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.
...
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