Darkness. That was all Emma could see in her new form. She closed her eyes and felt around her. Her senses were going wild. A wind pumped at her back. It took a moment to realize that was because she had wings. Concentrating on them, she forced them to fold down. She fell a few feet. That wouldn't have been so bad if she was her normal size, but in the new form, it was about 20 times her height.

Fortunately, her new form was surrounded by magic. It cushioned her as she landed. Once she recovered from the fall, she opened her eyes. A brightness shown beyond the dark cave where she'd transformed. Emma focused on her wings, making them beat slowly, then faster until she was airborne. She flew into the bright valley.

A large fairy floated on a pavilion, giving orders to other little fairies. The large fairy spoke in plain human language, but her fairies didn't. Emma, now one of them, could understand their chirping. Mother they called the large fairy. Sister they called Emma.

Emma flew to Mother. The large fairy smiled and issued her orders.

"Head out to Mount Greylock. There's 4 canines and 2 premolars there!"

Five fairies went with her as they flew to the American Wizard School at Mount Greylock. Emma paused, watching her new sisters. They passed through windows. Emma followed them, shivering as the window tickled her when she phased into it. Once inside the building, her new feathers tingled. She could feel the teeth. All of them. Every magical child sleeping in the building. But some of the teeth seemed to be singing out to her. She concentrated on the sound She passed through several doors and walls, hearing the song growing louder.

The notes were strongest under a pillow. Emma worked her way under, grabbing the tooth and leaving a coin. She flew out of the building with her sisters, back to Tooth Palace. While holding the tooth, she could easily hear the other teeth of the set. She followed the noise to a tooth case. It opened and she put her tooth away.

Looking to her sisters, she learned to take a coin and report back to Mother for new orders.

Years passed in this fashion. Emma found that most of her assignments sent her to America. At first she was happy about it. Jack Frost spent a lot of time in North America, especially in the winter. Her sisters all ogled him. They'd seen him when he put frost on the windows at night. Everyone chittered about his perfectly white teeth.

Emma couldn't care less about Jack's teeth. She had another reason to want him. But somehow, their paths never met. He never seemed to be anywhere near the children she was assigned to. Was it Mother's doing? Was she trying to keep Emma away from Jack? Emma dismissed the thought. Mother didn't pay attention to individual fairies. Emma doubted if she even remembered that Emma had not been born a fairy.

Once or twice Emma found herself with a moment or two of free time. At first, she spent this time looking for Jack, but he was hard to pin down. He bounced around the world in such a random way. Even though Emma could fly fast, she never managed to get where he was before he'd left.

Eventually, Emma stopped seeking Jack out, instead spending her time with her sisters. They all had stories of famous teeth that they'd collected and memories they'd restored. Emma paid particular attention when she recognized people from her life. It seemed her sisters had done everything from helping the Great King of the Wilderwest to establish his kingdom, to assisting Queen Rapunzel as she took up her parents' throne.

As the years went on, she stopped knowing the people they were bragging about. Harry Potter's teeth made no difference to her.

Everything fell into a normal pattern. Get tooth, replace with coin, put tooth away, get new coin, repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.

And she was expecting it to keep repeating. Until the day of the attack.

It started out a normal day. She gathered teeth and left coins for children. As she was tucking the last tooth into its container, she noticed the northern lights. Mother and a handful of fairies flew off to the North.

Emma didn't go. Most of the fairies didn't go. They had to stay and continue gathering teeth. Mother continued to direct them, sending the fairies she'd brought with her back and forth, telling them where to go.

Though her sisters didn't slow down, Emma did. She must still have some human instincts in her, because she found herself floating down to the old memory cases. The ones of the people she'd known as a human.

The memory of the people from the original Burgess, and the memories of those from the American town of the same name. The gilded cases darkened. Emma looked up towards the sun, or where the sun should have been. What she saw made her feathers puff up.

A cloud of blackness hovered above the shining palace. At first Emma thought it might have been a storm cloud, but it started to twist and turn in such an unnatural way. And then dark shapes darted from the cloud, down into the valley. Emma backed up, her heart beating as rapidly as her wings. She'd seen these ... these Night Mares before. They were the reason she was a fairy, the reason she hadn't seen Jack in centuries.

The horses darted past her, they were more interested in the teeth of people alive today. Emma watched in horror as her sisters fluttered to defend the teeth. Their sharp beaks did nothing when they hit the sand, they were barely fleas to the horses.

As some of the horses collected the tooth cases, a second wave of Night Mares appeared. These started snapping at the fairies, swallowing them whole.

