Chapter Twenty-One | Snow, Crystal, and Shining Things

Half singed and soaking wet, she stumbled into Shell Cottage with grim determination. There was someone there to meet her, even at the wee hour of the morning, the dullest embers of violet and orange – mixed with the rough strokes of a painter's brush – breaking thin upon the dark sea horizon. Bill sat at the dining table, a great bleached hunk of driftwood held together with iron bolts. He nursed a cup of tea, another sitting across from him with steam slowly drifting off the top, which he nudged in her direction as she shook off the cold and damp.

Quinn took the seat, silent, and brought the cup to her lips. Her eyes shut of their own accord, a shaky breath spilled out of her unbidden, and with trembling fingers she set the cup back on the table and looked at Bill, his hair limp, bedraggled, and his countenance severe.

"Where've you been off to?"

"Needed some air."

"There's a war on, Quinn. And you're-"

"Undesirable Number One. Yeah, I'm well aware." Scoffing, Quinn looked out the rain spattered window, drumming her fingers along the tabletop and sneering at nothing. "I had some things to take care of. It's done."

"How many?"

Her gaze flicked away from the window to meet Bill's. In it she found no judgement, no disgust. Only concern.

"Eight," she answered honestly. "Give or take a couple."

"And you came out unscathed?"

"I had time to prepare." She gave him a crocodile grin. All teeth. "You know a lot about runes. Enchantments, wards, that sort of thing. Yeah?"

"You and I have talked about 'em before," he said, raising his tea in acknowledgement. "And I'm a Curse Breaker. Be shit at my job if I didn't."

"How many Curse Breakers did the Barrows take before they figured out how to deal with Cairn-Fire?"

He'd gone to set his tea down when Quinn finished speaking, and Bill's hand hung in the air, a stunned look on his face. Slowly, the cup was set down and pushed aside, a low whistle drifting from his lips.

"Cairn-Fire, eh? Hell of a thing, that. Yeah, took out plenty of good Breakers up until… eighteen ninety something, I'd say. You telling me that you rigged some up?" Bill clicked his tongue and hissed through his teeth, grimacing. "Nasty stuff. Very, very nasty. Where'd you learn to put together something like that?"

"Restricted section has a lot of great reading if you know where to look."

"Fuck me. I'm surprised they don't have those locked up in the Headmaster's office. Not exactly something you want to leave lying around, even behind the… well, I'd call the security lax, but I'm a special case."

"It came in handy at least."

"That it did. That it did," he echoed, the last three words coming out in a staccato drawl. "Hermione's finally gotten some real sleep. Thought you'd like to know."

All the tension in her, muscles taut like bowstrings and her bones creaking from their incessant tug, left her in an instant. Her eyes, bloodshot, stinging with exhaustion, fell half-lidded, cloaking her view in a grayish haze. "Good. That's good."

"You should get some rest."

"Haven't you heard? There's a war on."

"Don't be an arse. Sleep, and I'll find some books I've got laying around while you rest up. You can look at them with fresh eyes instead of those pickled lookin' things you've got floating around in your head. Making me feel like I'm at the Cauldron."

Finishing off her tea, Quinn stood, holding her breath as she swayed – the blood rushing to her head. Just as quickly as it had appeared, the dizziness passed, and she nodded at Bill before stumbling towards the stairs. "Cheers. And thanks for the tea."

-::-

Dreams and memories passed her by in a kaleidoscope of delirium. What few moments of lucidity Quinn had been blessed with now fewer and farther between, and only growing by the hour. She'd woken briefly to hear shouting on deck, long enough to breathe in the bitter cold lingering just below her nose, one of the few parts of her body not swaddled in blankets. There had then been a crunch, a crack, that of splintering wood, before a minute later a chorus of shouts were swiftly followed by silence. She pulled her blankets tighter, every joint in her body aching and her skin alight, unable to tell if she was trapped in a furnace or left to freeze atop an icy peak.

People came to her in her dreams. Old faces. New faces. A strange blend of the macabre interlaced with a nostalgia so bittersweet as to be painful, her ailing mind plagued by lucid dreams and fits of yearning; though she was too muddled to even recognize it, let alone put voice to the ghosts that haunted her.

Sirius appeared occasionally, with that gaunt, wild look in his eyes that took him when there was a chill in the house. The spectres of Azkaban hung heavy in his past and his present, and even with his beard trimmed and the old prison rags he wore replaced with dusty finery poached from the many old cupboards of the Black house, there was a weariness in the curve of his lips that belied his young age. Terribly young for a wizard, and already graying at the temples and the wrinkles, those crow's feet that pinched at the corner of his eyes, stood in deep recesses that had been chipped at over a decade in confinement, never to be filled in again.

