Dance of the Fairies, Flight of the Phoenix

Chapter 6:- Animal Madness

"He is…" Ron said jerkily, tearing the piece of paper in his hands in half "the world's…" he tore it into quarters "biggest…" he tore it into eighths "git." And he threw the pieces of paper onto the common room fire.

The atmosphere in the room was now a somewhat sour one, though Ron tried to brush it off as if nothing had really happened by trying to get back to the homework that they had spent pretty much all day doing. It was now past midnight and Harry, Ron and Hermione were the only ones still up. Hermione didn't actually need to be but she'd finished knitting another set of socks she was going to leave out for the House Elves and had been contemplating going to bed before Ron had received a letter that took him completely by surprise from his older brother Percy.

Not that Percy had had anything Ron or the others actually wanted to read. And as Hermione offered to look over their homework so that they could finish it sometime before the sun came up and they had to get to Monday morning classes, Harry felt like he was off in another world.

Everything had changed so much. It seemed like every single year he had been here, the people around him seemed to think of him differently.

The first year had had everyone gawking at him for pretty much its entire length, staring at the Boy-Who-Lived that had suddenly sprung back into the Wizarding World, although from Harry's perspective it had been like the Wizarding World had sprung onto him.

The second year had had a very large population of the school thinking that Harry was downright evil and responsible for petrification attacks on other students and castle residents. It seemed practically everyone outside of Gryffindor had been convinced he was the Heir of Slytherin after Harry had accidentally revealed to everyone that he was a Parselmouth and could therefore talk to snakes. Even he hadn't really known about this talent until then.

The third year seemed to be the best one as far as he was concerned. People no longer believed he was evil but they did all believe him to be a hero again, but for most the novelty of his presence at the school had worn off and for the most part Harry felt slightly ordinary.

Then the fourth year had come along and rather ruined that after he'd been selected for the Triwizard Tournament. A huge number of the people at the school thought that he was a cheater and glory hound to begin with and then when he started doing relatively well in the tournament many of them started to hero-worship him more than ever.

And now that Voldemort had returned, most people thought him to be mad or unbalanced for continuously insisting that he was telling the truth. And for Percy Weasley to be one of them… well that hit him hard. Sure, he'd never got on with Percy nearly as much as the rest of his family and Percy had turned against all the rest of them as well, but he'd lived with the guy. Had Percy ever actually seen him do anything he considered unbalanced or did Percy just believe that he was because the Ministry did?

In reality, five years was not actually that long. How could so many people's perceptions of one guy change so many times throughout that time period?

And not for the first time, Harry really wished he could be considered the ordinary, average wizard that he personally believed he was.

But despite everything people had believed about him, not a single one of them had ever believed that. He was fairly certain that Ron and Hermione, even though they didn't treat him any differently from anyone else they knew, didn't consider him ordinary either and they were the ones who knew him best.

But his attention was diverted away from his internal mulling by Ron tapping on his arm while Hermione looked over what they'd written and occasionally scribbled at something with her quill.

"You alright, mate?" Ron asked, with concern.

"Yeah… Yeah, I'm fine," Harry nodded, though it wasn't exactly true and Ron could tell.

"Don't let Percy get you down, Harry," Ron insisted. "I don't think there was a single thing he wrote in that letter that wasn't total crap. You remember what he called Umbridge? A delightful woman? I mean, really? Anyone who can possibly think that about Toad-face has to be completely barmy. I dunno what the heck's going on in Percy's head right now he's just proven how much of an idiot he is in that letter."

Harry chuckled but only slightly. "Yeah, but its not just him, is it Ron? It's not just him by a long shot."

Ron didn't really seem to know what to say to that but Hermione looked up from what she was doing and said, "We know you're right, Harry. We know that you're telling the truth. And one day, everyone else will too. One way or another, they will find out you were right all along and then they will be more than sorry."

"But I don't want them to be sorry. I want them to believe me now so they can help us actually do something," Harry griped. "I don't want to wait until Voldemort storms the Ministry for them to finally understand that I'm not lying." He ignored the flinch that came from Ron when he said the Dark Lord's name.

Hermione sighed. "Well, we'll just have to bear it until we can actually figure out a way of proving it and getting your story out."

Harry sighed and nodded, knowing Hermione was right, but hating it all the same. And he was rather grateful when Ron tried to change the subject by saying, "So, you think the Quidditch pitch will be fixed before our next practice?"

Harry actually laughed properly this time. They hadn't seen what had happened on the pitch but earlier that day Angelina Johnson had come rushing into the common room, looking decidedly unsure whether she should laugh or worry.

"The whole school's talking about it," she had declared to the both of them. "Apparently there was some kind of freak windstorm near the pitch when the Slytherin team were practicing. Many of the players sustained some pretty big bruises and I think Warrington's broom was snapped in half somehow. I saw Malfoy's broom too - it looked more like a mop than a broom with those flattened bristles. Good luck being streamlined on that, Malfoy."

She'd gone on to explain how apparently a large chunk had been torn out of the stands, practically being reduced to rubble in one place. Harry could tell that while she thought it amusing that the Slytherin team, who had been so mocking of them the previous day, had got rather a big comeuppance today, she was clearly worried about whether something similar would happen to them the next time they went out training.

But Harry was quick to point out that it had never happened before and it probably wouldn't happen again.

"You're right, of course," Angelina agreed. "I hope you're right though. We really need things to kick off in our next session."

