About an hour later and Gajeel was asking, for about the third time, "Are you sure you're not kidding me?"
"No, Gajeel, we're not. That's the story," Lily insisted.
"And every single part of it is the truth?"
"Yes, yes, it is."
"Huh, sounds like you've been getting more excitement than me. And no offence, Lily, but I'd kinda hoped that Edolas would be the last we see of any universe except for the one that I was born in."
"No offence taken whatsoever," Lily replied. "Especially since there's no Anima in this one that we can use to send us back to Earthland again."
"We can worry about getting back home again when the time comes," Mavis insisted. "For now, the safety of our guild members is our main priority, starting with Wendy and extending to all of the others."
"Not to mention we haven't exactly given a great first impression to the people of this world," Happy noted.
"What I don't get is why those guys back in that town were so shocked by my magic," Gajeel folded his arms. "You said you guys were attacked by people who threw strange magical lights at you yet all those ordinary people didn't seem to have a frigging clue about magic. And they have dragons living not far away from them. What kind of messed up world is this anyway?"
"It is rather strange," Lily agreed.
"Well, we can figure out the mystery another time," Charla insisted. "For now let's stick with finding Wendy. You are trying to locate her scent, right Gajeel?"
"I'll let you know the moment I get a whiff of her, but we don't exactly know where we're going. We could be heading further away from her and we wouldn't have any idea."
"That's not the most encouraging thing you could have said, Gajeel," Lily admonished him.
"Well, I'm just telling it like it is. But this guild's a resilient one, as is everyone in it. We'll find her, we'll find them all, no matter how long it takes us to do it. Heck, that Lisanna girl got thrown into another universe and separated from everyone for two whole years but we found her and brought her back home even though nobody knew what had happened to her. This time, we're out looking. And we'll tear every boulder out of the ground in this entire world just to look under it if we have to, until we're all back together again."
The Exceeds and Mavis all smiled and Happy said, "It's not usually you that gives the rousing speeches, Gajeel. Usually Natsu does that."
"You want to be careful or people will think you're going soft," Lily snickered.
"Shaddup, damned cats, or I'll feed you to the next dragon we see."
"And there's the Gajeel we all know and love."
"Did I not just say shaddup?"
...
It was several hours later that the Aurors stationed in Portree were able to head back to the offices in the Ministry back in London, although their jobs were far from over since they would each have quite a bit of paperwork to do now to report this incident. Kingsley was fairly certain that he had a headache coming on, and was grateful that people from the Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes had been called in to help with the Obliviating - it had lessened the load that they Aurors had had to do considerably.
But when they finally did get back to the Ministry, Dawlish was waiting for them with a report from the events surrounding the glowing sphere in the field in Nottinghamshire.
"There's still been no success in dispelling the thing but they have managed to move it. It has now been transported to somewhere in the Department of Mysteries via Portkey."
"Good work," Scrimgeour nodded. "Tell the Unspeakables in there that they are to keep us informed just in case it turns out to be dangerous."
Dawlish nodded and hurried away, and as everyone else fanned out in order to get back to work, Tonks was finally able to murmur to Kingsley, "You don't think that this guy at Portree could have anything to do with You-Know-Who, do you?"
"We can't discuss this here, Nymphadora," Kingsley replied lightly. "All I can say is that this doesn't exactly fit in with the actions in the shadows he's been taking so far, but honestly I don't know. But we'll discuss this later. For now, we keep doing our jobs."
...
Aberforth sighed as he leaned against the wall, an unusually clean glass of Firewhiskey clutched in one hand. Wendy was now lying in the other room on the makeshift bed that he had conjured for her, so conked out that he guessed she wouldn't wake up even if he set off a fireworks display in the dingy living room.
It had been quite an experience having someone else staying under his roof again. It was something that hadn't happened in decades, since Aberforth didn't really like the company of anyone other than his goats. But Wendy had been charming, polite and curious about everything and he had found himself remarkably happy to answer most of the questions that she had about this world, while he in turn had been rather fascinated about her own.
Usually he thought of most kids as messy, irresponsible and immature, but Wendy had been none of that. She sounded much older and wiser than most kids her age did, which was presumably as a result of the things that she had experienced, though she had giggled a lot at some of his more amusing stories.
For the first time in a very long time, Aberforth felt rather grateful that Albus had come to ask him for help. His afternoon had been severely brightened by her presence.
Although she would certainly never serve as a replacement for Arania… he could get used to having her around.
...
"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?
...
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