They would talk in her dreams. Nonsensical, for the most part, and even though a small slice of Quinn was aware that the conversation wasn't real – that the man sitting before her in a half-rotten armchair sipping stale whisky had disappeared into the same void as she – the more childish side of her clung to those feverish moments. Occasionally her eyes would open, just long enough to catch the fog of her breath and the sound of ice floes cracking wide, the dull, echoing crunch they made that reverberated throughout the ship and sent her teeth a chattering. Just as quickly the fever would take her and send Quinn reeling back into the world of dreams and decaying memory.

Because that's what it was, wasn't it? Remembering.

Re-membering. The act of taking those tiny slivers of time and drawing them up again, fractured and imperfect, made more so every time she dusted them off and fingered through the pages of her past. A little bit of them would stick to the pads of her fingers as she went, flaking off and crumbling into nothing, replaced from then on with something conjured or simply left blank – forever lost.

She spiraled, ever deeper, unaware as the hours ticked by and how much closer to death she got with every passing moment. Quinn couldn't see, couldn't hear the crew's growing fear. She wasn't there – not in the proper sense – to witness Luffy bowing before the terrified villagers of Drum as their ship pulled into the wintry port of Bighorn Village. And wintry it was, an island of perpetual cold of which its scenery was blanketed in snow, tall stalky pine forests littering its narrow valleys, needles brushing against the neighbouring mesas, their chimney-esque plateaus hidden amongst the blizzard haze and the clouds that hung low across the horizon.

Dimly, Quinn felt the chill of Drum when she was taken from the ship to the village proper, swiftly carried to a waiting hearth with the hesitant offer of a doctor, a witch, on a guardsman's lips. The part of her that was awake, aware of the outside world, had its light grow dimmer and dimmer with every breath, and when Luffy woke her – a smile on his face – and told her that there was a doctor nearby-

"Doc-tor?" she slurred, squinting at her blurry surroundings. Quinn could smell timber in the air, the smoke of the nearby hearth and that cold, implacable nothingness that came with snowfall.

"Yeah. She lives on top of a mountain so we're gonna' climb it."

All of a sudden Vivi and Sanji's voices rang out, arguments flying from their lips. Quinn winced at the volume of it all, though Nami's voice quickly drowned them out. "Enough! Quinn is going to die if we don't get her to that doctor. And what the hell is she doing here?"

"You're the ones who let me onto your ship."

"Well, you're on the next island, so… go. Shoo."

"Nami! To treat a young girl so horribly-"

"She's a Bounty Hunter, Sanji."

"Vivi. You too!?"

"I'm gonna' take her up the mountain."

"If you slip and drop her she'll die!"

"I won't slip."

"You can't promise that, Luffy-"

"I. Won't. Slip." Sheer determination echoed in his words, and the shift in Luffy's demeanour was clear, the entire room falling silent in an instant. "Right, Quinn?"

"How- how tall?" she croaked, unable to muster any more of a reply.

"Tall."

Her eyelids flickered as she looked around the room, and though she tried to lift her head, all she managed was to snake her hand towards the top of the blankets. "Lemme' see."

A hand found its way behind her back and Quinn was faced towards the nearest window, looking out it to see the grand stone pillar that awaited her. Tall was an understatement, and even as she fought to stay awake long enough to see the conversation through, simply eyeing the mountain made her want to slip deeper under the covers and never crawl out.

'It'd hurt him, wouldn't it? Can he climb that?' were the thoughts running through her head. Fractured images of Luffy falling to his death, taking him with her then followed, and Quinn went to shake her head when another hand – a smaller one – gently but firmly squeezed her shoulder.

"You're a Strawhat. You're one of them," came the whisper in her ear. "Stop worrying and just trust them."

Quinn's own raspy, near imperceptible whisper burned in her throat. "Vivi?"

"Trust them."

Slowly, the tension in her body bled out, and she sagged into what she now realized was Luffy's supporting arm, twined once around her waist. "...A'right. Let's go."

"There we go!" Luffy proudly announced. "You get to be better and I get to meet another witch!"

The words had barely left him when Quinn started to pass out, the perplexed rumble of a stranger asking, "Another?" the last thing she heard.