The palace was in chaos, and it was not long before the horses started on the older memories. As one neared Emma, she ascended and flew away, letting it seize the teeth. The older ones were no use to anyone anyway, unless their owners had become ghosts.

Emma and the remaining fairies fled the palace as more Night Mares appeared. This was a losing battle. She knew it. Her sisters knew it. All they could hope for was to survive to continue collecting teeth. Unfortunately, the Night Mares did not want them to. They chased the little fairies out. Emma panicked as the Night Mare snapped its wide jaw, enclosing her sisters.

The horse was about to get her when something cold wrapped around her body, pinning her wings to her side. She was falling, protected by something soft and frigid. The top of her covering fell away. She looked up into icy eyes.

"Hey, little Baby Tooth. You okay?" the boy asked.

Jack! She tried to exclaim, but all that came out was a slight chirping. She forgot that in her current state she had no human voice box. He set her down as the sleigh they were in twisted and turned.

Baby Tooth. That's what he'd called her. He didn't know who she was, and she couldn't tell him. When the sleigh landed, Emma saw her mother in a flurry, worried over her missing sisters. Emma flew from behind Jack to both reassure her mother and to ask if she could tell Jack who she was.

Before she got a chance, the shadowman himself appeared. Emma hid with the Guardians as Mother challenged Pitch, but when the horse appeared she fled to Jack. He would protect her.

Pitch explained that the horses were new. And more dangerous. The Nightmare King had always been able to make Night Mares, but his new herd was a different breed. These were dreams that had been corrupted into Night Mares. More dangerous, more scary.

The Guardians attacked, but Pitch got away. Emma again went to Mother, intending to ask her about telling Jack who she was, but Mother looked so ... sad. Mother never looked sad. She usually looked busy. Emma couldn't bring herself to tell Mother that she wanted to be with Jack.

Instead, she hovered nearby while Mother and Jack talked, and Jack revealed he couldn't remember his past. Emma cringed. It was her fault. It hadn't even occurred to her at the time. Long ago, shortly after Jack was made immortal, a memory charm had been cast over the whole world. Jack was not supposed to be affected by it. Neither were the Guardians. But Pitch Black had played a nasty prank. All the Guardians except the Man in the Moon and Ombric had lost their memory of the youngest immortal.

Since that day, Katherine had started to record all stories, to ensure that nothing would be lost to memory ever again. Due to her new role as Mother Goose, however, it meant that she rarely set foot outside of her home in Ganderly. Ombric had attempted to see the future and past so often that he got stuck with one foot in the past and one in the future, leaving very little in the present.

The Man in the Moon, meanwhile, had lost his means of communicating with the Guardians. Or they had lost the ability to speak Moonbeam. Emma wasn't sure which, but it meant their communications had to be much more coordinated. Manny couldn't suddenly appear and tell them when there was trouble.

There was one more who might remember Jack. A boy called Nightlight. He had never had baby teeth to store his memory, so Emma was not sure if he had been affected by the spell. What she did know was that he sometimes called himself Jack and lived as a mortal with the Ardelean family. He had not mingled with any of Guardians, except Katherine, in many years.

Emma hovered around Mother. This would be a good time to tell her that she needed to speak to Jack. Before she could voice her request, though, Mother started molting. The Guardians quickly came up with a plan to help. Jack agreed, with the promise that he would get his memories back. Emma smiled. Once he had his memories back, she could tell him who she was. That he had a family.

The Guardians set off, running around the world collecting the teeth. As they flew, Mother went wild as she directed them to where the teeth were. Emma only heard the teeth nearest her, but if Mother could direct all her fairies from the palace, the teeth must sound insanely loud to her.

They traversed the world, going everywhere. She'd never had so much fun. Only once or twice she found herself darting into a house that one of the other Guardians had taken, including one in the land where Corona used to stand where she officially met a member of the European Division.

But the place she was most excited to collect teeth from tonight was England. She stayed with Jack, and steered him towards the teeth at the Weasley house. It was Hugo Granger-Weasley's first tooth. Jack took it, but showed no sign of recognizing the boy.

Emma sighed. She supposed it was asking a lot to expect him to recognize distant descendants of his friends. Of course, the child was not a direct descendant of the founding councilwoman, Merida. Rather, he was a descendant of her brothers, two of them. Harris had remained weak from his illness all his life. He had gone off in search of a cure and met a batty old witch. She didn't cure him, but he hit it off with her great niece. They'd been the ancestors of Molly Prewett. Meanwhile Hubert became a knight. He found love, and many generations later Arthur Weasley came about. In the last century, the two houses had rejoined, not knowing they shared a common ancestor in the first king and queen of Scotland. Emma had hoped that their powerful red hair might jog something in Jack, but he didn't seem to connect the dots at all.

