The senshi headed back to Japan (by airplane to avoid the now traceable teleport) later that very day, waving goodbye to the others as they went to visit Mr Weasley in St Mungo's. It was a blissfully uneventful holiday and they had the chance to catch up with many of their friends from the area, including Umino and Naru. Usagi, naturally, spent about half of the holiday with Mamoru, who had taken time off from the job he'd found in the ministry. Luckily, no one seemed to have figured out that he too was a part of the silver millennium, meaning that little suspicion was cast on him at work.
Christmas day came and went far too quickly and within no time they had repacked their trunks (sent courtesy of Setsuna the day they had arrived) and were on their way back to the airport. They said goodbye to friends and family and boarded the plane together. Mamoru had chosen to get the plane with them rather than apparate back to London, so he and Usagi sat together by a window.
They spent one night in Grimauld place with an almost full compliment of Weasleys, Harry, Sirius and Hermione before catching the knight bus to the castle. They didn't have any problems getting to the castle this time around and were very soon closeted inside a packed Gryffindor common room celebrating the final day before the start of exams.
This, of course, meant that they were a little surprised to feel a slight warmth emanating from their pockets – they each pulled out a (fake) golden galleon, reading the days date and, along with a few other people in the room, jumped to their feet. Rei glared at the others, who included the twins, Ginny, Dean and Neville, to tell them to wait a little while to make it look less suspicious.
They then headed up to the room of requirement where, sure enough, Harry, Ron and Hermione were already waiting. Hermione smiled and ran over to greet them.
"We thought that we should probably start as we mean to go on," Harry explained as he and Ron headed over, "which meant a lesson on the first day. It makes sense – there are no other clubs or groups starting out this early."
Within quarter of an hour everyone had arrived, "right, we should start where we left of I suppose. Patronuses – most of you had already conjured one, and those who have need to test it against the real thing."
"What, you have a dementor hidden in this room." Smith asked sarcastically.
"No – but I have a boggart."
"Oh so much use – who in their right mind is more scared of a dementor than they are of you-know-who?"
"I am." Harry said, very quietly. It didn't matter – you could have heard a pin drop. "Lord Voldemort," many people shuddered, "can only kill you. A dementor forces you to relive the worst moments of your life, which I suppose wouldn't be so bad for a spoilt git like you, and they take away your soul – leaving you worse than dead. That frightens me more than Voldemort any day."
"He's right," Hotaru said from her corner, "death is nothing – the midnight gate is only a portal to the next stage, but a dementor can feed off your very existence. Once a dementor has your soul, there's no going on." There was silence once more.
"Anyway," Harry said firmly, "keeping track of that happy memory gets harder when there's a real dementor around. You have to concentrate, really concentrate. This is where it really becomes important how strong that memory is – if it isn't strong enough, the dementor will easily reach you."
Harry demonstrated by letting the boggart out of a trunk by the wall and fighting it back inside with his patronus. He then invited the members of the group to do the same with mixed success. For most of them he had to stay between them and the boggart to ensure it remained in the form of a dementor rather than (as an example only) McGonagall handing out bad homework.
Ami was the first senshi to try beat the boggart-dementor back. She, as all those before her had, first tried to face the boggart just herself, without Harry standing between her and the trunk, but the boggart became Galaxia with surprising speed and Harry was forced to leap between them. Ami concentrated hard and flicked her wand, allowing the sparrow to soar into the air. She concentrated hard on the very first time Usagi had sought her out at school and within mere moments the boggart was back in its place.
When Makoto moved forward, Harry was forced to leap before the Wiseman of Nemesis before anything serious happened. Makoto focused very hard on how she had felt when Usagi had sat next to her at lunch and the silver doe charged the dementor down.
For Rei, the dementor took the form of Mistress Nine before Harry intervened and she struggled to brush of memories of the vision of silence. The thought that remained strong in her mind was the feeling of belonging as she first fought beside Sailor Moon – that moment when something in her life had felt right.
When Hotaru moved towards the boggart, Harry did not have to move. The Dementor loomed above her, but with only the smallest flick of her wrist the black patronus forced it back.
People murmured conspiratorially as Usagi moved forward and raised her wand. The trunk creaked open and there was a flutter of movement. Harry registered that it was not a dementor straight away and began to move in, but slipped as he saw what lay before him.
It was a battlefield, but one on which the battle had long finished. Dead allies lay scattered everywhere – Mamoru, the senshi, Harry, Hermione and Ron. People gasped and put their hands before their eyes, sickened by the broken and bloodied bodies on the ground before them, their clothes ripped, their eyes blank and staring. Usagi, who didn't seem to be able to process that it wasn't real, sank to her knees on the ground, tears swimming in her eyes.
Harry finally made it to his feet and was about to leap in front of her but Minako got there first. There was the sound of wind and the bodies were sucked into a single place. People peeked out from between their fingers and breathed a sigh of relief, followed by sounds of puzzlement. There before them stood Minako, except that Minako was knelt on the ground by Usagi. She squeezed Usagi tightly around the shoulders and stood to face the boggart. She took a deep breath and moved forward, the boggart-Minako mirroring the movement exactly.