Ron had winced visibly at this, but Angelina didn't appear to notice. Harry had decided to refrain from comment about it. He knew Ron was blaming himself for everything that had gone wrong in the last session and indeed his nerves had caused him to mess up several times but Harry knew that telling him otherwise would not help. Ron would know he was only saying that out of pity.

Now that Ron had brought the topic up again though, Harry nodded and said, "I reckon so. Things get fixed pretty quickly around here. And when we go back out there we'll nail it. Maybe we should learn how to cast some kind of wind spells in case Malfoy shows up again. Maybe we can make him afraid to come near the pitch because every time he does he gets blown off his feet."

Ron laughed out loud at this. "What a unique way to eliminate the competition. I wish I could have seen his face when he got blown over though. I wish I could have seen all of their faces."

Hermione made some kind of disapproving noise in the back of her throat before she placed her quill down and said, "Well, here's some improvements I've made for you. Soon as you get that done you'll finally be able to get to bed."

"Eh, we've got History of Magic first thing tomorrow. I can always catch up on sleep in that," Ron pointed out, and Harry laughed.

Hermione though, as expected, disapproved again, and opened her mouth to tell the both of them for about the three-hundredth time that they should actually make an effort to listen to the boring Professor Binns when suddenly a hissing, "Psst…" interrupted her before she could start.

"Oi, you three," a familiar voice whispered. "Down here. In the fire."

"Sirius!" Harry blinked the moment he spotted his godfather's head sitting calmly amongst the flames still burning faintly in the hearth next to them. This wasn't the first time that Sirius had contacted him this way. It was a special form of communication that involved Floo Powder. Sirius had told him that you had to have special access to fireplaces in the Floo Network granted by the Ministry in order to transport your entire body from one fireplace to another but anyone could use this head only way of communicating to any fireplace in the network. That meant that Sirius could talk to them in this manner but could not transport himself directly into the Gryffindor common room in this way.

"What are you doing here?" Harry asked, looking up slightly as if to make extra sure that there was nobody else in the room. His Godfather was, after all, considered a dangerous criminal by most everyone in the Wizarding World even though he had not actually committed the crime.

"Why else would I pop into your fireplace by to talk to you?" Sirius snickered. "I've been appearing for about half a second every hour, hoping you'd stay up when everyone else had gone to bed. Looks like I was lucky. Cramming in all your homework at the weekend last minute when you should be doing it in the week, Harry? Naughty, naughty."

Harry laughed. "Don't tell me you didn't do the same."

"Actually I rarely did my homework on the weekends either," Sirius grinned, and both Ron and Harry snorted at this, while Hermione immediately started fretting about what if someone had actually seen him there when he'd been checking? Which was, admittedly, a valid concern.

But Hermione dropped her protests quite quickly after the conversation started, far more interested in hearing what he actually had to say. Harry's lightning scar, his trademark 'gift' he'd received from Voldemort that fateful night when the Dark Lord had killed his parents and then tried to kill him when he was a baby, had recently hurt when their 'delightful' new teacher, Umbridge, had touched him to look at the back of his hand in her torturous detention. Harry had written a coded letter to Sirius about it and Sirius was now replying, assuring Harry that he didn't think Umbridge was one of Voldemort's followers - a Death Eater - but agreeing that she was definitely a horrible woman.

Nothing that Sirius had to say made Harry feel any happier. Sirius cycled through Umbridge's hatred of part humans, including werewolves and how her actions had made it increasingly difficult for Remus Lupin to find work, which made all three of them scowl.

And of course the information that Cornelius Fudge thought Dumbledore was going to start training his students to combat the Ministry in order to seize power… how much more ludicrous did it get than that? Preventing them from learning defensive magic right at the time when they needed to learn it the most… Harry had met Fudge before and while he'd always seemed a bit of a bumbler to him, he'd been sure Fudge was a pretty decent bloke. So much for that.

And there was no news of Hagrid either, which was nothing but worrisome despite Sirius' assurances that the half-giant gamekeeper could take care of himself.

But it was after this that Sirius hesitated slightly, an action that caught the attention of all three of the fifth-year students.

"There's something else, isn't there?" Hermione guessed, fiddling with the hem of her robes.

"Well, yeah…" Sirius grinned lopsidedly. "Not really sure if I should be telling you this one since its not technically Order business at this stage but… you heard about those bright lights that appeared in the sky yesterday, I assume?"

"Yeah, we heard about them?" Ron blinked. "What have they got to do with anything?"

"As far as we know, nothing, but the Ministry actually found one. Your brother, Bill, was called to the scene actually Ron and he says it looked like some large, glowing orb with a funny looking symbol on it. He said that it was like some kind of shield, but totally impenetrable - he couldn't find a way to break it."

"You serious?" Ron's eyes widened. "Bill was boasting to us just last summer about the tomb of this ancient pharaoh guy that had had curses placed on this shield that tried to turn anyone that entered into crocodiles and how he managed to take it down without breaking a sweat."

"Nevertheless, he could not break through this one. But the orb thing isn't really the issue here. It's what happened after that. Kingsley and Tonks were there with Bill at the site before they suddenly got called away. Apparently there was a magical attack of some kind on a Muggle Bank in some small village on the Isle of Skye today."

"The Isle of Skye? But that's pretty close to here," Hermione gasped. "Was anybody killed?"