Lily Luna Potter, also descended from the DunBrochs, likewise did nothing to make Jack remember. Emma next tried to take Jack to Hogwarts. It was unlikely he would recognize any of the students, despite a good many of them being from the Noble House of Black, a line left by Mother Nature when she adopted her father's new last name and lived among the humans for a time. Emma dragged him into the school, anyway, and to the Slytherin dungeon.

She could phase through the door, but he had to guess at the password. He got it in two tries. At first, Emma thought maybe it was a spark of memory, but then he crushed her hopes.

"The Bloody Baron told me the password last time I was here," Jack said. "I can't give snow days to kids in boarding school, but the ghosts are good for a chat. And when the kids are outside I give them snowballs."

He started to chuckle, "I once gave a set of twins the idea to enchant snowballs to continuously hit the back of a professor's turban. They didn't know I helped, of course."

Emma sighed and flew down to the dorm room to collect the lost tooth. Jack took it and they left the school.

She next tried to take him to the original Burgess. Most of the buildings from their time were gone, but the lake remained. Again, Jack showed some signs of remembering, only to reveal that his memories were for more recent exploits, such as giving the children a snow day during the Grindelwald years.

Emma scowled as they moved on. Unfortunately, none of Jack's other friends had left descendants who'd lost teeth this night. Not that anyone resembled them, anyway.

Finally, Emma had to give up. They went to America and continued the hunt for teeth. They may have continued circling the globe for all of eternity, after all, there were always more lost teeth, were it not for the little boy waking.

The Guardians struggled to put him back to sleep and ended up knocking Emma out. She dreamt that she found Jack's teeth and restored his memory.

By the time the little fairy woke up, the Guardians were in full fledged battle over Burgess. A battle that ended with Sandman turning into a Night Mare and Jack using all his power to defend the Guardians. He passed out from the effort, but Mother caught him, lowering him to the sleigh. They took off, heading to the North Pole. Emma watched her brother, afraid he would be out for another five hundred years. Fortunately he woke a moment or two later. The Guardians held a memorial for Sandman. Emma stayed with Jack. He didn't join the Guardians. He pulled his hood up and found a corner to hide in. Emma recognized the behavior. Whenever he'd been upset as a human, he'd often hide his hair, the thing that marked him as an ice elf, and one of his favorite places in their cabin was hiding by the window looking out.

North came to talk to Jack, then they noticed the lights on the globe going out. Emma knew from watching her brother fall what could happen if the lights did go out. All the Guardians would fade. What would happen to her then? Would she turn back into a human, or die with them? And what would happen to Jack? He had no believers to lose … would he remain or would it be too much for him?

The Easter Bunny opened a tunnel into his warren and they quickly realized it had been infiltrated by a little girl. Watching Jack with the child reminded Emma of her own childhood. She couldn't help but be a little jealous of Sophie Bennett. Trying not to dwell on it, she turned to help paint the eggs.

Soon the little child was asleep and all the eggs were painted. Jack volunteered to take the child home. The Guardians protested, saying they needed Jack more than the girl. But Jack insisted. Emma knew he would.

If Pitch went after the eggs, the Guardians would lose believers, but if he went after the child, she could lose her life. While Jack cared for childhood as much as the other Guardians, he put more stock in living than they did. Maybe it was because he was the youngest. Or maybe it was because he'd actually experienced death. The other Guardians who used to be humans had been turned while still alive.

Emma went with Jack. As he tucked Sophie into bed, she remembered how he used to tuck her in. She missed those days. They left the bedroom and were about to fly off when Jack paused and looked around.

"That voice. I know that voice," Jack muttered. Emma squawked at him, missing her human voice. She couldn't hear anything.

Jack took off after the voice. It led him to an old wooden bed in the woods. That wasn't good. Beds don't just appear in the middle of the woods. No matter how much Baby Tooth tried to stop him, Jack pursued the unknown sound into the dark tunnel under the bed. Emma squawked in his ear. Even if he couldn't understand the words, he should get her tone.

Leave. Stop. Go back, she yelled in fairy speech. Jack swatted her away. She tried not to let the hurt show. After all, to him she was just one of a thousand fairies. Not his sister.