-::-

Visions of snowy peaks and giant carnivorous rabbits coursed through Luffy's mind. He could still hear the laughter of that- that big metal idiot, could still feel the way his own heart nearly jumped out of his chest when Sanji fell off his back. It was a good thing he drank plenty of milk, otherwise he wouldn't have any teeth left holding his cook by the scruff of his shirt with – well, his teeth – and that would be the worst because how could he eat meat without teeth?

Up he climbed, his body wracked with shivers. Streaks of blood were left upon the rock face, freezing over the instant they dripped from his nearly frostbitten fingers, his nails long buried in the ice after a close shave and a steep, heartstopping drop. But he could grow those back, because nails were always growing and Ace couldn't stop him from nibbling the ends off whenever they did.

Ace.

Quinn was a lot like him. She felt the same, all scared and angry. Oh, she was angry all the time. All the time. He didn't get it, not one bit. How could you be angry in a place like the Grand Line? It was amazing! Typhoons and dinosaurs and giants and big fighting rabbits- or, those guys kind of sucked but then they helped beat up the metal guy, so they were friends? Whatever, there was just so much to see!

Luffy could understand getting angry at those people in the jungle. They tried to kill his friends after all. Or when that butler tried to kill Usopp's friend and the sheep guy. Yeah, he got angry sometimes too, but not all the time.

And she was dying, at least that's what Nami said. He knew she wasn't lying, could hear how slow Quinn was breathing, see how weak she was. He had to hold her up to look out the window and even then Quinn nearly fell over. She'd barely opened her eyes the last couple days, and that was scary because Quinn didn't sleep all that much. Zoro said she slept even less than he did, and he was always lifting something heavy or napping.

Actually, Zoro slept a lot.

But Quinn was always scratching stuff on the inside of the Merry, even late at night. Funny letters that she said would make the ship stronger. She even let him punch the wall to prove it! His fist bounced off it and he broke a lamp, but that was fine because even without her stick she could fix it.

Quinn was great, and he didn't understand why she didn't think so too. And if he had to make her talk to another witch then he'd do that! If that didn't work, then he'd get Sanji to make her some meat. And if that didn't work, then he'd- he'd hit her! Fist of Love!

"Yeah!"

Shouting into the snowstorm, Luffy climbed with renewed vigor. Scaling the mountain with gritted teeth and single-minded focus, he ignored the cold and flung his arms further and further, pulling himself dozens of feet upward at a time. Blood trickled a steady pace from his fingertips, falling hundreds of feet down only to get blown away in the winter wind, and no matter how much he ached, no matter how tired he got, every breath clipped with exhaustion and the pain – ripping through his lungs as he froze from the inside out – none of it mattered. The only thing that did matter was getting Quinn and Sanji to the top of the mountain and making sure the witch up there looked after them. And if she said no? Then he'd put his head down like Vivi showed him and beg, because they were his crew, his friends, his family, and he'd do anything for them, no questions asked.

One hand up. Pull. Other hand up, leg too. Push. Climbing the mountain became a game, like when Lucky Roo would drum on Makino's bar and taught him how when Luffy asked. One and two, and one and two and- on and on it went, one after another, and even if he wasn't very good at it (Lucky said he couldn't grab a beat or something) he was happy to remember. And just when he thought he couldn't climb any longer his numb hand slid across powdered snow. Unable to do more than grunt, he hoisted himself up with the last of his strength and crawled across the peak of the mountain, dragging his face across the ice with desperate, clawing strides. Luffy could barely see through the snow, squinting at the flurry and not once stopping in his advance.

Slowly, the gray stone of a castle began to creep into view, its doors flung wide and snow, so much snow, collecting in a mountainous pile around the feet of them. He heard snuffling, the sound of hooves, and Luffy turned towards the noise. His vision was starting to go dark, exhaustion creeping in, and as the blurry image of a hulking beast grew closer he croaked out a simple plea.

"Doctor…"

And then he too, fell unconscious.

-::-

"I never really knew you, did I?"

Sirius glanced at her out of the corner of his eye, silent, then nodded once. "I suppose not."

"Did you end up here? A pirate. Sirius Black the Pirate- you'd have a big dog for a ship."

"Would I?"

"I don't know. Maybe. I wonder if you're still alive. Or maybe I missed you?" Quinn shrugged, watching the tattered, translucent curtain of the Veil flutter in an impossible wind. She looked back to Sirius, perched atop the stone frame with a butterbeer in hand, sipping every so often. Below him, at the bottom of the massive structure, the shattered remains of his previous bottles lay scattered across the rocky plinth. "Time is complicated. Different world. It goes all over," she added, kicking at a stray pebble.

