Akamatsu Ken and Kodansha created and own Mahou Sensei Negima!

Winnie-the-Pooh was created by A.A. Milne and belongs to The Walt Disney Company... or Stephen Slesinger Inc... or the Milne estate... or... you know, whatever. They always can fight each other over who can sue me.

I make no money at all from this.

Thanks to Shadow Crystal Mage for proofreading and adding some jokes.

A British Affair of Sorts.

A special chapter for The Keys of the Kingdom.

"Oh, so you found the torn page after all!" Merlin happily said as Negi nodded, showing the old, yellowed sheet of paper he'd just brought into the ancient mage's shack. Archimedes simply huffed dismissively from his perch, ruffling his feathers and turning around to face the other way instead. Next to him, Fou snoozed."It wasn't too much of a hassle, I trust."

"Not at all," Negi said, "thanks to Yue's help," As the short librarian standing shortly behind him with the knowingly smirking Asuna blushed faintly and looked aside, the boy blinked as he was handed the rest of the old tome. "Sir? Why are you giving it to me?"

"Well, you recovered the page," Merlin explained, sitting back to stroke his long white beard, "so it's just fitting you should return it to the book, don't you think so?"

"Ah, of course, if you say so, Sir, that's a honor, then..." Negi nodded, flipping the volume open and quickly reaching the marked spot from where the missing page had been taken. Carefully, he placed the page back on its proper place, whispered a restoration spell under his breath...

And then a bright flash came out of the book, enveloped Negi and the two girls, and pulled them inside of the book, warping them away from that plane of reality.

"Really," Archimedes muttered grumpily while Merlin calmly picked the book up, "children just never should be entrusted to you..."

The mage frowned indignantly, adjusting his glasses and starting his re-read from Page One, as one should. "My, what a rude thing to say! I'm just giving them a whimsical breather fitting people their age, after all. That boy really needs it, if you ask me. That or get laid. He's much too old to still be a virgin"

"I'm sure Wart would have appreciated it, had you done the same for her," Archimedes kept on muttering.

"We had lots of whimsical harmless fun together too, it's just she was almost killed in each case!" Merlin argued, crossing his scrawny legs and better settling himself on the old couch. "No helping it, to deal in magic is to walk with death after all. But Negi already has enough of that on a daily basis as it is. Scary thing, realizing she was far better adjusted when she was his age. Makes one worry about his future..."

Not worried enough as to stop himself from enjoying his reading, however.

"Okay," Asuna sighed, placing two fingers to her forehead and rubbing the incoming headache. "So, where are we now?"

"Isn't it obvious?" Yue asked. "The book is A.A. Milne's Winnie-the-Pooh, so we must be inside of that book now."

"— since when was reaching that kind of conclusion count as 'obvious'?" Asuna asked.

Baka Black gave Baka Red a glare. "Asuna-san, you've been at this much longer than I have. Why do you still feel compelled to ask such things?"

"Well, Chisame's not here, so I got tagged. I mean, it's 'obvious' in the weird kind of 'logic' that applies to us," Asuna reasoned, "but you can't say it's 'obvious' as in 'obvious-obvious', which I thought still applied to you, Leader Black. Sorry to have reached a wrong conclusion, then!"

"That," Negi observed, impressed, "was a very Chisame thing to say, Asuna-san."

"Gee, thanks. Coming from you, I'll take it as a compliment," Asuna nodded.

"Why would you think it wasn't?" Negi said.

"Well, most people would think it means I'm annoying and have pimples."

"Oh, come now, you know that pimple thing is mostly in her head. I told her she should get a cleaner mirror and wipe the lens of her digital camera with a cleaner cloth."

"Mostly," Yue said, pointing at the grass where someone seemed to have written '100 ACRE WOODS' with thick black marker right before them, spanning almost half a block of fertile ground, "even leaving the 'Ala Alba-esque' sense of twisted logical clues like the flash of light and the smirk on Merlin-sensei's face, there's that, which is a landmark of Children's Literature come to life if I've ever seen one. And remember, I belong to that Club!"

