AUTHOR'S NOTE: this is my take on expanding the Winx Club story after the events of season 4 (diverging from the cannon timeline). Trying for a season-long arc, consistent with the tone of cannon seasons 1-3. Reviews welcome and appreciated!

No copyright infringement intended.

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Magical, action-y music as we zoom in on the girls zooming through the magical forest.

"Woohoo!" the Winx let out hollers of excitement as they swooped over the magical forest in their life-size paper airplanes, tugging the flaps left and right as they ducked and bobbed about the pine tree branches framing the road to Red Fountain.

Today was a special day, and all the girls were excited, because today was none other than the day of the Specialists' graduation. Of course, as the girlfriends of graduating specialists, the Winx had already secured their spots on the guest list, but as an added surprise, Red Fountain's Headmaster Saladin had sent specially spelled human-sized paper airplanes to pick up all attending students from Alfea on the day of the ceremony. Luckily for the Winx, they had gotten two crafts all to themselves and were now leading the pack of fairies on their way to Red Fountain.

"This is the best!" Musa shouted back to her friends, craning her neck so she could be heard above the wind. She was piloting the leading plane with Techna and Flora onboard and was quite frankly having the time of her life.

"Well, I'll say Saladin sure knows how to treat his guests with style," Techna agreed from behind her, tightly clutching her gadgets in one hand while she used the other to hold on.

"And what nice friends to guide us along the way," giggled Flora as she held out her hands to the paper doves that were flying alongside them.

They bobbed over another tree branch. From the plane beside them, Bloom and Stella waved at their fellow fairies. "Yoohoo!" called Stella. "You girls ready to par—gah!" She was cut off abruptly as an errant gust of wind whipped a chunk of her (formerly) perfectly groomed long blonde hair into her face.

Before the girls on the other plane got to finish hearing what she had to say, they pulled ahead as the clearing before Red Fountain came into sight.

"Hold on tight!" Musa called to her passengers as she went in for the landing.

Whoosh. She steered them in for a smooth descent, and they touched down without incident on the soft grass. Around them, the other Alfea fairies were landing their planes, too, and up the road near the gates, they could see guests arriving from other realms in various modes of transport.

With one mighty leap each, Musa, Techna, and Flora vaulted themselves over the edge of their magical craft, landing with soft thuds on the grass below. No sooner had they dismounted did the wings on their magical craft begin to shudder. Following the magic instructions with which Saladin had spelled them, the formerly platform-sized vehicle promptly folded itself up into a wedge no larger than a paper football!

"Neat!" exclaimed Techna, as she reached down to pick up the piece of magical handiwork.

"Well, yes points for style, but it loses points for what it did to my hair!" harrumphed Stella, as she and Bloom finally pulled up beside them.

"What? It's naturally windswept," Bloom joked, as they climbed down to join the other girls in the grass.

"Well, luckily, my magic's got it covered," Stella replied smugly, waving her hand to restore her hair back to normal. "Ah, look, good as new." The other girls giggled as they began walking towards Red Fountain together.

"Oh yes, what's magic when you can't use it to fix a bad hair day," teased Musa.

"Well, speaking of fixing, I believe we have a graduation to attend. Can't go in looking like we just walked off the streets now, can we," Stella declared, as they stopped outside the gates. She snapped her fingers again. With a glow of sparkling light, the Winx's outfits instantly became party-ready.

"Wow!" "Fabulous!" "Thanks, Stella!" The Winx chimed their thanks.

"Well, it's what I do!" Stella smiled proudly.

"Now, if only Layla were here to join us," Flora murmured softly, falling behind the group as she wistfully thought of their absent friend. For a moment, they all went quiet, lingering on the sad thought that the sixth member of their group wouldn't be joining them for the celebration.

Naturally, Stella was the first one to chipper back up, determined to regain the party spirit. "Well, then, we'll just have to party extra for her," she declared. Looping her arms through those of Flora and Bloom, the two of her friends that were standing the closest to her, she strutted forward purposefully.

"Now come on! Let's go find our seats and see our boys!"