"Was it Death Eaters?" Harry agreed instantly.

"I don't know the details. Kingsley and Tonks are the only ones who could tell you at this stage and they haven't come and told me anything yet. They might still be working for all I know. Sometimes something like this can take a while to sort out. But that's not the only funny incident that took place in that area recently. Ron, your brother Charlie was called back into the country to head out there to investigate involving two Hebridean Black dragons."

"What kind of incident?" Ron asked with curiosity. "Is Charlie going to be around long? I'd like to see him."

"I don't rightly know how long he'll be around but… apparently something attacked the two Dragons. And actually managed to wound them too. You'll probably see it in tomorrow's papers - Charlie said he had to talk to the press about it."

"Something attacked dragons?" Ron's eyes were wide. "Who or what in their right mind would willingly go up and attack a dragon?"

Harry could easily share this sentiment. After all, he'd been pitted against a vicious Hungarian Horntail in the Triwizard Tournament last year and was in no hurry to repeat the experience.

"Charlie said that one of the guys who was there was babbling on about some giant cat with wings," Sirius pulled a face. "Though it sounded like he'd been inhaling Bubotuber pus fumes to me. Look, the details aren't really important though I think Molly would kill me if she found out I'd been telling you this when it might not even be a Death Eater thing but… I guess I feel I should warn you to be on your guard. Dumbledore's called an emergency Order meeting to take place tomorrow night and, well, I'm sure that you'll be safe in Hogwarts but… well…"

The three of them looked at each other wryly. It was true that Hogwarts was infinitely safer than most places, but it had been proven a few times over the years that it was not infallible. Sirius was the only person that had technically broken in back when they had thought he was actually the enemy, but still, it was possible.

"You reckon you could find a way to tell us what happens in the meeting?" Harry asked.

"Depends what Dumbledore says, Harry, but it may be nothing you need to worry about at all. At this stage even I don't know the details. I'm just giving you a heads up. Anyway, let's change the subject - when's your next Hogsmeade visit?"

Sirius' suggestion that he might be able to come out in dog form to visit them was quickly shouted down, and they could all tell he was more than a little disgruntled when he left the fireplace. But they were all tired and didn't really have the time to dwell on it, so instead they finished up on the essays and headed to bed.

Despite his fatigue, Harry lay awake for a while, staring up at the canopy of his four-poster bed but not really seeing it. It was killing him, not knowing what was out there. Not knowing what Voldemort was doing, or what the world was doing? Before he'd always had the events in school to keep him occupied, but now everything was moving on a much bigger scale and the events of the school were only a mere part of it.

He found himself almost hoping the nearby incidents actually were Death Eater related. If they were then at least there was a chance Voldemort could be exposed soon and the could actually start opposing him properly instead of enduring all this pointless idiocy from the Ministry.

But who was it if it wasn't Death Eaters?

Just when was he going to get the answers he sought?

Eventually though he managed to doze off though he was not ready at all to start the second week of school when he did wake up some hours later. The first week had been such a disaster. Was the second one going to be any better?

"Have you got anything yet, Gajeel?" Charla asked for what may have been the tenth time that morning.

"Would you quit asking me that?" Gajeel grunted irritatedly. "If I get something then I'll tell you that I've got something. Until I get something then I'll zip it. Asking me if I've got something is pointless, okay?"

"Gajeel, don't yell at her," Happy protested, shifting his grip on the large Dragon Slayer.

"I ain't yelling," Gajeel shook his head. "But I gotta job to do and badgering me about it is not going to help."

"Of course, of course. I'm sorry," Charla wrung her paws together. "It's just… I don't think I've been separated from Wendy for so long before. Not since the day I hatched."

"I haven't been separated from Natsu for this long either," Happy's tail sagged slightly. "And we don't have any idea where he is at all."

"We'll cross that bridge when we come to it," Mavis said. "For all we know right now, Natsu may be safe and sound inside one of my Fairy Spheres. In fact, he probably is."

"I know," Happy nodded. "Wendy's the priority now."

"What if we've gone the wrong way though?" Charla pressed her ears flat against her head in agitation. "She could be stranded on some rock way out to sea waiting for us and we wouldn't have a clue."

Gajeel grimaced and tried his damnedest not to let Charla's fretting get on his nerves, which was far from easy for him. Truth be told, he was rather worried himself, though of course he wouldn't admit it to anyone, not even to Lily. The group had reached what appeared to be mainland late last evening and spent the majority of last night in a cave, forcing Charla to relax and rest, before continuing again at first light. Now they were flying up the coast, trying to locate the missing Sky Dragon Slayer somehow.

Gajeel hadn't known Wendy for very long in the grand scheme of things, but while everyone in the guild were now, at least somewhat, his friends, she was one of the few that he could really consider himself kinda close to. When he'd first met her he had tried extremely hard to hide his jealousy at the fact that both she and the Salamander had a cat, but she had not been in the least bit intimidated by him. She'd been extremely eager to get to know him, what with him being another Dragon Slayer who's Dragon foster parent had vanished on the same day as her own.

He'd been rather resistant to these attempts to befriend him at first but the kid had a good and honest heart and she was vastly more mature than the Salamander, despite being five years younger than him. She wasn't extremely irritating, like a lot of kids her age were. So he found himself letting her sit nearby and talk to him now and then, particularly after that whole Edolas thing where his respect for her Support Magic had grown phenomenally.

