When they appeared again, it was to a shocking sight. The area was already filled with wizards who seemed to be trying to track down and use Memory Charms on just about everyone in the town. And for good reason.
One wall of the bank had been practically ripped to shreds and there were a couple of wizards and witches pulling large metal spears out of the back of a car, staring at the razor sharp blades in morbid fascination.
"Ah, Shacklebolt, Tonks…" a slightly gruff voice hailed them from across the street, and when they saw Head Auror Rufus Scrimgeour waving them over they both hurried to join him. "Glad to see the two of you could make it so quickly."
"What happened here?" Tonks stared up at the shattered wall. "That must have been one heck of a Blasting Hex."
"Something like that, I guess," Scrimgeour murmured.
"Do we know what motivated an attack like this?" Kingsley asked. "The position of the rubble suggests to me that this attack was fired from the inside of the building. But why would someone want to attack a Muggle bank at all, let alone from the inside like this? Was there any money taken?"
"None, as far as we know. But the reports indicate that this was carried out by a single man. We were wondering if it could be Sirius Black."
Tonks had to resist the urge to growl - Rufus didn't know her cousin was an innocent man after all and she was not meant to know it either.
"I rather doubt it," Kingsley replied. "All the information I have been gathering on Black suggests that he is most definitely overseas."
"Well it would not be the first time Black attacked a crowded area full of Muggles, although thankfully there were no deaths this time. But the reports don't really make much sense to me. There was talk about his skin turning to metal and shooting spears out of his hands and… I don't know, it all sounded utterly ridiculous to me."
"Well, you know how Muggles can be when they see something they don't understand," Kingsley pointed out.
"Indeed, but I've got some of my men patching into the camera network," Rufus replied. "We intend to erase all traces that can be linked to magic and play this off as some kind of gas mains explosion or something like that. Standard procedure."
Kingsley nodded. Honestly, the amount of CCTV the Muggles had around now was making it increasingly difficult to keep the Statute of Secrecy in force. And it was predicted only to get worse as the Muggles tried to make themselves feel safer but adding bunches of cameras everywhere since they couldn't do protective enchantments. But at least the Auror Department had a few wizards in it that actually knew what they were doing with modern Muggle technology. After all, no spell had been invented to change the images recorded on a video camera.
But suddenly a woman stepped out of the bank and called, "Sir! You should… probably come and see this."
"What? See what?" Scrimgeour turned and hurried forwards, Kingsley and Tonks on his heels.
"It's the Muggle security cameras, sir. We've found the recorded footage of what happened. It's not Black that did this sir. But actually, it seems like the person doing this was defending the bank from a Muggle robbery rather than attacking it sir. The Muggle robbers in question were rounded up by their police before we got here but… you should really see this."
She led them all into a room with several monitors - a Muggle man sitting in a chair in a magically induced sleep until they had finished working. But when the images on the screen began to play and the Aurors all watched the feed of the wild-haired, bandaged man battling it out with the robbers… they could do nothing but stop and stare.
"Dear God," Scrimgeour murmured as he watched the man blasting some kind of metallic tornado out of his mouth. "What the hell… have we stumbled across?"
...
When Bill stepped back into Grimmauld Place shortly afterwards to relay the news… he paused and blinked in surprise. The usual crowd of the middle of the day were all gathered - it was usually only Sirius, Remus and his mother that were here around this time since everyone else was at work, although occasional Mad-Eye or Mundungus could be found hanging about.
But Bill hadn't been expecting to see the oldest Weasley brother after him sitting at the table tucking into his mother's delicious cooking.
"Charlie?" he faltered. "What are you doing here?"
"Hello to you too, Big Bro," Charlie replied with a smirk, standing up out of his chair and walked over to embrace his brother who hugged back. Charlie was shorter and stockier than Bill but was physically stronger and more muscled and had so many freckles that there was almost no part of his face without them.
"It's great to see you," Bill replied. "Of course it is. But I thought that you were staying in Romania to try and recruit foreign wizards to the cause against You-Know-Who."
"And I have been," Charlie replied. "I'm not staying long. But I got an urgent message this morning from the MacFusty clan to come back to Britain. I thought I'd take the brief opportunity to say hello and get something good before I move on."
"The MacFusty clan?" Bill asked, with a frown.
"I have mentioned them before, you know," Charlie replied. "They're a Wizarding family up in Scotland that have taken on the responsibility of looking after and managing the population of Hebridean Black dragons. We've worked together a few times - I've taken a few Hebridean Blacks off their hands and transported them to the Dragon Reserve when they've had problems with overcrowding."