Meanwhile, inside the Earth fairies' palace…

Clip. Clop. Clip. Clop. Those were the only sounds that could be heard as Nebula, High Queen of the Earth fairies, walked down the long, barren corridor underneath her palace in Tir Nan Og. Unlike the higher levels of the castle, which were always bustling with the activity of her subjects -from warrior fairies making their rounds to messengers hailing from the realms of the other Major Earth Fairies hoping for an audience, the underground levels rarely saw visitors at all, and seemed to maintain an air of if-not-eerie-at-least-unusual silence at all times.

This hallway, in particular, crossed Nebula's mind as perhaps the least-visited corridor in all the corridors of the castle, fittingly named The Last Hallway. There was only one reason anyone, fairy, wizard, or magical being, came here, and that was the reason she was there today.

Finally reaching the end of the hall, she stopped and turned to the figure beside her, who was so completely enveloped in her navy blue cloak that from the back it looked as if the night-blue swath of fabric had been gliding itself alongside the Fairy Queen.

Nebula reached her hand out and set it gently on her guest's shoulder. "You're sure you want to do this?" she asked again, one last time. Unsurprisingly, she received a resolute nod from beneath the hood.

"All right, then," Nebula nodded back. "I will be waiting for you at the other end of the hall."

And just like that, she left Princess Layla of Andros to enter the Garden of Asphodel all by herself.

Lots of chattering, hustle, and bustle can be heard around the girls as they maneuver their way around Red Fountain's stadium.

"Wow, what a turnout!" exclaimed Bloom, as the Winx shuffled to their row of seats. Her eyes panned over the expansive but already nearly packed stadium as she waited for the people in front of her to move forward. Surveying the crowd, she noted that there were people of all shapes, sizes, and modes of dresses already milling about in the stands, and more that just kept coming in a near-constant stream through the entrances.

"Yeah, it seems like there's someone from every corner of the magical dimension here," agreed Musa when they finally got to their seats.

"And not just someone," interjected Stella, leaning over to join the conversation. "Royal someones." Snapping into VIP-spotting mode, she scoured the crowd for persons of interest and began diligently pointing them out to her friends.

"Look, there's the archduke of Dolona, and that's the High priestess of Espero, and there's…" she petered off, distracted by a sight that caught her eye for a moment.

Seeing that her royal-spotting friend seemed preoccupied, Bloom waited a moment before changing the subject. "Well I can't believe the boys are finally graduating!" she said, still trying to get over the shock that she had been feeling all day.

"Tell me about it!" agreed Musa.

"It seems like just yesterday that we were tracking down trolls through the Black Mud Swamp together," Flora reminisced fondly.

"And evading the Trix in the magic-free wildlands," added Musa.

"And there was that time they helped us learn to ride wind-riders so we could pretend to be a biker gang—" Techna began, but Stella cut her off, rejoining the conversation.

"Oh come on, guys, stop talking about our lives as if we've already lived through our heydays!" she chided. "Yes, yes, those were all good times, but we have a whole wide future to think about! Think of all the endless possibilities there will be once our boys are finally free to be by our sides!" She splayed her hands out for emphasis.

Then, to further make her point, she gestured at Flora, "Take Flora for example, she and Helia are doing it right, travelling around the dimension after graduation, just the two of them!"

Flora blushed at the attention.

"And as for—"

Doo doo-doo doo! Luckily, the trumpets sounded before Stella could start her full-on commentary on any of her other friends' love lives, calling the stadium to attention.

Along with the rest of the attendees, the Winx girls hushed their conversation and turned to look at the center of the arena. Up until this point, the entire area had been covered by a large purple curtain-like cloth, mysteriously concealing all that was behind it, but now as the spotlight honed in on it, it whisked itself off to reveal Red Fountain's head teacher Codatorta and Headmaster Saladin standing atop a large, circular stage that temporarily stood in the place of Red Fountain's typical dirt dueling pit. They were immediately greeted with a deafening roar of applause.

"Now, now, please," Codatorta made a motion with his hands when the clapping had somewhat subsided. "Please save your real applause for our wonderful graduates!" This, of course, was met by even more deafening applause, which he graciously waited out once more so that the ceremony could continue.