Mirajane had teased him that he was ruining his lone wolf image by taking care of a little lamb like Wendy. He'd threatened to manacle her to the wall and taking her place on the stage next time she was due to sing, like he had before, if she ever said that again. But Mirajane had just smiled and winked at him before going on her way.

On the whole though, Gajeel was still something of an outsider in the guild. He'd won the trust of all its members now, but very few of them actively tried to talk to him on a regular basis. Sometimes one of them would sit across from him, exchange a few words, ask how he was, but it usually didn't take them too long to move on again. Aside from Wendy and Lily, the main one who did was Juvia, whenever she wasn't watching Gray, which was most of the time. But when she wasn't, his fellow former Mage of Phantom Lord was pretty good company.

And while he'd probably throw a punch at most anyone who said to him that he and the Salamander were getting on better, he'd have to admit it was somewhat true. Their previous antagonism had evolved into more of a friendly rivalry. They still insulted and beat the crap out of each other whenever they got the opportunity but that was pretty much the same thing Salamander did with Gray and they were close friends too under the surface.

Was there anyone besides them he was really close to?

Well… there was Levy he supposed.

Gajeel shook his head to derail that thought process before it could go any further. He didn't want to think about Levy right now.

And it was not because he was worried, damn it! He just… had better things to think about right now. Yeah, that was it. He wasn't worried about Levy. No way. Nuh-uh…

Although… he had been her partner for the S-Class exam, and although that had been cancelled, he did feel responsible for her because of it… She'd been right there next to him, holding his hand when Acnologia had fired on them and then…

He shook his head even harder. Gods damn it all, he was not worried about her. He needed to worry about Wendy - the other girl who had been holding his hand right before… or six years before… he'd been separated from everyone.

Focus on Wendy, focus on Wendy, focus on…

He blinked, as a sudden familiar smell began to tickle at the edge of his nostrils. He looked up, wrinkling his nose and narrowing his eyes as he tilted his head from side to side, trying to pick out where the scent was coming from. His eyes locked on the mouth of a wide river that they were approaching now and he pointed towards it. "Head down there," he said.

"Why?" Charla asked sharply. "Do you have something?"

"I might do," Gajeel grinned. "Let's get in closer."

Happy responded hurriedly and whooshed downwards, Charla and Mavis hard behind them as Gajeel's sniffing became practically a continuous noise. The lot of them hovered over the mouth of the river, the three Exceed watching Gajeel's studded nose twitch, before a wide smirk split across his face.

"Got her," he said. "That's Wendy's scent alright. She went up this river."

"Are you sure?" Lily frowned.

"Why would you doubt me?" Gajeel asked. "I know the girl's smell and that's definitely it coming from this river."

"Forgive me, Gajeel but I had always heard that when people were in water, tracking scent was next to impossible," Lily said. And he had good reason to think that. Exceeds had a better sense of smell than a normal human's but it was actually much weaker than that of a normal cat's. As was their eyesight in low light. But of course they could also speak and fly whereas a normal cat could not.

When it came to scent tracking though, Exceeds were really not that great at it.

"Let me guess," Gajeel rolled his eyes. "You've read in fiction books all these scenarios where someone's managed to escape from being scent-tracked by going through a small stream or something. As if suddenly there's no possible way for dogs or whatever to follow them after they do that?"

"Well, yes," Lily nodded. He had done some reading during his downtime in both Extalia and the Royal City of Edolas alike and fiction stories in both often had that exact thing.

"It's bollocks," Gajeel replied, simply. "A stupid thing that authors made up to give the hero the chance to escape from their pursuers. Do you know how scent trails actually work?"

"I have a feeling you're going to tell us," Lily chuckled.

"Scent trails are formed of dead skin cells," Gajeel did indeed tell them. "Every living thing is shedding millions of dead skin cells at all times and those skin cells have the same scent as the person, so they leave a unique trail behind. Going through water doesn't eliminate the smell - the smell lies on top of the water. Sure, running water can take the skin cells and therefore the smell downstream, but it sure as heck doesn't stop you from leaving the trail on the bank when you get out again so unless its a super wide river anything with a nose like mine could pick out where they went without even having to cross."

"Well, I guess you really can learn something new every day," Charla remarked.

"That does make sense," Happy nodded. "That's how Natsu managed to track me and Erza to the Tower of Heaven after we were kidnapped by Erza's old friends. The tower was out on an island in the middle of the ocean and he still knew which way to go."

"Geehee!" Gajeel laughed. "Never underestimate a Dragon Slayers nose."

"So Wendy went up this river for certain," Mavis nodded.

"Definitely. And quite a way up it I'd say. I reckon the smell's over a day old and its been carried downstream over the course of that day."

"Then let's not waste any more time," Charla insisted. "Let's head up the river until we find the point where she got out."

"That's right. We're on the right track," Happy nodded, and the group swooped down low to the water, which ran between two large hills, following its meandering path with tilts of their winks, Charla smiling for the first time in days, before a sudden thought occurred to her and she asked. "Gajeel. Is she okay? Can you tell from the scent?"

"I can't smell her blood, so she's not been harmed enough to make her bleed. And I don't smell death either. Besides, I already told you to stop with your fretting. I said the girl's tough. She's alive. I know it."

Charla felt herself smile again in spite of Gajeel's slight snap at her, and powered her wings to pile on all speed. "We're coming, Wendy. We're on our way."