This could be the homeland of any small boy, but it just happens to be home to a boy named Negi Springfield, a warm, grandfatherly voice of unknown origins began narrating from above them. Like most small boys, Negi Springfield had toy animals to play with, and they all lived together in a wonderful world of make-believe.

"Now, that narration doesn't belong in Milne's prose," Yue made a small frown. "It might be the storytelling is adapting itself to assimilate Negi-sensei as its protagonist, which I'm sure the real Christopher Robin Milne would have appreciated, but..."

"Now that he mentions it," Negi calmly said, looking at the idyllic wilderness spreading before them under a clear blue sky, "this does remind me a lot of some woods Anya and I used to play in during our childhood. I never played with toy animals, however. Somehow, I could never see the point..."

"Well, yeah, but then, you always were weird," Asuna shrugged, deciding the environment didn't look dangerous enough just yet. "They told me all about those visits to your flashbacks, you know. What kind of brat decides to become a supervillain when he's still six?"

In the lower right portion of the screen, Lex Luthor raised an eyebrow. "What? I am not a supervillain, I am the only man who can see the ALIEN MENACE for what it really is!"

"A what?" Yue asked as Negi coughed uncomfortably, and the Narrator chose to take pity on him by continuing, distracting Yue's attentions.

But his best friend was a bear called Winnie-the-Pooh — or, 'Pooh' for short. Now, Pooh had some very unusual adventures, and they all happened right here in the Hundred Acre Woods.

As they walked, exploring the area and looking for the next door to open or Princess to kiss so they could leave already (and it was disturbing in itself how that, too, seemed to be becoming routine), they saw a small yellow bear that seemed to be made of cloth, sitting on a tree stump and tapping himself on the head, making a great effort to remember or formulate something.

"Think, think. Think, think," the red-shirt-wearing bear repeated, still not noticing the presence of Negi and his companions. "Think, think." Steam was clearly emanating from his head, as if he were badly overheating something.

"..." Yue said. "A shirt? That's such a corruption of Ernest E. Shepard's perfect, lovely illustrations. The Heartless must have done a real job on this world."

"Heh. I think I like him, he reminds me of Maki-chan's mind in Satsuki's body," Asuna smiled before walking to the bear and casually greeting him, "Yo! What's wrong there, Pookie?"

"Pookie?" the bear blinked, slowly lowering a fingerless paw and tilting his head aside curiously. "I have no pookies, but if you had any cookies with honey, I'd be glad to take one or two or three..."

"Cookies? No biscuits?" Negi said, faintly dismayed.

"See, Sensei?" Yue told him. "This is nothing but a twisted mockery of all that is good and decent in Early 20th Century's Children's Lit."

"M-Maybe," Negi hesitated, "but even so... Ahem," he bowed for the small yellow creature. "Glad to meet you, I'm Professor Negi Springfield, and these are my students, Kagurazaka Asuna and Ayase Yue. May we help you in any way, sir?"

"Professor?" the bear very slowly blinked, and Asuna already was starting to change her mind on him. Not even Makie was THAT slow. Sure, she always reached the wrong conclusions, but she at least was quick to get there. "Kagura— Oh, no, no, you can't help me, you've made it harder instead," he lamented, going back to tapping his head. "Those are very big, strange words I don't know, and I already was having trouble thinking with the ones I know..."

"Well, and what words were those?" Negi asked, with the saintly smile of any teacher used to dealing with 'special' children (we're required by law to call them that, otherwise we'd use a word one letter shorter). "We could start from there, you know..."

"No, I don't know," the pudgy bear said, "because I forgot them! That's why I must think of them, except I can't, because I already forgot them, so I must—"

"Then they aren't the words you know either, are they?" Asuna asked. "Looking at it from that angle, maybe you should start thinking of 'Kagurazaka' instead. It may sound hard to you, but at least you haven't forgotten it yet, right?"

"Actually, I think I have," the bear said. "Kah-gooh—"

As Asuna facepalmed and resolved to never complain about Haruka's way with words again, a small pig hanging from a red balloon's thread passed by flying over them, as pigs tend to usually do. "Oh, hello, Piglet!" the bear happily waved up at the terrified tiny creature clinging for dear life. "Ah, that's right, I was thinking of that balloon! But, why was I—?"