And then they saw them. All her 'sisters'. The other fairies, kept in cages by the dozens. Jack ran to one, trying to open it. Emma reassured herself. Maybe Jack would be the hero. Maybe he would save the-

Nope. He leapt off the cage and down to a pile of teeth. Emma squeaked in alarm as Jack started looking at the cases. He could never find his memories that way, and now was not the time. She intended to peck him, to make him remember what was important …a dark shadow enveloped her, holding her in place. Jack did not see her as he chased the shadowman around the dark lair.

And then she was alone.

She sniffled. Jack had abandoned them. He'd abandoned her in pursuit of his memory. She hadn't thought he'd do it. Jack was supposed to be good. He always put others first. Except this time. She pulled her knees up to her chest and cried. If Jack looked at his memories, he would remember her. But it would be too late. She would never see him again.

A small bit of light entered the chamber. Baby Tooth turned to it. But it wasn't Jack. Pitch's gray hand shot out and grabbed her, crushing her arms and wings.

"I know you," he murmured. "I can feel your fear. Your fears are nothing like the other fairies'. They fear disappearing. They fear children waking up and finding teeth. They fear cavities. But you fear for Jack. Why?"

Baby Tooth held her head up. She wouldn't respond, even if he couldn't understand her.

"Don't tell me," he sneered. "I can use Occlumency to get it out of you."

He did. He forced himself into her mind. She tried not to give him anything. Tried to hold him out. But it didn't work. He invaded her mind, learning everything.

"So, the boy had a family, but doesn't remember them now. I can use that. And use you," he sneered. He slipped her into a small dark box and transported them to somewhere very cold. He tried to tempt Jack, offering him a family. Jack didn't fall for it. Not this time. Instead, he turned away. That was when Pitch brought her out. He squeezed her hard, crushing her insides until Jack relented, giving up his staff.

"Now hand her over," Jack demanded.

"No," Pitch sneered. Baby Tooth saw what he planned. He would keep her, as leverage, to forever harm Jack. She couldn't let that happen. Not again. She stabbed him with her beak. He threw her. She hit a wall of ice and fell to the cold ground. A moment later, Jack fell into the crevice. He gently picked her up as she regained her senses.

She hadn't seen her brother so sad in a long time. He tried to hide it when he was around other people. He'd given up. She didn't have to be his sister to see it. As he apologized for being cold, she heard the singing. The tooth box! He had it!

She crawled into his pocket and triggered the tooth box so that it would call out to him. He took the bait, and activated the memory as she instructed.

She didn't know what he saw, but he perked up really quickly.

"Did you see that?" Jack demanded. No, she never saw what people remembered.

"I had a sister. I saved her!" Jack exclaimed excitedly. "We gotta get out of here."

Emma couldn't be more proud. Jack remembered. Most importantly, he remembered her. Of course, he didn't know that she'd become a fairy. He wouldn't remember that. But she was quite pleased to be a part of his most important memory.

Jack apparently remembered he was a wizard as well, as he used wizard magic to fix his staff.

Emma sat on Jack's shoulder as he flew them back to Pitch's lair. Her wings felt weak. She couldn't fly. She wasn't believed in. This happened gradually to her, as children stopped believing. No wonder Jack entered a five hundred year coma. To experience every child in the world suddenly forgetting you, not believing you existed in one moment would be an unbearable pain.

Jack opened all the cages, but none of her sisters could fly either.

Emma stayed to help her sisters while Jack flew back to Burgess, where the last light waited. Slowly, a few other lights in Burgess flickered on. The fairies regained a bit of strength. Flying down to the teeth, Emma instructed them to help the children remember the Guardians. To help them remember good dreams and past Easters. The children stopped doubting. Sure, this night they had nightmares, and this Easter never came. But their fears were pushed aside as they remembered. They gave strength to the Guardians.

The fairies could fly again. She and her sisters burst forth from the underground chamber. Half of them took charge of returning the stolen memories to Tooth Palace, the other half went to collect tonight's teeth. They couldn't let another child stop believing. Baby Tooth and a small selection of her sisters flew to Burgess just in time to see the final battle. Sandman came back to life, the children stopped believing in Pitch, and Jack was sworn in as a Guardian.

They flew off, Emma staying at Jack's shoulder. She chirped in his ear as he made a light snow over Burgess.

He still didn't understand her, but he did take his tooth case to Toothiana.

"Can you help me?" Jack asked. "I remembered some of my life, but there are still gaps."

"Of course I'll help," Toothiana promised. Emma stayed by Jack's side until Toothiana got around to it. She helped him strip back the memories. Neither Tooth nor Emma could see what Jack remembered. But he gasped and blinked so often that Emma could guess.

