Author's Notes:

Bonus chapter for hitting 100 likes, June 10, 2018!
And thank you to all who are reading my story.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” asked Twilight after his explanation, her voice reflecting her wounded feelings that he hadn’t told her the portal still existed and could be used to go back to his world.

Even Spike was giving him a disapproving stare. As was Applejack.

He shrugged, and looked at the fillies. They smiled encouragingly back at him. A year ago he would have been terrified at her discovering his secret. Today, thanks to his filly friends, he was considerably more confident. He still twitched at certain sounds and voice tones, but, overall, he was a different colt than before.

“I was worried you’d send me back. And I’d do anything to avoid going back to the Dursleys. Plus, I wanted to stay here with my friends. So . . . ,” he let his voice trail off.

She sighed deeply, a hurt expression on her face. “Harry, we would never have forced you to go back, you know that.”

He gave her a swift glance and resumed staring at the table-top. “I know that now, but back then I didn’t. I worried every day that you’d toss me out as soon as your experiments were done. That once you wrung ‘Subject’ dry and could learn no more, well . . . I’d be out the door and discarded like an old dishrag.”

She leaned back, her ears lying against her head, appalled, “I would never . . . .”

“As I said,” he interrupted, “I know that now, but I didn’t back then. Back then, all I knew was that adults were not to be trusted. That they’d say one thing one day, then another the next. And beat you for imagined misdeeds. Kids . . . other foals, you’d say . . . were just as bad.” He gave a quick smile to the three fillies. Three fillies who had unreservedly accepted him. Three fillies who had told him he was family to them, a herd with him. Three fillies he couldn’t imagine leaving. “Except you of course,” he softly said to them, happiness shining in his eyes. The three immediately moved around the table and hugged him.

Applejack had been watching and listening quietly. “Apple Bloom,” she said ominously. “Ah see ya aren’t surprised ta hear ’bout this portal. . . .”

Twilight frowned at this observation and turned her attention from Harry to his “herd-mates.”

Apple Bloom gulped and pretended not to hear her sister as she continued to hug her friends, maybe even a bit tighter. The silence was damning in and of itself.

Harry could see Twilight frowning as she thought things over. “AJ,” she finally said, “I think we need Rarity and Lofty or Holiday here when these troublemakers explain themselves.”

“Ah reckin yer right,” the mare half growled as she turned to the door. “Spike? Ya want to get Rarity and Fluttershy while Ah track down Pinkie Pie, Rainbow Dash, and one a’ Scootaloo’s aunts?”

“Sure!” said Spike as he ran out the door, followed by Applejack at a slightly more sedate pace.

“While we wait,” Twilight said quietly, “You, Harry, can tell me just how many times you’ve been through the portal and when.”

Harry ran his hoof through his mane, “Heh,” he said uncomfortably looking down. “Maybe a dozen times?”

At Twilights accusatory glare, he explained, “We were careful. Nopony saw us!” That was true, no Guards or any other ponies had seen them. People in the playpark and around Little Whinging, though . . . .

“We?”

Uh, oh. “Heh,” he said embarrassedly running a hoof through his mane. “The fillies wanted to see where I lived. See what people looked like.” He cut his eyes to his friends. They looked as embarrassed as he felt.

“They have carts for carrying ponies that ponies don’t have to pull, and go faster than a pony can run,” Sweetie Belle said, trying to be helpful.

“And trains that can carry hundreds of ponies at a time that fly without pegasi pulling them,” added Scootaloo, “we saw ’em!” Anything to distract the upset purple alicorn from their transgressions.

For a moment it looked like it might work. Harry could see the interest in Twilight’s eyes, the way she started to shiver excitedly at the prospect of learning something new.

“All of you went there? Multiple times? Through the Everfree Forest?” she growled.

Realizing that maybe that wasn’t the best thing to admit, Harry looked back down at the floor and the fillies shuffled uncomfortably at his side, also looking everywhere but at Twilight.

“We were careful,” he said quietly.

“The Everfree,” Twilight restated flatly, glaring at them.

“But you go there all the time!” he weakly defended.

“I’m an adult! And the bearer of the Element of Magic!” she declared, glaring at him. “And you don’t know any offensive or defensive magic!”

“Maybe you should teach me some, then!” Harry shot back. Then leaned back. Ooops. “I should’na said that,” he mumbled to his fillies. As one they nodded.

“You’re too young to do those spells! You don’t have the power!” she shot back.

Harry looked away. “We don’t know that. I’m also too young to teleport!” he said quietly. “And yet I can do that quite well, thank you very much!”