"Pooh!" the piglet named Piglet wailed. "I told you to go look for heeeeelp!"

"Ah, that's right, that's why I was thinking of balloons!" Pooh nodded. "Thank you, Piglet, you've been a great help today..."

"P-POOOOHHHHHH!"

Negi sighed, pointed up with a finger, and said, "Ras tel Ma Scir Magister, Sagitta Magica."

A single, tiny arrow of compressed wind flew from his finger, pierced the balloon, and dropped the yelping Piglet, who was easily caught in the hands of the waiting Asuna below. "Th-Th-Thank you!" the little pig stuttered, giving the author a wasted opening for some sort of Porky joke.

"Well," Yue said, "at least this one sticks to the book's visuals better. Although his body should be blue..."

"Oh! The balloon!" a slooooowly shocked Pooh said, clumsily waddling his way to the remains of said flotation device on the ground. "You've popped the balloon..."

"Sorry our heartless supervillain friend popped your balloon, Bear-san," Asuna bowed. "We'll punish his wrongdoing as harshly as we can."

"I'm not a supervillain anymore, and why can't you use that kind of language for anything but teasing those who can't?!" Negi protested.

Pooh seemed to almost sob, just as slooooowly. "We, we needed the balloon to go visit the bees and take some hunny from them..." he said, pointing up at the large beehive on the branches of a big tree across the clearing. He smiled sadly. "But that's okay, I guess. We'll think of some other way."

In WHICH century?! Negi, Asuna and Yue thought all at once, but just nodded their silent agreement instead.

"By the way, I'm Winnie the Pooh, Pooh for short, and this is Piglet," he said. "Are you here to say goodbye?"

"Um, well, as a matter of fact, we were just passing by, so you could say..." Asuna began.

Negi discreetly silenced her with a gesture, then kindly asked Pooh, "Saying goodbye? Why, if we've just arrived?"

"Negiiiiiiiii," Asuna complained.

"Well," Pooh awkwardly scratched the back of his head, "looks like everyone's saying goodbye now. We'd take walks together, or play baseball with our unbeatable God. And everyday, I'd eat some hunny from Rabbit!"

"Honey from a rabbit?" Asuna asked, confused, and thus wasting the opportunity for a Bugs Bunny joke.

"Haven't you ever even watched a Pooh cartoon, Asuna-san?" the annoyed Yue asked her.

"I never watch gaijin anime, I only buy the merchandise!" the redhead said, then snapped her fingers and told the confused Piglet, "I think I have you on a T-shirt!"

"That couldn't be, since he's here, I think," Pooh pondered, scratching his own head. "But he and I are the only ones who are here, since everyone's leaving. After the nights became longer and darker, and the days shorter and, well, darker too, which I guess makes no much sense since if those are longer and these are shorter, shouldn't those be darker and these brighter? But anyway, now they can't give me hunny," this was ruefully said with a sad rubbing of his growling belly, "because they're gone."

"Rabbit, Owl, Eeyore, Kanga and Roo all moved away," Piglet sadly said, "and our unbeatable baseball God, too. I think it had something to do with some—"

"Professor!" Pooh suddenly said, as if finally enlightened by a great spark. "Professor, that's something that has something else to do with something called a school, isn't it?"

"Um, yes, it is," Negi confirmed. "Your, ah, unbeatable baseball God must have gone to school, like all children eventually have to. Although this being a British story, it should be football instead, or at least cricket..."

"Will the bastardizations never cease?" the upset Yue muttered. "They should just burn this book already!"

"Yue," Negi chided, "no advocating for the destruction of perfectly innocent people's homes, much less while we're in them, okay?"

She pouted. "I'm sorry, Sensei, but my blood boils at this profanation of a classic..."

"Yoo-hooo!" a feisty voice called out. "Now, not everyone's left! You're forgetting someone!"

