Most of that passed right over the heads of the Order members, but Lisanna looked torn between feeling relief and concern. "Oh… well… thank you for telling me. At least… at least that clears a couple of things up."
...
Moments later Juvia arrived, looking rather dizzy and a short time after that Gray was there. The three Fairy Tail members stood together by the fireplace, staring out at the amassed Order members who stared right back, before Sirius broke the silence by asking, "Why don't you have shirt on, kid?"
"What the… where did it go?!" Gray yelled. "I'm sure I was wearing it when I stepped into the fireplace!"
"…Did you actually strip in the middle of a Floo Powder transportation?" Tonks asked, slightly deadpan. "Great, that probably means by shirt's lying in some stranger's fireplace now."
Juvia immediately stepped in front of Gray and glowered in the direction of Emmeline Vance and Hestia Jones, while Lisanna ran a hand down her face slightly. Severus Snape, meanwhile, turned to Dumbledore and asked, "These children are the ones who have fought incredible battles in their world, Headmaster. Forgive my scepticism but they don't seem to be… all that disciplined."
"Indeed they are not, Severus. But if you had seen what I saw, you would know that I am quite serious. Regardless, greetings to you all, Fairy Tail. You are most welcome here at the headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix and we would like to extend an invitation for you to stay here for a while. This place can be your new home should you so desire, perhaps until a way can be found to return you to your true home."
"Thank you for your generosity, Dumbledore-san?" Juvia bowed her head.
"Where's Wendy?" Gray cut to the chase instead.
"Your friend is currently staying at my brother's house, and we will take you to see her soon. But first, we would like to talk to you about a few things."
"What kind of things?" Lisanna asked.
"Mostly about what we hope to happen in the future. But for now, it might be best to start with introductions. After all, you may be stuck with a few of us for some time."
"And I for one would quite like to see what these kids are capable of doing," Mad-Eye cut in, his eye flicking from one of the three to the others in rapid succession, and there was a chorus of agreement from around the table.
"This isn't going to become a pattern, is it?" Gray sighed. "Us constantly having to explain who we are to people and stuff?"
"Probably," Tonks shrugged. "But Professor Dumbledore and I already told them everything so I guess this time all they want is the demonstrations."
"Well, in that case, I guess I'll go first," Lisanna shrugged and her body shimmered briefly and suddenly she was in her cat form, tail waving and paws raised, claws extending and retracting briefly.
"Hah. That's nothing," Sirius grinned and suddenly got out of his chair. "Watch this, kid. This is how you turn into an animal." And suddenly his body shrank and a very large, very shaggy black dog was standing in his place. Sirius shook himself and wagged his tail, tongue lolling out as he gave Lisanna what could only be described as puppy dog eyes.
"Wow, that's pretty good," Lisanna leaned down to pet Sirius' head for a moment with one paw, an action which caused the huge dog to flatten his ears back and his tail to beat backwards and forwards even harder while Lisanna seemed to concentrate on him intensely for a moment… before suddenly her body shimmered again and there was an exact copy of the black dog standing in her place.
This definitely made the room gasp - turning into animals for them was a long and difficult process and each person could only turn into one animal after they mastered it, but they'd just seen Lisanna turn into two before their eyes. Sirius himself seemed momentarily bewildered before he barked and the two dogs were suddenly gambolling around one another, until it became quite impossible to tell which was which.
"If we might get this back on track to a proper meeting that might be good," Snape drawled distastefully. One of the dogs turned to growl at him before morphing back into Sirius, who continued to glare.
"Talk to my guests like that again under my roof and I'll boot you out on the…"
"Sirius," Dumbledore said warningly.
The Animagus halted but gave Snape another sour look before he took his seat. "Anyway, that was pretty neat, girl."
"Thanks," Lisanna said, without changing back into a human - and that really threw them all for a loop, even Sirius. No Animagus had ever been able to talk while in animal form before. "But my magic's not that powerful compared to most of the others, I'll admit. Gray and Juvia are both much stronger than I am."
Juvia quickly took her turn to demonstrate by turning to water and sweeping in several laps around the room in liquid form before shooting over the table and reforming in the middle and sending small plumes of water out the filled several empty glasses at once. Gray then created several large ice sculptures and then whipped a couple of ice swords into his hands. Both of these acts suitably impressed the room as a whole, but before a flurry of questions about how they learned to do that could start flying, Dumbledore beat the rest to the punch.
"Your magic is quite exquisite and quite clearly comes in many different forms. But let me ask you something. When I viewed your world in Wendy's memories, it seemed to me that anyone in your world can learn how to use magic. Is that true?"
"In a way," Gray nodded. "Gramps, that is Master Makarov, always said that it takes real conviction, heart and belief to be able to learn magic but as long as you have that anyone can do it."
"I see. That is very different from our world. In our world, you either have magic or you don't. It is as simple as that. It's actually down to something called 'genetics' as the Muggles call it. The ability to use magic is built into the body of a witch or wizard. But I also saw something else about you - your magic can run out if you use too much and you have to wait for it to return naturally. How does that work?"
"Juvia can answer that one. In our world, all people have a special container within their bodies that, if they learn magic, allows their body to absorb a special energy from the air called Eternanos and convert it into magical power. As we use magic we use up some of the Eternanos in our bodies but we replenish it automatically afterwards."
"Wait… do we have Eternanos in this world!?" Gray suddenly asked, sharply. "What if we run out of magic here?"
"We did not have Eternanos before you arrived," Dumbledore replied. "But we do now as a large amount of it was transported here at the same time that you were. But it seems my theory may be correct.
We of this world cannot learn the types of magic that you wield because we do not have this Eternanos absorbing container in our bodies. And you, similarly, cannot learn the magic we have because you do not have the genes that we have in our bodies that determines who can and cannot use it.
I would assume that if one of us gave you a wand it would not respond to you no matter how much you screamed out a spell. Though perhaps it might be able to channel your own magic somehow, but a wand would more likely limit you than help you."
There was an air of disappointment around the room at that - a great many of them had been extremely interested in the idea of trying to learn what they had just seen the Fairy Tail mages do.
"Wait…" Lisanna turned back into a human. "How do you know Eternanos was transported here with us? How much do you know?"
"Everything I know I learned from Wendy," Dumbledore replied. "And everything she knows she learned from the founder of your guild, Mavis Vermilion herself."
"EEEHHHHHHH!?" screamed all three of them simultaneously. Dumbledore laughed and quickly explained everything, starting with how Mavis had helped save them from Acnologia in the first place with her Fairy Sphere right up until the point where all the miniature Fairy Spheres had been scattered around somewhere at random.
"Damn," Gray murmured after a while. "I'm not sure whether that's made things easier or harder. But at least Wendy is okay, and the three Exceed are out there somewhere."
"I still can't believe it," Charlie shook his head slightly - Dumbledore had already told him about the identity of the big black cat that had been seen with the dragons, as well as Wendy's involvement in injuring them. "All this stuff about talking cats is one thing but humans wielding Dragon magic that they learned from talking dragons… what I wouldn't give to meet one."
"Not as much as they would considering their dragon parents abandoned them seven years… or I suppose thirteen years now… for an unknown reason," Lisanna pointed out.
"Maybe but even so… talking dragons… it's like in the old myths. People used to say dragons could talk in the old days when Merlin and King Arthur were still alive, but nobody really believes that anymore."
...
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