Twilight just glared at him.

They sat in silence. Twilight’s expression varying from glaring at them for sneaking into that deadly forest, for any reason, to delight whenever she thought about finally visiting Harry’s home-world and all the things there were to learn there!

Twilight glared at them until the other mares arrived.

“What have they gotten into this time?” queried Rarity as she came in. Twilight simply shook her head, delaying an answer until everyone was here.

Aunt Holiday, an earth-pony, was shaking her head in resignation as she came in a moment later, behind Applejack. Unfortunately for Scootaloo, Aunt Holiday was not the more laid-back and relaxed Aunt Lofty. Whatever the trouble was, the stern mare was certain that Scootaloo was in the middle of it. Her gaze quickly found her niece and the guilty look she got in return confirmed her suspicions, earning the filly a glare.

Twilight said, “Rarity, you already know most of this, but Holiday, you don’t.” The purple alicorn sighed. “You know Harry isn’t from here,” she said to Scootaloo’s aunt, “Most ponies assume he’s from one of the countries outside Equestria, but he’s from much, much farther away.

“Harry is actually from another world entirely. He came here through a portal, which we thought dissipated after he passed through it. Today, Harry received a message from his home-world, and just now told us that he’s known the portal was still in existence for over a year.”

Holiday switched from glaring at Scootaloo to staring at Harry while frowning suspiciously.

“He had his reasons for not telling us, and while I disagree with those reasons, I understand why he kept silent.”

Aunt Holiday turned her attention back to Twilight looking apprehensive. “And this concerns Scootaloo, how?”

Twilight cleared her throat. “It seems that the fillies here,” she stopped and looked at Sweetie Belle, Scootaloo, and Apple Bloom in turn, “. . . not only knew about the portal, which is in the Everfree Forest,” she growled the last two words, “but have actually gone with him to visit his home-world. Multiple times. And didn’t tell anyone.”

Both new ponies were giving their respective relative filly a harsh glare. Applejack was doing the same with Apple Bloom, although part of that glare was mixed with disappointment.

“We made a Pinkie Promise!” squeaked out Scootaloo.

“So, Harry Potter,” Twilight said ignoring the interruption, “How did the fillies find out about the Portal? Did you tell them?”

“Come on, Harry!” Scootaloo said.

“We’ll get caught,” Harry argued back.

“No, we won’t,” she wheedled. “There’s only two guards posted there at a time, and they only check your trail twice a day now, mornin’ and evenin’.”

“I know,” he said, his right hoof through his mane nervously. “It’s just so dangerous in there according to the guards and Twilight!” He looked away from them. “Besides, I’ve already looked for the portal with Twilight and the guards when I got out of the hospital.”

He didn’t want to admit he had already been back there since then. That would lead to even more questions.

“Ah, gee, Harry, this is our chance to get our Cutie Marks in tracking,” Apple Bloom said.

“Or maybe our Cutie Marks in Guard Scouting!” said Scootaloo.

“And it’ll help you, too,” finished Sweetie Belle.

Harry sighed and stared out the clubhouse window. He had already told them he knew exactly where the trail led, and that it simply stopped dead. But once Scootaloo got an idea in her head it was impossible to dislodge it.

Just look at what had happened when they had tried to be Chicken Rescuers in the Everfree, or ninjas! Not their best days. He wondered if there was just something about ponies without cutie marks that attracted tree sap. Or were the four of them destined to get cutie marks as tree sap collectors? Oh, the irony! At least the Sugar Maple tree sap tasted good. He wouldn’t mind collecting that.

In any case, the three fillies had been pestering him every day for a month, now. And he knew they wouldn’t stop until he caved in to them. Finally, he said, “Okay.” He would show them the place, nothing more. They’d never find the portal, itself, he’d make sure of that.

“Yeah!” yelled the other three.

He sighed, “We’ll have to do it on the weekend when the guards are having lunch.”

“Awwww,” came the disappointed response.

He shook his head, “It’s too late in the day, now, plus the guards get antsy as sundown approaches. They’d spot us for sure.” They nodded in reluctant understanding.

The weekend couldn’t come fast enough for the fillies, and it arrived far too quickly for the colt.

“Okay, you have to do as I say or the guards will catch us,” Harry explained. “They take their lunch at noon, so we need to be in position at a quarter to noon. What we’ll do is go into the edge of the Everfree far enough away that they can’t see us and we can’t see the barracks. Then we can start moving closer to the path until we reach the edge of what they monitor with magic. Once they go to lunch, we’ll cut at an angle into the forest and let the forest hide us as we sneak onto the trail. When we get on it, we’ll be far enough away for them not to see us. Got it?” He stared intently at the three fillies. They nodded eagerly. Harry sighed. The three fillies seemed distinctly lacking in survival instincts.

