"Are you saying, Dumbledore," Professor Dolores Umbridge was turning a rather horrible shade of purple as she stewed in her own bubbling anger. "That I should take the words of that woman seriously? That that… garbage… she spouted at breakfast today was an actual prophecy?"
"You can take it any way that you wish," Dumbledore replied lightly. "I won't deny that our dear Trelawney has always had, shall we say, a flare for the dramatic. I won't pretend to understand Divination. I was terrible at it at school. Sometimes I would make up some ludicrous stories of what I could see in the crystal balls just to see if the teacher would believe me, when all I could really see was swirling mist."
"If we could keep this on topic please, Headmaster," Umbridge huffed from where she was standing before Dumbledore's death, saying the last word as if he was physically sickening to do so. "We both know that your lies, your insistence that the Dark Lord has in fact returned to the world, haven't been bearing the fruit you hoped they would when you started them. Hoping that the masses would flock to your side like frightened sheep. But this is the most blatant and obvious attempt to inspire fear that you've ever done. Convincing that terrible excuse for a Seer to make up something like that in the middle of the Great Hall. It's so desperate, it's almost laughable."
"I did nothing of the kind. In fact I haven't actually spoken to Sybil for almost two whole months - I see her so rarely."
"Then you continue to deny it was a thinly veiled attempt on your part to scare the students away from their faith in the Ministry?"
"On the contrary I very much want them to have faith in the Ministry, though I would prefer it if the Ministry would help us take the necessary actions into ensuring their safety."
"So be it," Umbridge turned to flounce out of the office. "Well, just wait until Minister Fudge hears about this. We'll see what he thinks of this blatant attempt to seize power."
"I would actually be very interested to hear the Minister's opinion. But I must warn you, Dolores. There is a reason I hired Sybil to be the Divination teacher. She may be extremely hard to make sense of but sometimes her words do ring true. You might want to bear that in mind in this case."
Umbridge said nothing else. She merely scoffed slightly before strutting out of the office, leaving Dumbledore alone to his thoughts. As far as he was aware, four of the Fairy Spheres scattered around the place had already been lowered. Wendy and the Exceed had been the first. Gajeel the second. Gray, Juvia and Lisanna the third and the Clippers had been the fourth. And Sybil's warning had been quite clear… the war would begin when the fifth sphere was lowered.
Did this new prophecy nullify the old one?
No, he didn't think so. After all, there was nothing in this new one that suggested as much.
Still… when the fifth sphere was lowered… it seemed that that would be when things truly did kick off.
...
Even Lucius Malfoy's arrogant expression slipped and he found himself stepping backwards a little, eyes flicking towards the door to make sure his path to it was clear. The man standing before the Ministry personnel was taller than any one of them, and the way he squared his shoulders told them all quite clearly that he meant business. There was just something about that meant every one of them, even Kingsley, were trying hard not to wilt under his stony gaze.
Needless to say, Gildarts didn't have a clue what was going on. He had no more knowledge of the events that had led him to be in this place than any of the other Fairy Tail mages had when they'd awoken from their own suspended animation within the Spheres.
One moment Acnologia. And the next this.
It was enough to throw anyone off pace.
It was Rufus Scrimgeour that spoke first, clearing his throat a little and saying, "You… You are currently in the custody of the Ministry of Magic. We discovered the strange glowing Sphere that you were inside, which apparently fell out of the sky and brought you here until the Sphere dissipated just now. That means you… are our…"
"Please tell me that you are not about to say 'prisoners,'" Gildarts raised a brow, that one motion causing several of the Aurors to flinch slightly. "Because I'm not entirely sure that I would like that."
"Well… not prisoners," Scrimgeour actually found himself floundering a little. "I'm not sure there is a word for it but… we cannot allow you to leave until you've answered our questions. And there are a lot of questions."
"Indeed, like all the ones that my friend Levy just asked. Where are our friends? Where… is my… daughter!?"
The last word was growled out so forcefully that Scrimgeour took a step back as if he'd been physically shoved. Levy, who was still on the ground behind the S-Class Mage, frowned in confusion - not having heard that Gildarts actually had a daughter before. As she pushed herself to her feet, the atmosphere seemed to grow even tenser with both sides wondering if the other was going to strike out at them.
But before something could kick off, someone said, "They can't answer those questions because they don't know the answers." And both Levy and Gildarts' had their attention drawn to the girl with the long blond hair weaving her way hurriedly through the Aurors to the front without touching the ground with her feet. And simultaneously both their jaws dropped, gasping in disbelief. This time Gildarts was the one who took a couple of steps backwards and Levy almost fell over again, the both of them absolutely stunned.
For they definitely knew who this girl was.
"You… you're…" Levy stammered.
"You can't be…" Gildarts breathed.
"I can and I am," Mavis replied quickly. "But please, now is really not the time for questions. Listen carefully - those men behind me cannot see or hear me. They don't know I am here. I am invisible to all who do not have the Fairy Tail mark. Well, mostly, but the point is they don't know the answers to your questions so please don't do anything rash. You're not in danger right now unless you start something first."