Aberforth Dumbledore had not been entirely comfortable with Wendy coming out into the front with him when he opened up the bar that morning. He was well aware that his bar usually attracted far more shady kinds of character than the Three Broomsticks down the road did, but it was amazing the kinds of things you could overhear in an environment like that. Aberforth didn't really care who came in as long as he earned a decent amount from it, enough to keep on living.

But suddenly he had a charge to protect, and she was a charge that reminded him a great deal of his long dead sister, Ariana. Naturally that meant he didn't want to put her in any situation that could cause her harm.

And yet Wendy insisted that she be helpful in some manner and Aberforth could only stand behind the bar and watch in slight amazement as Wendy carried a tray of Butterbeers in two hands over to a group of three witches, one of which might have actually been a hag, and placed it on the table.

"Thank you for coming," Wendy smiled at them. "Please enjoy your drinks." And she picked up the now empty tray and skipped back to the bar with it. Seriously, when had been the last time anyone had ever skipped inside this bar? Aberforth didn't think it had ever happened once.

"How do you make such a good waitress? What are you, twelve?"

"I've actually never done this before," Wendy said. "But I've seen my friend Mirajane-san do it all the time, so I'm trying to do what she does. And what she does is smile and say nice things a lot so that's all I'm trying."

"I'm not entirely sure whether I should ask you to stop or not," Aberforth shook his head. "On the one hand your smiling definitely brightens the place up but on the other this isn't really that kind of bar. You might disturb the customers a little with that perky attitude."

"Oh," Wendy murmured, looking around at the place and registering that it did indeed not look like the pleasant, open environment that Fairy Tail was. "Okay… I'll just help with glasses and dishes and stuff then."

"Wouldn't most kids your age just want any excuse to skive off work?"

"I like being useful," Wendy shrugged, but smiled, putting down the tray and taking up a dishcloth. "And… well…"

"Well what?" Aberforth raised a brow.

"I want… to keep myself busy," Wendy murmured. "I want to… keep my mind off my friends if I can. Because if I think about them, I'll just worry about them and if I just worry about them…"

Of course, Aberforth nodded, kicking himself for not realising it sooner. He quickly coughed before Wendy could dwell on her missing companions too much and said, "Well, there won't be any slackers staying under my roof. Those flasks of Butterbeer need cleaning out. And then later you can try and milk the goats like you said you would."

"My pleasure," Wendy nodded and hurried to carry out his instructions.

But even as Wendy washed her pots, Gajeel and the Exceed flew upriver and Harry and his friends headed down to breakfast, a quite different set of events was beginning to unfold over five-hundred miles to the south.

Resting between the cities of Southampton and Bournmouth and just north of the Isle of Wight was New Forest, one of the largest areas of woodland, heathland and unenclosed pasture left in all of England - a hotspot for wildlife and for activities of all kinds.

And, nestled right on the edge of a body of water that was somewhere between a large pond and a small lake, a fair distance away from any road or town within the forest, was a large, golden glowing orb that had crashed down through the tree canopy a couple of days ago and lain here, undisturbed, since then.

The bright mark of Fairy Tail shone on the surface of the sphere. And that mark was beginning to blaze, growing brighter every second along with the rest of the sphere. The whole thing shimmered, throbbed and pulsed like some kind of beating heart before, abruptly, it vanished.

Leaving three forms lying still in the place where the sphere had been, strewn out across the bank, half in and half out of the water, looking totally dead to the world but for a slight rising and falling of their chests.

The three of them lay like this for a good fifteen minutes before finally one of them stirred. Lisanna Strauss grunted and raised a hand up to her aching head, unaware that said hand was caked in mud from the bank around her, but suddenly very aware of it when she smeared plenty of it across her forehead. She opened her eyes and stared at her brown-smeared hand in distaste before groaning and pushing herself upwards to have a look around.

"Where am I?" she murmured, blinking through bleary, unfocused eyes at her surroundings. "Did I… did we… am I alive?"

It seemed scarcely too good to be true. Last thing she remembered was trying to channel some power, along with all the others, into Levy and Freed in the hope that they could set up some kind of defensive barrier to stop the mighty Black Dragon, refusing to give up until the bitter end not matter how dire the situations were, as had always been the Fairy Tail way.

Had it actually worked?

As the fog in her brain began to clear and she looked at the forest around her she realised quite quickly that this didn't look like any part of the forest on Tenroujima that she had seen. She wasn't an expert on plants, far from it, but these ones all looked different. Not at tall for one thing. Deciduous for another - not like the massive tropical trees that made up the vegetation on the island.

And then her brain started to kick in properly and she looked around hurriedly for her friends. Whee was the Master? Where were Natsu and Lucy and Erza? Where was her brother and sister, Elfman and Mirajane?

She didn't see any of those, but she did see the two others who had been sharing her Fairy Sphere with her, lying side by side next to each other.

One was her own partner for the S-Class exam, Juvia Lockser.

And the other was the resident Ice Mage who was currently not wearing a shirt (as usual), Gray Fullbuster.

For a moment, Lisanna forgot the urgency of the situation and could only sit there and smile at them, lying close together side by side, as if sleeping. Granted they were coated in mud from the bank and they were covered in bandages just like she herself was but Lisanna thought they looked cute together like that.

