duel, yesterday morning," the man informed his - friend? - with a stoic face and a monotone pitch in his voice. It didn't fool anyone in the group who knew perfectly well Korr enjoyed making fun of his former superior. Sometimes, people wondered if Korr quit his job as a marine purely because he enjoyed making fun of Roxy too much in between practically babysitting the older man.

Harry snickered as Roxy rounded on Korr with indignation.

"That bird was asking for it! My boat is not an avian latrine!"

"Alright, alright," Harry cut in, moving on to the next tree. "You can watch me use magic to collect sap, okay? How long do you plan on sticking around, anyway?"

"Oh wonderful! Probably as long as you do. We finally purchased an actual ship to replace the rowboat from before. That way, we can follow you when Red-Hair eventually decides to return to the Grand Line and we can keep more things like food supplies and clothes, like this coat," Roxy informed them, gesturing to the fur coat he was wearing.

Harry eyed the Blue trio thoughtfully as he continued transfiguring buckets, lids, and metal tubes. "Knowing you, you're traveling far more extravagantly than you know what to do about. I have half a mind to tip Shanks off so he can rob you and then maybe you'll stop acting like some creepy sexual predator."

"How dare you!" Blue yelled indignantly. "I ought to challenge you to a duel!" As a Vice Admiral, sword duels were hard to come by since most marines were too in awe to ever challenge Roxy and pirates never followed the rules. Ever since resigning, the former marine threatened duels left and right to make up for lost time.

Harry smirked. "Tsk, tsk. You should know by now what it means to challenge a wizard to a duel."

There was a tense moment of silence as Roxy contemplated the possibility of winning against his obsession without cheating – the last time he tried, Harry took his sword with a single word – when Harry finally cut in with a cheery teasing voice. "I'll forgive you if you give me some vanilla extract."

Roxy Blue gaped a moment at how easily he was being extorted as Mona giggled in the background and Korr's shared a look with Spaz. Finally, the former Vice Admiral gave a melodramatic sigh and agreed, to Harry's smug delight. The wizard had ambitious plans for making large quantities of ice cream to store in the almost empty freezer in the kitchen.

It wasn't long before Harry and Spaz parted with Roxy, Mona, and Korr to rejoin the pirates. The duo found the crew by following a trail of footprints that eventually led to a river frozen over as it flowed from a large cavern. Most of the pirates were ice fishing with bits of guts leftover from yesterday's barbeque several meters away from the cave opening where the ice was thinner. At the large entrance, there was a growing pile of ice blocks as the remaining pirates lugged them out from deeper in the cave where, presumably, the river was frozen more thickly.

Harry watched for awhile before turning to Spaz again. "Shall we make an igloo?"

Spaz nodded rapidly. "Do you know how? How big can we make it? How long will it take? I've heard about igloos, yes sirree, but I never could make one myself because it's never snowed more than an inch where I come from so we could make tiny snowmen sometimes and have muddy snowball fights but I wanna make an igloo now, oh please Harry, show me how!"

Harry laughed and walked towards the cavern, peeking in to see half a dozen pirates shoving the last of the ice blocks out.

"Hey there. Could me and Spaz borrow some saws?"

Lucky Roo just pointed to the pile of them in the corner with his free hand as he ate his large rack of meat while pushing a large block of ice with his stomach.

"Thanks." Harry picked up two saws and returned to Spaz before stomping out a decent sized circle a bit more than his height in circumference inside the entrance of the cave. The cavern air was below freezing, which was necessary to maintain an igloo's structure.

"Alright, time to cut out blocks of snow. We only want the really solid stuff, so try to brush away the powdery top layer before you start sawing, okay Spaz?"

The pirates who were having no luck fishing watched the two friends work and quickly caught on. Soon, there was an impromptu igloo building contest with vague outlines of what's considered 'the best.' Some groups tried to build the widest, others the tallest, and still others the fanciest. Being pirates, of course, sabotage was completely within the rules of the game.

"Attack!" Harry yelled, as he and Spaz charged at Yassop's group who were fleeing the scene as they stole a stack of snow blocks. Snowballs pelted them from behind but to no avail, and Harry and Spaz resigned themselves to having been robbed. Instead, Harry used an aguamenti charm followed by a carefully controlled 'Glacius' to build a wide moat of slippery water surrounding their under-construction igloo. Spaz could easily Moon Step over it, while Harry used a gripping charm on his boots to walk over the ice.

When Shanks attempted to lead an attack on them next, Harry enjoyed simply watching the trio – Shanks and two others Harry didn't know very well though he did hear one call the other Sou – slip and fall clumsily over the moat. Enthusiastic ballistics of snow from Spaz quickly had them scrambling away with mock threats of revenge.

Now relatively safe from invasions, Harry and Spaz finished their igloo rather quickly, though at first there was nothing about it to separate it as superior to the others still being built. Thus, Harry used his experience in wood-working to manipulate ice and snow. It wasn't quite the same, but the same physics and three-dimensional perception was important. When he heated a knife with fire it slid through the ice with ease and generous freezing charms kept the structure firm. If he made a mistake, it was nothing another handful of snow and some magic couldn't fix. With Spaz's help building up mounds of snow, Harry decorated the 'front lawn' of the igloo with tables and chairs as well as transformed the igloo itself into a giant snow crab with a pair of turrets sculpted from the ventilation shafts.

"Done," Harry stated with pride. "Hopefully it doesn't come to life over night and digest us while we're asleep inside."

Spaz stared until Harry chuckled nervously. "Right, morbid thought, haha, no need to worry so much Spaz. This time I'm just joking; I'm no good at object-animal transfiguration."

The night was spent on the snowy island instead of aboard the ship as each pirate enjoyed roasted fish and their own cozy igloos. Shanks insisted on a round of sake despite the risks of hypothermia.

"Man, this snow reminds me of our island back on the Grand Line," the pirate captain reminisced. "Hey Beckman, how about you?"

Beckman looked around a bit before turning back to Shanks. "It's familiar, Captain, but it's not nearly as cold. There also hasn't been a blizzard since we docked."

"True, true," Shanks agreed. "Maybe, when we leave our headquarters, we'll travel farther up north and see how cold it can get in East Blue."

"If you'd like," Beckman agreed. "We only have a few more months, as agreed with the mayor."

"Just a few more months," Yassop slurred. "Luffy's a good kid – about the same age as my son!"

"We know!" yelled the pirates within hearing distance as they groaned. Already, they couldn't wait to return to Windmill Village so Yassop would direct his repetitive drunken ramblings about his son to the pirate-fan-boy instead of them.

A/N: Thanks to my beta, PyromanianBlackWings, for the edits. I hope everyone liked the chapter. Let me know if there are still any questions about Spaz's past :)

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