"There's eleven of us now, if you count our ghostly First Master," Gildarts noted as he stood on the beach of Tenroujima with his arms folded, the rest of the group gathered together in a circle on the sand around. "And that means we now total exactly half of our original number, again if you count Master Mavis amongst that number."
"And the third Master is amongst that number," Levy agreed. "I wonder where he is now."
"I wonder where all of them are now," Lisanna sighed. "Natsu, my brother and sister, Erza, Lucy, Cana, Laxus and the Raijinshuu… all of them are still out there somewhere, hidden away in their respective Spheres. And all of them unaware of the new situation they're in."
"That includes all of our S-Class Mages except you, Gildarts," said Gray. "Does that make you our leader now?"
"Your leader?" Gildarts snorted. "Trust me, I'd never assume to take the place of the First Master herself. Or any Master, come to that. I'm not exactly… Master material, I don't think?"
"You do realise that you're the one that Master Makarov will most likely pick to be his successor right?" Gray raised a brow.
"It might not be his decision to make anymore," Gildarts shrugged. "In all likelihood Fairy Tail has a Fourth Master now. One of the ones left behind in our world will have had to pick up the mantle."
"Dear gosh… can you imagine how horrible it must be for them?" Lisanna gasped. "And we think we've got it rough here in this world when they're the ones who must surely think we've all been dead for the last six years."
"Juvia wonders what the guild is like now," Juvia murmured, drawing little patterns in the sand with her fingers.
"And who took up the mantle of Master," Levy mused. "Macao and Wakaba are the oldest remaining guild members I think, so they might be the most likely candidates."
"Thinking about them at this time probably isn't going to help us very much," Pantherlily interjected. "We need to focus more on what exactly we are going to do. Even if we are staying here to help out our new companions we should probably still be thinking of a way to get home."
"Maybe if we could do some research we could find something from this world capable of dimension travel that could help us…" Levy tapped her chin before sighing. "Too bad those Ministry people took away my Gale-Force Reading Glasses. They would have been helpful for that."
"Oh, of course!" Gildarts suddenly clapped a hand to his forehead and stuck the other inside his coat, before he pulled out a familiar pair of red-rimmed glasses and a light pen. "These look familiar to you, Levy?"
"Those are… how did you get hold of those?" Levy gasped as Gildarts tossed them back to her.
"They were in a box on the outside of our cell," Gildarts chuckled. "When I blew my way out I knocked the box over and I spotted them on the ground so I picked them up before I rushed off to get you."
"Gildarts, you're the best," Levy grinned, perching the glasses on her nose and smiling widely.
"Even so," Wendy raised her hand as if she was in a classroom. "Dumbledore-san thinks that dimension travel has never happened in this world before. If that's true then there might not be anything for us to find about it here."
"I see… that is rather disappointing," Gildarts murmured.
"What about you, Lily?" Happy suddenly turned to his fellow Exceed. "Do you think that you could do something?"
"What makes you think I can do anything, Happy?"
"Well… you worked with the Anima from Edolas, didn't you? That was something that could transport things from one world to another. Do you think we could build something similar to that?"
"That's not actually a bad idea, Happy," Charla blinked, and she wasn't the only one surprised that Happy had come up with an idea that wasn't totally ludicrous. "Maybe with that, we could transfer the entire island of Tenroujima back home with us to."
"It's a nice thought, certainly," Pantherlily scratched his arm. "But a rather distant one I'm afraid. It was the humans who constructed the Anima from our world. I knew very little about how it worked. Maybe if the Prince was here… Mystogan… he might know how to duplicate it. But sadly he is not. And I remain clueless."
"Well… good try anyway, Happy," Lisanna placed a hand on the disappointed blue cat's head and ruffled between his ears lightly.
"So we've come up stuck?" Gajeel asked, grumpily.
"For now, yes," Mavis said from where she was perched on a rock nearby. "But as the saying goes, where there's a will, there's a way. And that saying is especially true of those with magical ability. I'm sure somewhere along the line we will be able to return home. But that is not our first priority right now either. Finding and securing our missing comrades is. That, and helping our newer friends with their own struggles. Speaking of which, I calculate there is a seventy-three percent probability that one of them will Apparate to our location within the next five seconds."
There was a brief pause before suddenly there was a loud crack and none other than Sirius appeared not far away with a rather lop-sided grin on his face. Another crack saw Remus Lupin arrive alongside him, the man looking a little more haggard than even just that morning.
"Well now," Sirius grinned as he strode towards them. "Looks like I may have been replaced at the top of the Ministry's Most Wanted list if even half the stuff we've been hearing is true. You lot really went and made a mess, didn't you?"
"It's practically our calling card," Lisanna tapped her fingers together sheepishly. "Sometimes I get the feeling most of us feel that if we don't make a mess we're not doing it right."
"Well no complaints from me," Sirius laughed. "Except maybe for the fact I wasn't there to see Fudge's face when it happened."
"But you might be hearing quite a lot of complaints from everyone else," Lupin added. "Anyway… where are my manners? It's a pleasure to meet two new members of your group and to see you're both looking well, though of course I'd rather the circumstances were rather different."
"The pleasure's ours," Gildarts nodded with a smirk. "I gather you're more members of this Order we've been hearing so much about."
"And I gather you're the one who almost tossed Kingsley through a wall," Sirius snorted. "And you also vaporised a few Dementors? I would give… practically anything… to have witnessed that, believe me."
"Not fond of them, I take it?" Gildarts asked dryly.
"That's one way of putting it," Sirius growled slightly. "I'm not normally one that would call for something to be hunted to extinction but… if there was every anything…"
"I think the chatting can wait until we're back in Grimmauld Place," Lupin placed a hand on Sirius' shoulder consolingly. "As you can probably tell we've been sent to come and collect you."
"More Side-Along Apparition, you mean?" Gray asked.
"That's the stuff," Sirius wrinkled his nose. "Sorry to tell you first timers but its really not the most pleasant experience. I'll be one-hundred Galleons that you'll both fall over when you reach the end."
"That's not exactly the best way of inspiring confidence I've ever heard," Levy face faulted slightly.
"Er… there might be a slight problem with that, if that's the case," Gildarts rubbed the back of his head a little. "When I hit things rather hard I have a tendency to… smash it to pieces. And that includes walls, floors and sometimes… entire buildings. It might be difficult for me to, erm… contain myself."
A brief beat of silence.
Then…
"You mean you might break Grimmauld Place!? Well no arguments from me!"
"You would say that," Remus heaved a sigh.