Lisanna had only recently gotten to know the Juvia from Earthland. She'd spent two years knowing who Juvia was back in Edolas but that Juvia had been more or less an entirely different person. And she'd watched the Edolas version of Gray constantly fawn over Juvia only to be shot down at every turn. It had been quite a change to come back to Earthland and find it was the total other way around. Not that that was surprising really.

Back in Edolas, she'd always been rooting for Gray to finally win Juvia's heart.

And now that she was back with the Gray she'd known as a child and this other Juvia, she was still rooting for them to get together, and now they looked almost peaceful like that, with Juvia on her side and almost pressed up against Gray, who was on his back.

But Lisanna knew she didn't have time to sit back and let them rest. They needed to find out what had just happened. She pushed herself up, grimacing at the mud which was caked to her side and placed a hand on Juvia's arm, shaking her gently. "Hey, Juvia. Juvia, wake up. Can you hear me?"

Juvia mumbled something that sounded suspiciously like, "Can we have a wedding by the seaside, Gray-sama?" which made Lisanna snort in amusement - even half unconscious Juvia was imagining her future with Gray. But Lisanna shook her more earnestly slowly Juvia's eyes, as blue as her hair, opened wide.

"Juvia, are you okay?"

"Lisanna-san?" Juvia blinked, trying to sit up. "What… what happened? Where are we? Have we…?" she stopped looking around when she noticed Gray lying next to her with the back of his head actually resting in the pond and his black hair waving about in the water. "Gray-sama!" she gasped and shot up immediately, clambering to her knees and leaning over the still form of her intense crush, gripping him by the shoulders and hauling him out of the water, tucking her legs underneath him so that his head was resting on her thighs.

"Gray-sama… Gray-sama, wake up!" she pleaded.

"Don't worry, Juvia, he's fine. I think," Lisanna pushed herself to her feet and stepped around them both to kneel on the other side of him. "Look, he's still breathing, see. And I don't see any new injuries on him."

"What should we do?" Juvia fretted, not looking up from his still form.

"Just try and wake him up, gently," Lisanna suggested.

Juvia nodded but abruptly her face went red as a sudden thought occurred to her. "Maybe… maybe Juvia should… try giving him the… the kiss of life!"

"Er… I'm not entirely sure he actually needs that, Juvia…" Lisanna murmured. "He's breathing just fine, see?" she pointed to Gray's steadily rising and falling chest, the black Fairy Tail mark displayed proudly on his right side.

Juvia made a face that looked, somehow, like a cross between relief and disappointment, but she gently took Gray's shoulders and shook him ever so slightly. "Gray-sama… Gray-sama please open your eyes. Let Juvia know you're okay."

It took a couple more minutes before Gray finally did move and when he did, he awoke to the sight of both Juvia and Lisanna looking down at him with concern. He blinked several times before murmuring, "…What the heck happened?"

"That…" Lisanna observed. "Is a very good question."

"Gray-sama, Juvia is so glad you're alright…" Juvia sighed in relief. "Juvia was really worried about you."

"Well, I'm fine," Gray pushed himself into a sitting position and clicked his neck slightly, staring out at the trees around them. "Though how exactly I'm fine, I haven't the faintest idea. Does anyone else remember the big black dragon that was going to blow us to smithereens."

"All to well," Lisanna nodded.

"Juvia remembers as well," the Water Mage began to take in her surroundings for the first time. "One moment Juvia was standing there holding hands with Gray-sama and Lisanna-san and then… Juvia doesn't remember a thing after that. Not until waking up in the mud next to Gray-sama…" she blushed again at the thought.

"We're still alive then," Gray noted, pushing himself to his feet. "But where are the others?"

"We don't know. We only just woke up here ourselves," Lisanna replied. "Whatever questions you've got, you can bet we probably have the same ones as well."

Juvia stood up as well and moved to stand next to Gray. "Juvia doesn't recognise this place. It doesn't look like Tenrou Island."

"That's what I was thinking. Not least because if it was Tenrou Island, there'd be a bloody great big tree about a mile tall looming above us somewhere. That thing is pretty hard to miss," Gray pointed out.

Lisanna looked around her slightly before murmuring, "It… it doesn't look like Edolas either."

"Huh? Edolas?" Gray looked down at her. "Why would you bring Edolas up?"

"Because that's where I was the last time that I blacked out right after I was attacked and I woke up somewhere completely different," Lisanna remarked. "Back when Elf-niichan lost control of his Beast form and struck me the next thing I remembered after that was landing in a forest just like this. And that forest was in Edolas. But this doesn't look like any Edolas forest I'm familiar with so I don't think we've been transported there again."

"I doubt we could have been anymore. Not with Edolas losing all its magic like it did," Gray remarked.

"This place definitely has magic," Juvia agreed. "Juvia can feel it in the air. But if we're not on Tenrou Island anymore… what should we do, Gray-sama?"

"Heck if I know," Gray grumbled. "What did you do when you got lost in Edolas, Lisanna?"

"Nothing that could remotely be considered a plan," Lisanna answered. "It seemed the only option to me was to pick a direction and walk in it, calling for my brother and sister in the hope that they'd hear me. It took me two days before I found something, and I think it was a stroke of luck that that something was the Edolas Fairy Tail."

"Well…" Gray murmured. "I don't know if we've got much choice but to do that again. Just… start walking and see if we can find the others. Anyone else got a better plan?"

"Nope," Lisanna got to her feet, brushing dirt of her clothes.