"But… how is…" Levy gasped.
"Please, just listen to me. I'm quite real but you need to act natural. And calm… please just pretend that I'm not here because as far as these people are aware, I'm not." Mavis insisted, glancing back over her shoulder to where most of the rest of the room were giving the two mages strange looks now, wondering what was wrong with them.
Fortunately, despite his shock that the First Master of Fairy Tail herself - whom he recognised from when Makarov had shown him the photo taken to commemorate the founding of the guild - was somehow standing in front of him, Gildarts was able to recover quickly and suddenly chuckled, lowering his guard a little and giving the rather bemused Aurors a smirk.
"My apologies if I came off a little intense there," he grinned. "But look at it from our perspective - one moment we were under attack and then suddenly we're in a room with a bunch of strangers with all our friends missing with no knowledge of what happened in between. It's really no surprise we'd be highly strung, is it, Levy?"
"Um… oh… oh no, indeed not," Levy confirmed, forcing herself to look away from Mavis. "We're sorry to trouble you like this but… don't know know where the rest of our friends are? We're so worried about them. They could be dead for all we know!"
Mavis chuckled, recognising that while Levy was talking to the Ministry members, her questions was actually aimed at Mavis. But the ghost let Scrimgeour answer first to avoid confusing overlap.
"I am afraid we do not. We did not even know that there were people inside that Sphere until it suddenly lowered."
"Don't worry, your friends are safe," Mavis then answered. "All of them are alive for I cast the Fairy Sphere over you all to protect you from Acnologia's attack."
Gildarts and Levy both sighed in what might look like frustration, but which was actually profound relief, before Gildarts suddenly questioned. "And this Sphere… you say it fell out of the sky?"
"That's right. Care to explain that?" Scrimgeour asked.
"Events beyond my control unfortunately caused us all to be sent to another dimension," Mavis chipped in. "I had to split the Fairy Sphere up to keep it from falling apart on the journey."
Levy's eyes widened but Gildarts managed to contain his shock and keep up his casual and rather disarming smile, though even he was thanking the gods that the whole Edolas debacle had happened before the S-Class exam because his knowledge of that event made this news much easier to swallow. "Let me ask you, did more than one Sphere fall or was it just us?"
"There were multiple lights in the sky certainly," Scrimgeour nodded.
"Well, to be honest, I'm not entirely sure what's going on," Gildarts shrugged his shoulders. "But my guess would be that those other lights contained our friends. That's good - it means they are probably safe too."
"Oh yes… my guess is they are indeed safe," Scrimgeour's face tightened slightly. "I haven't had the… honour… of meeting any of your friends yet as far as I am aware, but unless I'm very much mistaken… they've been making themselves known to us. And in a pretty big way."
"Scrimgeour, allow me," Fudge stepped forwards and, clutching his hat slightly, he drew himself up as tall as he could and still only came up to about the same level as Gildarts' ribs as he said, "I am Cornelius Fudge, Minister for Magic! And I demand to know who you are."
Gildarts grimaced slightly, for the name Cornelius reminded him suddenly of his deceased ex-wife, Cornelia, and that just brought thoughts of Cana back to the front of his mind. He ached to go charging out there to find her, but he trusted Mavis' word that she was fine even though he was still dumbfounded that Mavis was here at all.
Still, he quickly ordered his thoughts and held out his hand. "Gildarts Clive, S-Class Mage of Fairy Tail. And this is my young friend, Levy McGarden. A pleasure to make your acquaintance, Minister, even though I've never heard of you before."
"Never heard of me?" Cornelius blustered without shaking the hand before him. "How is that possible - I am the Minister for Magic of Great Britain. How could you not know who I am!?"
"Maybe because I'm not from Great Britain?" Gildarts shrugged. "Wasn't trying to offend you - there's lots of people I don't know. Heck, I don't even know the name of the King of my own country."
"And what country would that be?"
"It's called Fiore. And my guess is you've never heard of it before. My guess is that most people you know won't have heard of it before." Gildarts finally lowered his hand, deciding that he didn't particularly want to shake this man's hand anyway.
"Questions about where you come from can wait," Scrimgeour stepped up next to the bristling Minister. "What's more important is learning more about who you are. For instance… that mark I can see on your chest, right there?" He pointed at Gildarts' left pectoral, where his guild stamp was located but mostly covered by bandages. "What exactly does that mark mean?"
"That?" Gildarts looked down and pulled his bandages aside slightly to reveal the whole thing. "That's the mark of Fairy Tail. Everyone in our guild has one."
"Here's mine," Levy spoke up - she decided to let Gildarts do most of the talking since he was probably better at this kind of thing than she was but here she turned around so that they could see the white mark on her left shoulder-blade.
"And what craft does this guild of yours practice?" Scrimgeour knitted his eyebrows.
Gildarts blinked a couple of times. "Magic…" he eventually said. "What else would we practice?"
...
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