"I'd imagine I'm long dead, then."

"...Yeah. I suppose so."

Pacing circles round the Veil, Quinn scuffed her heels on the floor, listening to the distant sea breeze and the sound of cannonfire that echoed softly from the ancient artefact. "Were you ever happy?" she asked, gaze jumping to her godfather's back, hunched, tired, and framed in shadow.

His head turned, just enough to catch the black silhouette of his jaw, the curve of his lips. "Sometimes."

"That's all we can ask for, really."

"Take it with the good and the bad. You, Quinn. You should be happy."

"Why?"

"Why not?"

She hummed. "I dunno?"

"Not knowing is as good a reason as any. At least you're not dead."

"I'm not? Ginny said I am."

"No. In fact, you're getting-"

"-better find it fast or Doctorine is going to be so mad," a high pitched voice chattered, almost drowned out by the sound of papers being pushed about and a strange clatter, like wood on stone.

Feeling vaguely human for the first time in ages, Quinn sat up and rubbed her eyes, barely able to make out any more than a brown and pink blur amongst the unmistakable gray of a castle. "Pomfrey?"

The blur squeaked with fright and dashed away, huddling beside… behind, she couldn't much tell – somewhere in the general vicinity of a door frame. "Madam Pomfrey is that- is that you?"

No, wait. It couldn't-

She couldn't be in Hogwarts. She wasn't in Britain, or on Earth for that matter. Wherever she was, she was safe and warm, and Quinn tried to recollect the last… however many days, clouded with sickness. It was all a haze, and after a few seconds she summoned her glasses, which quickly slammed into her waiting hand, much to her relief.

Glasses on, and oh- "Who are you?" she asked, finally getting a good look at the blur, a blur that happened to be a small animal of some sort. Intelligent, since it had been speaking, so a Being or something of the like, similar to a Fishman maybe?

"Shut- shut up, human!"

Fierce his words may be, the soprano pitch of them (not to mention how tiny the little thing was) did little to intimidate her. "Are you… the doctor? I- my Captain brought me here, right?"

"Y- yeah. I'm a doctor. Not- not the doctor, but a doctor." He blinked at her, making a poor show of trying to hide behind the door, seeing as half his body was sticking out in the open. "Is your… is your fever better?"

Squinting, Quinn looked the little doctor up and down, and her foggy mind – though a few paces behind – pieced the puzzle of him together. Tan fur, a blue nose, and antlers poking out of a big pink top hat. Small and fuzzy he may be, but the doctor was a walking talking reindeer.

"Why are you looking at me like that?"

"Sorry- didn't mean to stare. And yeah, my fever is-"

"Leave the girl alone, Chopper! And where's that book I asked for?"

The doctor – Chopper, apparently – squealed and ducked out of sight as an elderly woman flounced into the room, a bottle of wine in hand and wearing an outrageously gaudy set of bell-bottom jeans and a crop top. She blinked at the woman as she took a deep swig of wine and pressed a finger to Quinn's brow. "Just shy of thirty-eight degrees. Not bad," she declared, flipping up a small pair of round black sunglasses and smiling at Quinn. "Feeling better, eh girlie?"

"Well, I'm not dead. Bit warm still, but good."

"Ah, one look at you and I knew what kind of patient you were," she said, wagging her finger. "The name's Kureha, by the way. But you? You can call me doctor."

"Where are-"

"The secret to my beautiful, youthful appearance? That's what you're going to ask me about?"

"...What?"

"Ah. You're in a castle, at the top of Drum Mountain."

"That… wasn't what I was going to ask either. There was… my captain, Luffy. I think, and…" Quinn frowned, vaguely recalling the sight of Sanji as well. "Another with him. Are they alright?"

"Oh, they're fine. Just fine. Don't you worry about them," Kureha insisted, reaching over and rolling up Quinn's shirt sleeve. "Aha. See that?"

Looking down, she saw a strange, spotty bruise littering the meat of her shoulder. "That what nearly did me in? A… bug bite?"

"Spot on. A Kestia, they're called. Like a tick and a mosquito had a baby, more annoying than both the parents combined, and you managed to get bitten by the only one left in existence, seeing as they were thought to go extinct a century ago. Pretty impressive, if it weren't for the fact that if you were two days later in getting here, you'd be dead." Rolling Quinn's sleeve back down, Kureha patted her arm and then pulled a chair out, kicking back and taking another long gulp from her wine. "You're lucky I kept the antibiotics necessary to fight off the bacteria they carry."