Without even blinking, and barely shifting on his feet, Negi instinctively swatted away the colorful blur leaping from the bushes at him with a mighty roar and outstretched paws. It was only a second after he realized he'd just hit nothing but a plush tiger barely any bigger than Pooh, and he'd just sent him flying to bounce between trees like a rubber ball while Asuna and Yue sweatdropped. "GAH! I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry! I didn't mean to hurt you, but I've been trained, and whenever someone pounces on me, my first instinct is to—!"

"You and Evangeline have a lot to answer for," Yue told Asuna as the dazed, groggy tiger dragged himself across the grass to finally drop at Negi's feet with a dumb chuckle.

Asuna coughed into a fist, then formally told the animals, "Once again, we apologize for the evil of our supervillain friend."

"I just told you I didn't mean to!" Negi cried.

"Of, of course he didn't, 'cause otherwise I wouldn't have let him !" the tiger slicked his fake head fur, or at least the plush surface on his scalp, back as he stood on his tail, making a slight bouncing sound while he did so. "Tiggers are the best at not letting others do what we don't want us to get done to! Hello, I'm Tigger! T-I-Double Grr-Err! That spells Tigger!" he introduced himself, very proudly.

"Why hello Tigger," Pooh waved. "This is the Professor, and this is Ka-gooh-ra-zoo-ka, and this one's related to Owl, I think..."

"I'm an owl?" Yue asked, right eyebrow twitching slightly.

"Actually, I think it kinda fits, yeah," Asuna nodded, imagining an owl's outline over the small, compact figure of the taciturn girl.

Tigger wagged his thick eyelashes, edging closer to Asuna and wrapping his tail around her legs, much to her annoyance, while Yue made a tiny smirk of bemusement. "Hoo-hoo, pleased to meetcha, Kanga-rooh-zooka! And you're related to Kanga, I see," Here he slightly blushed and broke into short goofy chuckling before eagerly asking, "What were you doing here, with Ol' Pooh and Mr. Piggy-Wiggy?"

"And Mr. Balloon," Pooh said, sadly holding Mr. Balloon's mortal remains.

Tigger gasped in horror. "Who?! Who did such a malified thing?!"

"A supervillain," Negi sighed in resignation. "We, we were about to help Mr. Pooh get his hunny..."

At the reminder of that word, Pooh's stomach growled even harder now, and after a moment of doubt he unceremoniously threw Mr. Balloon's corpse aside. "I think," he said, "my rumbly tumbly would thank that."

"I see!" there was a glint in Tigger's eyes as he rubbed his chin, looking up at the beehive in analytical fashion. "Well, this demands a brave and bold strike plan! To steal, I mean, take the hunny, which is all icky but Ol' Pooh still likes anyway, we must be very ingenifirious and bravusculous! We'll draw a complex, expert plan to get pass the missus bees and get our hands on the icky sticky stuff! We'll... JUMP UP THERE AND TAKE IT!"

"Ras tel Ma Scir Magister. Aer et aqua, facti nebula illis somnum brevem. Nebula Hypnotica," Negi droned, casting a sleep-inducing mist that made the bees buzzing around the hive quickly fly down in spirals to end up sleeping on the grass. As the three animals blinked, he floated up, reached inside of the hive, quickly gathered some honey into his hands, and floated back down, offering the scoops of his raid for an eager Pooh to desperately slurp and swallow like a shameless addict. Seriously, it was disgusting, he was snorting it up his nose so it would go down when his mouth was full.

Tigger looked away in disgust, sticking his tongue out. "Or you could be a weird bore and just do that, instead. Bah! Bah! Phooey! Hunny's horrible after all!"

A thoughtful Yue stuck a finger in the honey and delicately licked it. "We should have brought some bread and a butter knife..."

Asuna simply shook her head in disapproving dismay. "And now you're stealing from poor, hard working creatures of God who need that to feed their bee babies. Your supervillainy knows no limits, doesn't it?"

"It's for a good cause!" Negi protested, trying to wipe his hands off on his sides, only to have Pooh hungrily slurp all over them instead. "Ah, well, thanks. Now, if there's nothing else you need from us..."