When she stopped, the boggart did as well. Minako closed her eyes and took a deep breath, composing herself for something. After a moment she blinked her eyes open and moved her hand forward, allowing the boggart time to do the same. Her hand shook as it moved up but she made a visible attempt to stop the tremors as her own fingers and those of her mirror self neared each other.
As her fingers touched those of the boggart there was a blinding flash of yellow light. For a moment, Usagi thought Minako had reached her cosmos form, but she dismissed that thought mere seconds later – this was something more than that. There was no henshin phrase this time and Minako seemed to be floating high above them all. Usagi shielded her eyes and squinted up to see the light attach itself piece by piece to Minako as she embraced the power. The boggart exploded in a gout of yellow sparks as the light reached its full intensity and Usagi was forced to close her eyes to protect them.
The light faded slowly and Minako fell gracefully to the ground, landing on feet now clad in orange high heels. Her fuku was very different to any they had ever seen before. It was less like a uniform and more like an orange dress that ended a short distance above her knees with a yellow skirt (split at the front) on top. It was still white across her chest and the bow fixing her yellow sailor collar was gone, replaced by an ornamental pair of what looked like butterfly wings. Her yellow choker now bore the sign of her home planet and her tiara was now far simpler – golden beads supporting a single topaz that hung where the gem on the tiara had previously rested.
She looked up and smiled at her fellow senshi, tears in her eyes. She raised her wand in a hand covered by a white glove and flicked it in a figure of eight movement. Instead of the dove they had seen previously a very tiny spec of silver emerged from the end of her wand. The butterfly shone brighter than any patronus they had ever seen and the pure energy that radiated out from it brought a smile to all of their faces. The butterfly flew around their heads as the inner senshi and Usagi converged upon Minako and held her tightly, many of them crying, all of them happy. Out of the shadows Setsuna watched, a smile playing across her lips. Hotaru moved silently to her side.
"You knew, didn't you?"
"Yes. Sailor Venus needs to be strong for the times ahead – her cosmos form would not have been enough. She needed to confront her fear to reach this form and the best way she could do that was to believe it a reality."
"And the change in her patronus?"
"A side affect. I would not be surprised if some of the other senshi experience the same thing when they reach this form – their final form. It is a realisation of sorts, a finding of their inner self."
"And you and I? Can we ever reach this form?"
"You will, one day. I cannot see for myself, you now that."
"Of course not." Hotaru hesitated, "she will understand, I think. Her greatest worry this whole time was that she would be unable to protect Serenity-"
"She wont." Setsuna said bluntly, her eyes, the only part of her that betrayed her true age, glittered with unshed tears, "none of us will. In the years to come Usagi must defend herself. The only thing we can do is make sure we're here for her when she gets back." They watched as the inner senshi disentangled themselves and wiped their eyes.
"Then there truly are dark times ahead," Hotaru whispered.
"You worry about her, don't you?" The voice chimed through the vast halls of the castle, "I can tell. You are forever gazing at the stars, even though it's to far away to see."
"Am I really that transparent? I should be worrying about you… that's my job isn't it?"
"Your job, as you call it, is to protect those close to your heart. If she means so much to you then you should be by her side when this new evil approaches."
"Kakyuu…" Seiya turned away from the window to look at her princess, "I need to be here with you. If this evil covers Earth there's no way it'll stop there. Setsuna said as much."
"You know as well as I do that Setsuna twists the truth."
"Yes, but she always does it with good reason… I don't know…"
"You want to be near her though?"
"That doesn't mean I need to be though," Seiya said, turning to the window, "she has Mamoru and the senshi. You just have the three of us at the moment."
"I can protect myself."
"You shouldn't need to though," Seiya said shortly, pushing herself away from the window and storming out of the room.
"So… what senshi form is this?" Minako asked once most of the group had gone (most of them were used to senshi developments ending meetings at this point).
"It… well I suppose technically it isn't." Ami said, slightly dumbfounded.
"What's that supposed to mean?" Minako asked, frowning.
"It's your final form?" Ami said, gazing down at the screen of the Mercury computer as though she almost didn't believe her eyes, "You'll keep increasing in strength and stuff, but this is your last ever henshin."
"Well… wow." Minako was for once lost for words.
"That's one way of putting it," Rei said, eyebrows raised, "even Usagi hasn't managed that one yet!"
"Way to go Minako I say," Makoto said firmly.
"Yeah," Usagi agreed, smiling from ear to ear. "Let's go back to the dormitory, we should celebrate! A party or something."
"We heard that!" George said as he and George appeared from somewhere.
"Geez watch it!" Ron said after he jumped about a mile in the air.
"Whatever little bro," Fred said, waving him aside, "a party cannot be a real party unless we help organise it, which means it must be held in the common room."
"He's got a point," George said, "I mean, come on – the whole tower can celebrate that way."
"Well who are we to deprive them of a party," Minako giggled, truly happy for the first time in months.
Rei dreamed again that night. She dreamed that she was walking down the corridor in the department of mysteries over and over again, but something just kept stopping her from reaching the door at the end.
She began to get curious – just what was it through that door?
:) Was anyone starting to get worried about Minako? I hope so, where's the fun otherwise?
I may even start TRYING to leave you on cliffhangers, as I'm feeling evil and just haven't done it - given how far through this is that is an issue that needs addressing. XD