Smiling to herself, Quinn remembered the foggy conversation she'd had with Vivi. "So you lot do know germ theory."

"That we do, Potter. That we do."

"Still getting used to…" Freezing, Quinn glared at the doctor, who was now giving her a knowing grin. The kind Ron used to wear when he'd cornered her in a game of chess and she'd just figured out how trapped she was. "How do you know my name?"

"Not going to ask if your friends told me?"

"They wouldn't use that name."

Swirling her wine, Kureha tilted her head back and forth, still holding that silly little grin. She then tapped her own forehead, mirroring Quinn's faded scar, and lifted the wine in mock salute. "Your godfather told me stories about you. A madman from another world who ended up crashing into my house from a thousand feet up. I never expected to find you on my doorstep, the girl I'd heard so much about."

Quinn gasped. "Sirius? Sirius Black?"

"One and the same. I thought he'd made it all up until he did things no Devil Fruit can do. Hard to argue with a man when he can follow through on his threat of turning you into a bug."

Nearly jumping out of her bed, Quinn sat on her knees and drew as close to Kureha as she could without falling onto the floor. Her heart leapt, childish, and a thousand questions that had been begging to be answered now had a proper target for the first time in years. "How is he? Is he- is he near here? Is Sirius-?"

"He died," Kureha said, her tone severe. She then took another sip of wine before passing the bottle to Quinn, who took it on reflex and stared, heart thudding painfully against her ribs, at the wall. "I'm sorry. Truly, I am. He died a long time ago."

"...How long?"

"A little over thirty years ago. He was ninety-five. Middle-aged, he said, for a Wizard."

"Azkaban."

"That prison did a number on him, but it couldn't take the joy out of that man."

Laughing quietly, Quinn held out the bottle, not once drinking from it. Kureha took it and set it aside, sighing loudly. "I really am sorry. He was a good friend of mine."

"It's fine. I… I've thought he was dead for years. Almost a decade now." Running her fingers through her hair, Quinn leaned against the headboard, one arm hanging off the end. "And then I ended up here, and I realized that he might still be alive. It was a shot in the dark, and I never really expected to find him, but I hoped – just a little – you know?"

"Believe me, I know. You're looking at a woman who's a hundred and thirty-nine years young. If anyone would know a thing or two about hope, it'd be me."

"I've met older."

Barking out a laugh, Kureha grinned at her. "I bet you have. What a strange, strange place the both of you come from. So far ahead, yet so far behind. But, I think you'll be happy to know one thing."

"Yeah? What's that?"

"Your godfather lived a happy life. A wife, a son. He built a family here."

Her gaze flicked back to the doctor, and Quinn's mouth dropped open, surprise and elation flooding her from head to toe. "He did?"

It was probably the best thing that could have happened to Sirius. Family, the one thing she knew he'd been searching for all his life. He'd found it in her father and grandparents, for a time, and when that was dashed away by Voldemort and the Dementors had stolen nearly all the happiness from him that they could, he'd escaped. Then he'd found Quinn. Protected her in his own, reckless way. And she'd thought it had cost him his life, that she was the reason he died. That family, the only thing he'd ever wanted, had been what killed Sirius Black. But he survived.

No. More than that. Sirius had lived.

"That's great. That… that's amazing," she breathed, her shoulders falling slack. "And… the rest of them?"

"How long have you been here? In this world?"

"A few months, maybe a bit longer."

"Ah, then you'll have heard of his son."

"Who? What's his name?"

"Well, Sirius couldn't go around calling himself Black anymore. Wanted to get rid of the name, shed the ghost of his parents, so to say. Lucky him that his wife had a name brighter than Black ever was." Raising an eyebrow and grinning wide, Kureha winked at Quinn. "Gol. Or Gol, D. if we're being specific. Tended to call himself Mr. Gold, he thought it rolled off the tongue better that way, much as Marina – his wife, that is – teased him for it. But I think you'll have heard of their baby boy. Roger."

Breath caught in her throat, Quinn took off her glasses, as if she could hear better were her eyesight to fail. Then she chuckled, a soft, quiet thing but no less hearty for it – and that laugh grew. Louder yet, her belly heaving, a few tears sprung to her eyes as she pictured him, wild haired and healthy, his beard gray yet no less full, and his clothes simple and clean.

Sirius Black, the proud, cheering father of the King of the Pirates.