Finally, he began, gesturing to Headmaster Saladin to take the floor, which, stepping forward, he did.

"As you know, our boys have trained tirelessly, under the most rigorous program for specialists in the entire magical dimension," he began.

"Every single Specialist graduating today has seen combat, be it the Battle for Magix or the race for the Codex," the Alfea fairies nodded in solidarity at this, remembering their recent ordeals.

"…or one of countless other missions which may have gone unsung but whose impact is seen in the safety and harmony we enjoy today," he continued.

"But every single one of them has come out the stronger for it. Now, after five long years at this institution, they are ready to graduate to their next stage in life, where I know they will carry the values of Red Fountain with them –honor, duty, and a dedication to protecting the Magic Dimension.

"No matter where they go from today, as future leaders, knights, and warriors," –the royal families could be seen puffing their chests out at this— "I know that these young men will do great things."

He stepped back, bowing his head to the applause that once again erupted his way.

"And now for our graduates…" Cordatorta began, just as the school shook with the crushing force of an earthquake.

Silence. Stillness. Opens up on Layla in the Garden of Asphodel.

Layla held her breath as she walked along the tiled garden pathway. With every step she took towards the raised circular platform in the corner of the garden, the pounding in her chest seemed to only grow louder, and she had to will her footsteps to stay on course.

Every once in a while, the occasional flower of asphodel would brush against the hem of her cloak, having overgrown its area of grass and begun to droop onto the path, but for the most part, she remained undisturbed as she carried along her way.

Finally reaching the large concrete podium that marked her destination, she began to climb, mounting the square-cut stairs carved into the side of the stricture. Using every ounce of her former princess training, she had managed to maintain a calm façade, both before the concerned and pitying eyes of her friends and classmates before she had left and in front of her former comrade-in-arms the fairy queen all the way up until their parting at the door. Now, however, Layla could feel her arms shaking beneath her long cloak, and she clutched tightly to the inside of the fabric to steady herself.

Pulling her hood off of her head, she let her long brown curls spill out just as she reached the final landing of the structure. Inadvertently, her breath hitched in her throat as she took in, for the first time, what was before her.

Within a ring of concrete stood a circular plot of soil just large enough for the single flower of asphodel planted at its center. Like the others, it was eerily still, as if it were preserved in a magical suspension that mirrored that of its owner. Although she had known and been expecting to see this sight, all of the mental preparation in the world wouldn't have been enough for her to prepare her for her own reaction.

"Nabu…" she choked out, before falling to her knees.

With a single word, it was as if the strength had been drained right out of her. Silently, with her arms flung over the concrete edge of her former fiancé's honorary gravestone, she began to sob.

Boom! The stands exploded as the monster catapulted itself over the edge of the school. From the moment it started climbing the already levitated foundations of Red Fountain, the stadium had descended into chaos. As entire magical families left and right hurried to teleport themselves out of there, the rest of the masses had begun to flee, taking their chances with the Red Fountain elevator that headed in the very direction the monster had come from.

All around her, Bloom watched as people swarm for self-preservation, running, shoving, and more than one disgruntled royal entourage resorting to aggressive elbow-jabbing in their quest to usher their royal heirs off the premises as quickly as possible.

"Girls, we just need to stay calm!" she called to her friends, as they tried to keep each other in sight amidst all the commotion.

Already, on the other side of the stands, the specialists were doing damage control, attempting to usher as many guests safely and efficiently out through the exits as possible, while Headmaster Saladin chanted reinforcement spells to hold the already splitting and unstable building intact.

A few magic users who had stayed behind were blasting spells at the monster, trying to slow it down as it made its way down the bleachers, crushing the stands in its path.

"We're going to have to transform!" yelled Stella, already entering her transformation. Without saying, the other girls followed suit.

"Enchantix!"

Enchantix transformation song.

Having transformed, the girls now hovered in the air above the monster, gaining a new vantage point on the action going on below.

"Ordinary spells don't seem to be working on it!" Musa yelled, as they watched the monster advance after only very briefly stopping to swat at a spell cast by a young Andros wizard.