"Juvia will go wherever Gray-sama leads," Juvia nodded devotedly.

"Uh-huh…" Gray murmured. "Shall we pick at random or…"

"Ooh now, isn't this interesting," said a slightly nasal voice that instantly had all of them of edge as it seemed to come out of nowhere. "Are they what was inside the baby golden egg thing, are they, are they? They all look like cripples with those bandages on, so they do."

"Who's there?" Gray demanded, placing his hands together in preparation to use his Ice Magic. "Where are you?"

"Oh, hark at his big turd, making demands of me. And he can't even see me either. Ha, he must be blind as an effing bat."

"Nobody says things like that to Gray-sama," Juvia flared up instantly, scowling at the surrounding bushes. "Show yourself."

"Aaw, how sickeningly cute, coming to her man's rescue, is she? What, is he so rubbish that he has to get his woman to pick his fights for him?"

"Gray-sama is far stronger than whoever you are!" Juvia flushed red.

"And she's not my woman!" Gray agreed awkwardly, his hands growing cold as he began to call on his ice powers. "Get out here before I freeze your butt, you…"

He was stopped by Lisanna putting a hand on his arm. The youngest Strauss sibling shook her head, before turning and offering the vegetation a bright smile. "We're sorry if we're intruding or something but we could really use some help. Can you come out so we can see you? We'd be really grateful for it and we won't hurt you. Cross my heart."

There was a slight pause before the voice said, "Well this one's nice at least, even though she looks weird with that white hair." And suddenly a head popped out of the undergrowth not far away from them - a small pointed head with a snout ending in a big black nose, large ears perched atop it and black markings around the eyes that looked like some kind of mask. But it was definitely not the face of a human.

"So, were these three stashed away inside the small golden sphere thing after all? Thought it was the world's weirdest tent when I first saw it, I did." the creature said as it moved out into the open, revealing a long slender body with grey, brown and black fur and a long tail pointing out behind it.

"It's… a ferret…" Juvia blinked.

The creature, which did indeed look like a ferret but twice as big, hissed. "This wench clearly knows nothing. I'm not a ferret, no I'm not. I'm a Jarvey. Maybe you should keep an encyclopaedia of magical creatures tucked between those big boobs of yours!"

"Hey!" Juvia squeaked, immediately covering her chest with her arms, but also half hoping that this sentence would prompt Gray to try and take a glance at her. He didn't, but he did look angry at the creature's words.

"Never heard of a Jarvey before," he growled.

"Then someone's clearly been living with his head in the toilet for all his life. Explains why his head is full of crap."

Gray's snarl of irritation was cut off by Lisanna again, and the girl stepped forwards and crouched down in front of the Jarvey. "You know, there's really no need to be rude," she said. "We're just a group of mages who have lost our way. Can you tell us if we're still in Earthland?"

"Eh? I thought that you might actually be intelligent," scoffed the Jarvey. "Where do you think you are, Mars Land? Of course you're on Earth Land. Jeez, what's wrong with you people."

Gray and Juvia watched with wide eyes as Lisanna just smiled and continued as if she'd not been insulted at all. "That's good to know," she said. "But have you seen anyone else nearby recently? We were part of a big group but it seems we've been separated from them somehow. My sister and brother would be among them as well as…" she did a quick count on her fingers. "Eighteen of our other friends. Do you think you could have seen them?"

"Haven't seen any other damn human dorks around for a while," the Jarvey shrugged its small shoulders. "Just as well really - the forest always smells much better when there's no people clopping around and stinking it all to high heaven. Ugh."

Lisanna bit her lip. "Thank you for telling us," she said, looking back at Gray and Juvia, who looked at each other in turn. If there friends weren't nearby, then where the heck were they?

"Though of course there is the bigger golden egg thingie that showed up the same time as your little one. Nearly flattened me when it landed, it did."

"Bigger golden egg thingie?" Gray frowned. "What are you talking about anyway?"

"With every question he reveals more and more how stupid he is," the Jarvey rolled its eyes. "I'm talking about the whacking great glowing sphere thing that was there right where you three were when I saw you. Came falling out of the sky and nearly took my head off, thanks very much. That was two days ago? What were the three of you doing in that thing for two days? Getting frisky with each other I'll bet."

Juvia went redder than Erza's hair and made an incomprehensible squealing noise and Gray froze in place, eye twitching, looking as if he couldn't decide whether to attack the Jarvey or not. Even Lisanna blushed a little at this but she shook her head and said, "It's nothing like that - we must have been unconscious the whole time. We only just woke up here and we definitely weren't here before this. You say we were inside some large glowing sphere?"

"Now I'm wondering if she's deaf too. Yes, that's what I've been saying, dumbbell."

"And there's a bigger one of these same spheres nearby?"

"Duh!"

"Is there any chance that you can lead us to it so we can see it for ourselves."

"And why should I do that, hm, hm?" the Jarvey bobbed its head. "You humans are all the same. Clotpoles, the lot of you, running around thinking that you're in charge of everything. What douches."

"Alright, I've officially decided I don't like this guy," Gray huffed. "Let's just find this other sphere thing ourselves."

"We don't know where to look though," Juvia pointed out, still very red in the face.

"How hard can something like that be to find though?" Gray shrugged.

"You'd be surprised," Lisanna stated. "Just give me a second." She turned back to the Jarvey and said, "You'd have our immense gratitude if you could just show us the way to this other sphere thing. Please. It would mean so much to us."