"How 'bout a bouncing contest, Flying Boy?" Tigger proposed, stomping up to Negi with a challenging smile.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Tigger, but I'm afraid I can't bounce..."

"Well, and I can't fly, so I'd say that makes us even," Tigger replied. "Except 'cause bouncing is better, so I win! 'Cause bouncing is what Tiggers do best, and there's nothing better than what Tiggers go better than anyone else!"

Piglet nodded, taking a wary look at poor Mr. Balloon. "Flying is scary, y-yes. Bouncing is not that scary, I think..."

"Seriously? Then let's go for a few bounces!" Tigger suggested.

"N-N-NO!"

Negi laughed softly. "Ah, you're all so funny. It's actually a shame we can't stay, but... we've got to get back to our friends, at home."

Pooh nodded, sloooooowly offering him a paw that Negi shook cordially. "We're your friends too, Professor. We won't forget you!"

"Promise?" Yue deadpanned before Asuna discreetly gave her a smack on the noggin from behind. "I mean, we won't forget what you did to, I mean for, classical British Literature either, Pooh-san."

"Who is Pooh-san?" Pooh asked. "Somehow, that almost sounds familiar..."

"Must be your brother or something," Tigger brushed it off, walking back to Asuna, wiggling his eyebrows again, and placing a clumsy wet smack on her hand. "I hope we'll meet again soon, Miss Kangaroo-zooka. Cute bells, very cute, by the way..."

"Ah-ha-ha, well, yeah, thanks..." Asuna laughed while Yue smirked at her again. "Don't you worry about your old friends either! I promise they'll get back as soon as we defeat the Heartless!"

"The what?" Piglet asked.

"I'm not sure they're related to this particular little crisis, Asuna-san," Yue cautioned, "I'd say it's rather like the physical manifestation of a childlike sense of wonder and imagination vanishing gradually after his exposure to—"

"No matter what, we'll beat them!" Asuna swore, pumping a fist up as the three of them disappeared little by little, bathed by a golden light. "Because we have a bigger, badder, even more vile villain than they do! We have Negi!"

"I'M NOT A SUPERVILLAIN!"

"Yeah, tell that to the bees!" Asuna countered, and then they were gone.

Tigger, Pooh and Piglet sat there, on the grass, looking at the place where they had been moments ago, and finally, Pooh said, slowly, "Want to go look for some snacks now?"

Negi waved good-bye, and so did they. And maybe they would never meet again. But, wherever Negi would go, and whatever happened to them on his way, he would always know, in that enchanted place on the top of the forest, a little bear would always be waiting for him.

"Oh, come on now," Asuna said as Negi wiped something off a corner of his eye, "We weren't there for even half a hour! Don't start acting as if we developed life changing ties with them! We're not Kirk Taichou-sama, we're not that good! I bet they'll forget us before their day is over!"

"Chalk it up to poetic license if you want, Princess," Merlin shrugged, closing the book. "But I know you're more of a dreaming romantic than that."

"There you go calling me 'Princess' again, just like the old demon..." Asuna muttered, looking aside. "No wonder Saber-san can't stand you..."

"I still say that was an abomination going against all there that is good and decent in the original books," Yue said, with the quiet bristling aura of a RUINED FOREVER Internet fangirl critic.

"Eh, you should see what they did to The Once and Future King, and yet I'm not complaining!" Merlin observed. "Now, do you want to hear another story before going back home...?"

Piglet waved to the readers. "Th-Th-Th-Th-That's all, folks! "

Oh look, we managed a Porky Pig joke after all.

The End.

…

Or Is It?

As they left the house, leaving the book all alone except for a sleeping Fou, there was a brief light. The book glowed.

Then from out of the book popped a little wide-eyed loli girl in a black dress. "Wah! Who keeps doing this? Alice keeps taking out the bad part, who keeps putting it back in?"

And so Nursery Rhyme reached into the book and pulled out several pages of an abomination, a twisted mockery that went against all that was good and decent about Early 20th Century's Children's Literature. Satisfied, she went off looking for candy, or possibly a tea party.