But this was not news to Harry. Not after the last year with them. How the four of them survived some of their adventures he could only attribute to luck. Certainly not to any caution the trio had displayed. Their sense of self-preservation always seemed to kick in a bit late, if at all.

Anyway, Harry regularly visited the guards to ask if they had seen or found anything new. He wanted to make sure the Portal was still undiscovered and his secret safe.

The guards thought it was sad. They suspected he was worried that whatever had hurt him might come through after him again. So, they went out of their way to reassure him that they were doing a good job of watching the area for suspicious activity. They repeatedly told him he didn’t have to worry, explaining their routines and what they watched for. They noticed he always left happier than when he arrived and congratulated themselves on helping the poor colt cope with his fears.

The foals’ trip through the orchard was steady and quiet. Harry used the same discreet approach he had used to find the portal previously. The girls readily followed his lead.

Faster than he wanted, they arrived at the edge of the forest. Sneaking closer to the barracks and his trail’s entry to the forest was nerve-wracking for all of them. He didn’t want to stray too far into the wilds of the Everfree, preferring to stay as close to the relatively “safe” edge as possible.

A pair of binoculars would have been nice, but Scootaloo’s pegasus vision more than made up for their lack. They were fortunate that the two guards on shift right now were both unicorns. He just had to rely on her to not impatiently rush things and take unnecessary chances.

“Harry,” she whispered, “The guards are headed back downstairs.”

“Great!” he answered just as quietly, “We’ll wait five minutes, then head for the trail.” He gave the fillies a frowning look. “Stay close to me and be quiet!”

The trail, by now, was quite well marked by the many guard ponies who had walked it, which made it ridiculously easy to find. As soon as they reached it, the girls rushed past him. He followed the three excited fillies as they bounded into the darkness under the forest’s canopy.

After a brief ten-minute fast trot they reached the end of the trail, beside a giant of a tree. The area around it was a tangle of roots barely covered by the moss and forest debris. The guard ponies’ regular patrols and checks for changes had packed down the forest floor at this spot. You could easily see the path the Guards walked as they circled a wide area enclosing several trees where they suspected the portal to have been.

Harry carefully walked up to the tree trunk and sat down, his back to the tree. As a human he would have been tempted to lean against the tree, but as a pony he sat leaning slightly forward with his front hooves nestled between his rear legs. He needed only a long furred tail to complete his impersonation of a cat. As it was, he had to remind himself not to sweep his tail back and forth nervously and accidentally fall through to his home world.

He had to smile at their determination, and loyalty, though. This world was so different from where he grew up. The fillies had said, and he had heard the adult mares talking the same way, that stallions were more than a bit reckless and it was the mares’ job to protect them and keep them out of trouble. These three had apparently made him their project, and he couldn’t say he minded one bit. It was nice to know someone . . . somepony . . . actually cared enough to look out for him.

Although, the three fillies weren’t all that much girly. At least, that is, what he thought of as girly. Back home they would have been called tom-boys with all their crazy schemes and predicaments. Was there a word “tom-colt”? Did that make him a “jane-filly” in Equestria with the way he tried to protect them and keep them out of trouble? The stallion-mare relationships were confusing to him.

Despite their mishaps searching for cutie marks, they were always a group. A herd, the fillies called it. And they wouldn’t dream of doing something without him. The first time they had had a sleepover in their clubhouse had been a revelation. For the very first time he could remember, he had not slept alone. And waking in the middle of a pony pile had been the best thing that had ever had happened to him. Well, second best thing. The first was falling into Equestria. Even knowing how the painful first weeks were going to be, he would eagerly have done it all again.

“Here it is,” he said, “This is where we lost the trail.” He looked down. “You can’t see it anymore, but there were scuff marks near this tree indicating I fell down here. Unfortunately, there weren’t any marks anywhere else except for the trail leading to the orchard. Twilight couldn’t find any residual magic that would show where a portal might have existed.”

The three fillies wandered around him, and the tree, and stared at everything else while he talked.

“Twilight searched for any signs of magical leakage. She said a portal should have been like a spring of magic welling up, but all she could detect was the normal background of wild magic here in the Everfree. There wasn’t anything else. The guards searched around for a hole or something that might conceal a portal. The Pegasus guards even flew around checking higher up branches. They poked and prodded just about everything. And found nothing.”