"Mother," Emma chirped to Toothiana, "can you make me what I was?"

Emma held up one of her own teeth, from when she was mortal. Toothiana put the tooth to her forehead, then looked between them. She bowed her head and called upon moonlight. Emma could feel herself growing, and her wings shrinking. It was an illusion. She knew that. This body was no longer hers. But Jack knew it.

"EMMA!" He scrambled to his feet, embracing her in a huge hug.

"Jack, you're okay!" Emma cried into his shoulder.

"Thanks to you," Jack said, cradling her face. "I remember. I remember it all. Hogwarts. Mom, John. Jokul. And most importantly, you. Everything about you. I remember your life, your friends, how much you wanted to be a witch and how disappointed you were when you weren't one. And Manny showed me what happened after. How you stood up for me. How you watched over me. All those years you stood alone, guarding my lake."

Emma brushed away tears, "It wasn't so bad. The Guardians watched over me."

"I don't suppose you ever learned what happened to everyone else?"

"I figured you'd want to know," Emma said. "I checked their teeth once I became a fairy. They grew up, and became the greatest rulers Europe has ever seen. Hiccup became King of the Archipelago."

"The Archipelago has a king?"

"Hiccup was the first, I think. I know I work with memory, but I haven't thought of the Archipelago in a long time. Hiccup hid them too well. Once his reign ended, we never heard from the Archipelago again. We don't know if anyone is still there. Vikings don't always put their teeth under their pillows, anyway."

"What about Merida?"

"She and her brothers grew up, and ruled jointly. Merida never married, but her brothers did. Their descendants are still in Hogwarts, under the names Weasley and Potter. Some of the lords' sons also left descendants in Hogwarts. Wee Dingwall's great-great grandson even married a giant."

"And Rapunzel?"

"She married Eugene. They became the King and Queen of Corona after her parents, living happily ever after. They also befriended the Queen of Arendelle, Rapunzel's cousin. It's too bad you never met her. Queen Elsa of Arendelle had ice powers, too. And Pitch hunted her down with all his might, trying to revive the fear that you stopped."

"I'm sorry I missed that," Jack mumbled. "I might have liked her."

"Maybe you can mee-" Emma started to fade.

"I can't maintain her form anymore," Tooth said. "But she will always be here. That was the agreement when she cast off her mortal form for the immortality of a tooth fairy.

Jack reached out his hand as she resumed her shape as a fairy. She landed on his palm. Jack cradled her to his chest.

Jack smiled, "Can I borrow her for a while? She is my sister."

"Of course," Toothiana said. "You belong together. Where are going?"

Jack stood up and held out his staff. "Now that I remember ... there are some things I have to check up on."

Baby Tooth, formerly Emma, flew a few feet, leading him.

"I have a feeling she's got something to show me," Jack said with a smile.

He waved his staff and took off into the night, Emma at his side, forever together.

"Good ending, Jack. But ... uh ... I think you cut it off a little too early." -H

"Yeah. You didn't mention that when Emma took you to visit Mother Goose, you found that we lived on in the stories we left." -M

"We're narrating, aren't we? We all had movies. Some of us had books or TV shows. And it's hardly like this is the only fanfiction of us. We'll all keep living on, so long as the readers believe in us." -J

"What happened to Mother Nature?" -R

"Mother Nature is still around. She's a bit put out with humans recently. Lately she's been growing warmer. I tried to temper it by sending blizzards to the places she scorched in the summer. It hasn't really worked so far." -J

"What about the Wizards and Muggles conflict?" -R

"Well, Pitch Black isn't as involved with it as he once was, but there are still Wizards who think they're better than Muggles, Muggles who think they're better than Wizards and a whole bunch of Half-bloods and Muggleborns caught in the middle. But that's for the living Wizards to decide now." -J

"So ... our story is finally over? There's no way to go forward from here, is there?" -H

"Nope. It's time to sign off. Our fate lives within us. You only have to be brave enough to see it." -M

"The only upsides are the pets. While other places have ponies or parrots, we have... dragons!" -H

"And we're living happily ever after." -R

"Yes we are." -E

"So when the moon tells you something... believe it." -J

A/N: And so ends my career as a fanfiction writer. I thank you for each review, follow, or favorite you gave me. I cherished them all.

Now I move on. I do have other fanfiction ideas, but I think I will try to write them as original fiction stories going forward and see if I can get anything professionally published. See you in the bookstores, I hope.