"We'll have to try a convergence," Techna agreed, glancing worriedly over at the exits through which the specialists were still busy herding frazzled attendees. "And we'll have to not wreck the building while we're doing it."

"Ok, girls," Bloom said, honing her concentration as they formed a circle above the monster.

"Enchantix convergence!"

Boom! Their spell exploded and went hurtling towards the monster, which turned to watch as it came towards it with his red, reptilian eyes. His pupils widened just a fraction before it hit…

But as the light from the explosion cleared, the monster's head reemerged from its large, armor-like turtle's shell. Eyes squinting with more than distaste and annoyance this time, it turned towards the Winx girls, who were hovering with a look of oft-expressed surprise on their faces. If Bloom were to read monsters' facial expressions, she would understand this one to be a vow of a personal vendetta begun. She stiffened, still in shock that it had managed to survive their blast.

"That was our most powerful spell…" Stella said from behind her, sucking in her breath as the silent stand off went on between monster and fairies.

For a moment, all stood still.

"We need to recalibrate our next move," Techna said through her teeth.

But then, suddenly, the monster turned away, pushing over the columns of the stage as he went. With a mighty leap, he bounded right off the edge of Red Fountain and began to walk away.

Back at the Garden of Asphodel…

Layla wiped her tears away. Her cloak had come undone when she had fallen into her broken mess, and she now straightened it and refastened its clasp as she prepared to stand.

"Nabu, I," she had tried to start many times before, but she could never quite get the words out, even completely alone amidst the field of unmoving flowers. It was this day, one year ago that you proposed to me, she wanted to say. Do you remember that? Layla pulled her cloak on tighter. There were so many conversations that she would have with Nabu in her head, each one the perfect way to find closure, reminisce, and accept his death. She shrunk into herself at that.

Be strong, stay fearless, stop feeling sorrow, she thought to herself. Nabu wouldn't have wanted that. But just once, once, she wanted to allow herself to feel what she wanted to feel.

Finally, the words came out.

"Goodbye, Nabu," she said. "You were my first love, and I will always remember you." Then, with one last look at the flower that preserve his spirit for eternity, Layla pulled on her hood, descended the steps, and began her trek back to the outside world of Tir Nan Og.

The Winx blinked as the dust cleared. Even they had had to look away for a moment as the fumes of dirt and chunks of marble flew into the air.

When they finally landed on the ground, the tank-proportioned monster was already lumbering away into the distance, moving upright as its armor-like shell glinted sturdily on its back.

"What was that thing?" Stella took a moment to wonder, before remembering that her specialist-sized boyfriend had been standing near the foot of the column as it was falling.

"Brandon!" she called out, as she ran towards the exit. Through the debris and remaining dust clouds, he emerged.

"Oh Brandon, thank goodness!" she cried, leaping into his arms.

"Bloom? Bloom, are you all right?" Sky called out to his fiancée. "Yes, Sky, I'm right over here," Bloom, too, ran over to her man.

"Musa—" Musa turned to Riven, whose spiky updo emerged from behind the exit doors.

"Techna!" Techna turned to Timmy.

"Helia?" Flora waited for her specialist to step forward, before catching a movement near the base of the pillar. Running over, her heart nearly caught in her throat, but when she got closer she saw that he had escaped unscathed.

"Oh Helia, are you all right?" she called to him, as she helped him tug his light blue cape free from beneath the rubble. He nodded as she helped him stand up, her strong and silent warrior as always.

Codatorta looked on as the fairies and specialists hugged each other, eventually moving on from their significant others to reunite as a group.

He turned to the exhausted Headmaster beside him. "What was that thing?" he asked, reiterating Stella's question.

Saladin gazed gravely into the distance. "I do not know," he said.

On a planet far or not-so-far from here, two guards stood sentry at the mouth of a cave. Down many, many levels, behind magical ivory bars spelled with many layers of enchantments, an essence from within a pitch-black pit stirred. The gates holding the clearly magical presence behind it shook. And finally, seeping through a crack between the bars, a fragment seeped out the same size and shape as a wisp of smoke. Congealing on the ground outside the gates, the wisp formed into a young female figure. Pushing herself off the ground, she smiled.