The fillies pushed against the other trees and hoofed the ground. They kicked big rocks that had roots wrapped around them. All to no avail. Eventually, they gave up and gathered around him, staring into the forest. Sweetie Belle sat and leaned against him. Apple Bloom sat on his other side and leaned against him as well. Scootaloo just walked circles around the tree. She stopped in front of him and sat.

She tilted her side to side a bit and asked, “What was your world like?”

He grimaced. He usually avoided talking about his world, except to Twilight — they had spent many hours on the subject. To the fillies, well, he had always given them some vague answer and switched the subject. Today, however, he had the feeling they wouldn’t let him get away with that tactic.

“Well, no magic, as I’ve told you. At least none that I knew of. We used technology for everything. I’ve told you we have trains. Our trains, though don’t use steam like yours, they use electricity and oil. They run much quieter and go much faster for far longer — no stops to refill the water, you see. You know how fast the train that stops here at Ponyville goes? Our trains regularly went twice as fast as that. There were even a few special trains that could go from here to Canterlot in under an hour instead of most of a morning or afternoon. None of those fast trains were where I lived, though.

“And we flew in planes. Planes are like train cars with wings that carry people and cargo everywhere by flying. Imagine a train with one car that could hold two hundred ponies, all at the same time. Now imagine that train with metal wings as wide as the train was long and flying through the air as fast as the fastest that Rainbow Dash could fly — and she can fly from here to Canterlot in fifteen minutes. We had thousands of those in the air all at the same time flying all over the world.

“And ships. We don’t use sailing ships, we use the same engines in ships that our trains do. And the ships are huge, some are as long as Ponyville is wide, and could carry as many as five thousand ponies at once. And cargo ships that are even bigger.”

Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle had moved to beside Scootaloo by this time. They looked at him in amazement. “Ohh, yer pulling our legs,” Apple Bloom said. The other two nodded, agreeing.

“Nope,” Harry said, “Honest truth. I’ve personally seen the planes flying over Little Whinging going to and from London. I saw the ships and trains on the telly.”

“Telly?” asked Sweetie Belle uncertainly.

“Oh, yeah, every house has at least one of those. It’s a box that shows films . . . ,” at their frowns he amended that to, “. . . plays and news from all over the world. England, where I lived, has two stations that send out plays all day and night to the tellies. Dramas, comedies, romances, you name it, they have a play for it. They have whole series of plays, like . . . well, imagine all the Daring Do books as plays, where you get a new play every week.

“And music stations, too, so you can listen to music at any time of the day.”

They were staring at him with wide eyes.

“Now I know you’re pulling our legs!” Scootaloo said.

“I am not!”

“Yes you are!”

“No I’m not!”

“Yes you are!”

“NO I’M NOT!”

“YES YOU ARE!”

“AM NOT!”

“ARE TOO!”

They glared at each other and then Scootaloo lunged forward to tackle Harry. Harry toppled over backwards. He saw wood shoot by beside him. And then it was bright out.

Startled by the sudden light, Harry blinked, looking up into the underside of the tree overhead. “Uh oh,” he said. He had been hoping that by sitting right in front of the portal he would prevent them from accidentally discovering it by tripping through it. He was pretty sure that their desire to find the portal to his home-world would trigger it in that case. And, it seemed, Scootaloo had.

The forest here was more open and much brighter than the oppressive Everfree.

“What was that?” Scootaloo said from her position on his chest. She blinked her eyes and started to look around. “Oh, wow!”

He twisted his head to the side and looked towards his feet. Just as he had feared, there was a tree there. Almost immediately two girls tumbled out of the tree on top of Harry and Scootaloo. And then rolled off to either side.

“Where are we,” Scootaloo asked in confusion.

“Oh, wow!” said Apple Bloom blinking and staring around. “Ya’ll just vanished!” She still had her pink bow in her hair, but it looked much smaller now.

“Ptui,” said Sweetie Belle, spitting out the dead leaves and forest debris she had accidentally gotten into her mouth when she fell down face first.

Harry sighed and said, “Welcome to my world.”

He pushed Scootaloo off to one side and slowly stood up, stretching muscles and feeling things shift that he hadn’t felt in months. It was awkward at first, he was out of practice at standing and walking on two legs. He swayed slightly, hands on his hips, looking down at the three girls, who, he now realized were naked. As he was. The nudity taboo he had grown up with kicked into high gear and he immediately turned around and started examining the trees around them.

Scootaloo was too busy looking at her new hands to complain about Apple Bloom landing on her.