"Oh yeah, I remember now. What do they want you for?" Bill pulled up a chair alongside his brother.
"I'm not actually that sure," Charlie replied. "It said in the letter that a couple of the dragons clashed over territory, which isn't unusual. That happens all the time with that species. But they said something about the dragons having received strange injuries that they don't think were inflicted by one another and they wanted me to take a look."
"You mean something else attacked a pair of dragons?" Bill asked with wide eyes.
"Looks like it," Charlie nodded.
"We were just discussing what in the world would be foolish enough to try such a thing when you showed up," Sirius added. "But we've been coming up with squat. Less than squat really."
"Anyway, what about you? How did the work with that fallen sphere go?" Remus asked.
"I came up with about as much as you did for the dragon attacker," Bill shrugged. "But that's not what I came to talk about. Kingsley wanted me to tell you that apparently there's been some kind of attack on a Muggle bank. One not that far from away from Hogwarts, on the Isle of Skye."
A hush fell over the room as all of the occupants looked at each warily - all thinking the same thing.
"The Death Eaters wouldn't attack a Muggle Bank, would they?" Mrs. Weasley fretted. "It can't be them."
"Well, if it was not them, then who could it have been?" Sirius asked.
"It may still be an entirely unrelated incident," Remus said calmly. "We cannot lose our heads so quickly. The Death Eaters are not the only malignant Wizarding force out there, even if they are the most prominent at this time."
"Now I'm wondering if this could be related to the dragon attack," Charlie suddenly voiced. "The Isle of Skye is in the Hebrides as well after all."
After this statement they all fell into silence, consumed by their own individual thoughts. But they were all thinking pretty much the same thing… there had been a slight surge in bizarre, unexplained events in the last day or two. What was going to happen next?
...
"WEEENNNDDYYYY! WEEENNNNNNDDDYYYYYY! WHERE ARE YOU!"
"Charla, I don't think that's going to help anymore," Happy murmured dejectedly as he floated along beside the frantic white-furred Exceed.
"Well, what do you suggest?" Charla rounded on him and snapped angrily. "That we just sit back and do nothing! What would you be doing if it was Natsu out there?"
Happy flinched back and hung his head slightly, making no comment since he knew he would be doing pretty much the same thing. Charla's expression softened when she saw his reaction and she sighed, placing a paw on her head and murmuring, "Sorry… it's just… I'm so worried about her. Where could she have gone."
"We're all worried about her, Charla," Happy replied, reaching across to touch his paw to hers reassuringly. "But we're going to find her. And we're going to find everyone else too, just like we said we would. We always pull through don't we? And Wendy's tough. She'll be alright."
Charla nodded, feeling a little better but unable to stop the gnawing worry in her gut. She let Happy touch her paw for several seconds before she slowly drew it away. "I know. I just don't know where to start looking."
The two Exceed were flying over the ocean once more, scanning the waves below for any sign of the young Dragon Slayer. Mavis was not far behind them, accompanying Lily and keeping an eye on him. The ghost had lost sight of whatever it was that had taken Wendy away last night quite quickly but she'd been able to deduce it was following quite a specific, straight course and it had pulled upwards to make sure Wendy could breathe so it clearly wasn't interested in killing her. At least not yet. When she'd lost it, she'd doubled back to tell the Exceed and they were proceeding along the path that the creature had taken, but the cats had all worn themselves out to the point of exhaustion so Mavis had eventually forced them to come and get some rest, floating on top of a buoy not far from the shore of another island.
Lily was not in the best shape. He was a tough little thing but the burn on his back was obviously paining him a great deal. He'd allowed Mavis to rub salt water onto his back last night to help with the healing, which was the best Mavis could do for him. But the burn did look better today and Lily was a tough little soldier. He kept pushing on, refusing to slow the search for Wendy down because of him.
"What do you think that creature was that took her away, First Master?" Lily grunted as he bobbed along in the wind. "Did you get a good look at it?"
"Unfortunately, no," Mavis replied, shaking her head. "All I saw was that it had a fish-like body and greyish skin and scales. I know what I might have assumed it to be if we were still in our own world. But we are no longer in our own world. Who knows what creatures lie in wait in the waters of this world that we don't have in our own."
"That is true," Lily nodded. "In the world I come from, there are no real dragons, whereas in the world you come from there were no Exceed until Edolas sent one-hundred over through the Anima. Perhaps this world has both Exceed and dragons. Perhaps the Exceed are as dumb and wild here as those dragons were too. We simply cannot say."
"Exactly," Mavis replied as she floated along after Charla and Happy. "But I think I know what it could have been. But even if I am right… what would they like in this dimension?"
...
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