The Jarvey and Lisanna both stared one another in the eye for several moments before the Jarvey said, "Well, you're nice, I guess. I'll take you to the Sphere, even if the Gaylord and the Squealer over there have to come too. This way…" he shot off into the undergrowth suddenly, before popping his head back up out of a bush several metres away. "Come on, come on."

Lisanna winked at both Gray and Juvia, who stared in undisguised amazement for a moment before the three of them followed on, the Jarvey disappearing and then reappearing further away whenever they got close and yelling at them to hurry up, still throwing the occasional insult in whenever he could.

"How did you do that?" Gray asked with a whisper. "Almost all those names that guy keeps calling us can be applied to him. I didn't think he'd every help us in a million years."

"Well," Lisanna rubbed the back of her head slightly. "It's not entirely his doing. I may have… spurred him on a bit with my Take Over. I'm not controlling him per se but… I'm giving him a bit of a nudge to helping us."

"Of course, Lisanna-san uses Animal Soul Take Over magic," Juvia nodded in understanding. "That means that she can not only Take Over the properties and turn into animals but she can control them too."

"Yeah," Lisanna nodded. "Elf-niichan let me practice it on his parakeet when I was younger. I hardly ever use that part of my power though. Especially not in battle - I refuse to put innocent animals in danger for me. And one time when we were younger, Happy asked me to try it on him to see if it worked, but it didn't. I guess that's because the Exceed don't technically count as animals. But apparently this Jarvey does."

"Still, what an asshole," Gray muttered. "What the heck did we do to earn all those insults he threw at us?"

"Nothing. That just strikes me as his character," Lisanna shrugged. "I think we might need to take him with a pinch of salt."

"Well I'm hoping that he won't be around for very long," Gray scowled.

"Juvia is in agreement," the Water Mage coughed, cheeks colouring again as some of the Jarvey's suggestions ran through her head again.

"Up this hill, fatasses!" the Jarvey was standing out in the open again now at the top of a rise. "It's right here."

The three Mages trudged up the hill and as soon as they joined the large mustelid at the top they stopped, staring with wide eyes. For there indeed in a clearing before them was sitting another Fairy Sphere - this one at least five times as large as the one that they themselves had been in. But of course, they didn't know that since they hadn't even seen that one.

"There's the Fairy Tail mark," Juvia nodded, rubbing at her leg where her own mark was. (It was also the same place she'd punched her own leg to prevent Meredy from killing Gray and was still a little sore but mostly healed thanks to Wendy's previous efforts before Acnologia's attack)

"So this is what we were inside?" Lisanna asked. "Something like this? For two days?"

"Must have been cosy," the Jarvey snickered, which did nothing to help Juvia's blush.

"Does that mean the rest of our friends are in here?" Gray asked, stepping forward and placing his hand on the glowing sphere which was as solid as rock under his hand. He tried to peer through it and could make out some shapes beyond but he couldn't make out who they might be, though there did seem to be a lot of them.

"They could be," Lisanna remarked. "But what is this thing anyway?"

"Juvia thinks it looks like some type of magical forcefield," the Water Mage noted. "Perhaps this is what protected us from Acnologia's attack back on Tenroujima."

"Sounds logical but how do you explain it falling from the sky?" Gray asked.

"Juvia can't. And Juvia also can't explain why the three of us were in a separate sphere when others are in this one. After all, we were all standing in a circle when Acnologia struck."

"Another good point," Lisanna moved over and placed her ear against the Sphere, listening for any sound of movement coming from within but able to hear nothing. It was slightly warm to the touch and seemed to make a very, almost imperceptibly low magical humming noise. "So, what do we do now? Should we try and get inside it?"

"Step back," Gray huffed as he put his hands together. "I'll see if I can break my way through. If this thing did protect us from a dragon's roar attack then I doubt I can but I'll still try." As Lisanna and Juvia quickly backed off to give him room, Gray called, "ICE-MAKE… HAMM…"

Right before he could form the Hammer attack though the Sphere suddenly flashed brightly, forcing Gray to stumble backwards and shield his eyes from the brightness. The three Mages and the Jarvey watched as the Sphere pulsed and rippled across its entire surface, intricate golden patterns washing across it like lattices before the sphere slowly began to dissolve away right before their eyes.

"Well, that's convenient," Lisanna said as she hurried forward. "Mira-nee! Elf-niichan! Anyone, are you in there?"

"Uh… no… I don't think they are…" Gray's eyes widened as he saw through a gap in the vanishing Sphere.

Lisanna and Juvia both gasped when the Sphere dissipated entirely and they saw what was within.

It was definitely not their friends.

It was a number of large, green-feathered birds, each the size of a man. They had prominent red crests sticking out the tops of their heads, long, viciously sharp yellow beaks with two fangs protruding from the size, yellow feet with black, hooked talons, claws on their wings and long rat-like tails extending out from between their fan-like tail feathers.

Gray remembered these birds all too well - he and Loke had been attacked and swarmed by several of them during the second task of the S-Class exam. But there had been only five that time. Now, there were at least forty! And they were all spreading their wings and hissing in their direction.

"Clippers…" Lisanna breathed. "It's a flock of Clippers."

"Never mind what they're called, get back!" Gray cried, right at the same time as a cacophonous squawk rang through the clearing and the highly territorial, highly aggressive birds launched themselves into the air and towards them.