“We gotta go back. Now,” Harry said urgently over his shoulder.

“What?” came the abstracted responses from the three girls staring around them in wonder.

“Look, we can’t stay here, we’ve got to go back. It’s dangerous here.”

“But I want to look around!” exclaimed Apple Bloom, doing just that.

“I thought you said your world didn’t have timberwolves, manticores, and all those other dangerous creatures that live in the Everfree!” said Sweetie Belle.

“They don’t, but the people are the ones we have to avoid! We can’t stay here, it’s dangerous. If someone sees us we might never get back to home,” Harry explained quickly.

“But I want to explore!” said Scootaloo.

Harry snorted, “You can’t even stand up, much less walk!”

“What!” said Scootaloo, offended, craning her neck to look up at him.

Harry rolled his eyes, still looking over his shoulder. “Okay, stand up and walk.”

“Ha!” she said, rolling onto her stomach and then getting to her hands and feet. She looked very silly with her butt up in the air. Fortunately, Harry thought, her head was towards him.

“That’s not standing up, this is,” Harry explained, standing with his arms out and turning sideways to her.

Scootaloo tried to imitate him and promptly fell on her butt. She rolled over onto her hands and feet again and tried to stand once more. It wasn’t possible from the position she was in.

Meanwhile, Sweetie Belle had started to look around and quickly homed in on the fact that Harry no longer had fur or a sheath to hide his . . . stuff . . . and was staring curiously, and blushing. Apple Bloom noticed her staring and followed her gaze, getting her own blush in turn. They had all seen stallions, of course, but this was different. Everything was just . . . out there.

Harry could hear the traffic from the nearby subdivision of houses and started to get worried. It was the middle of the day, and summer to boot. There was a good chance some kids might spot them. And a kid running home telling his parents about three girls and a boy in the woods by the park, all stark naked, would get the constables here immediately.

“Oh, god,” he said in a panic. “We’ve got to go back before anyone sees. Come on, hurry!” He pushed Scootaloo around to face the tree. She was still trying to go from standing on her hands and feet to standing on her feet only. Which gave him a view he really hadn’t anticipated. No longer a pony, she had no tail that he could pretend covered things up.

Fillies and mares didn’t seem to care about such things with older fillies and mares frequently flicking their tails aside when flirting with stallions. Stallions were the ones who were secretive. The reverse of what he was used to here.

“What are you doing?” she complained.

“I’ll explain later, we can’t stay here,” he said, his face nearly as red as Sweetie Belle’s and Apple Bloom’s. He put his hand on Scootaloo’s butt and pushed her at the tree, desperately wanting to go back to Equestria.

“AHH—!” she said falling towards the tree. The fact he had his hand on her must have helped, as she disappeared into the tree immediately on reaching it. It would have been more than a little awkward if she had just hit her head on the tree.

His obvious distress motivated the other two girls into following his orders, and grumbling, all three soon were stumbling out of the tree portal into the Everfree forest.

As soon as they were all there he collapsed on the ground. “Oh, thank god!” he said.

The three fillies rounded on him. “What was that all about?” Sweetie Belle and Apple Bloom still had red faces, as did Harry.

“Look, I know you don’t understand, but in my world everypony wears clothes almost all the time. The only exceptions are when taking a bath or shower, and then you are alone. There are laws against not wearing clothes in public!

“If somepony saw us,” he continued, “they would call the constables, the guards. The guards would arrest us and take us back to their station. And when we couldn’t tell them where our parents were, they’d send us to foster homes or an orphanage and we’d probably never see each other again.

“If we tried to tell them we were from another world, they’d think we were sick and not thinking right and send us to a hospital, and again we’d probably never see each other.

“In fact, as soon as they saw how hard you found it to walk, they’d just take us to a hospital thinking something was wrong with you and split us up.

“And even if they just put clothes on us and let us go, how would we find that tree again? We have no idea where we were, or how to return. And asking the guards to take us back to where we were found would get us taken back to the hospital again as they tried to find out why we were so obsessed with a tree!”

“So,” said Sweetie Belle, “You’re saying that if we want to explore your world, we need clothes and to learn how to walk on two legs? And some way of marking where we are so we can get back here?”

“Well,” Harry said slowly, “Yeah, I guess so. But we’re not going back.”

All three fillies grinned slyly at him.

“No. Definitely not!” He shook his head emphatically.

“But Harry,” wheedled Scootaloo, “That could be our key to getting a cutie mark as daring explorers, like Daring Do!”

“Or a cutie mark in learning about other cultures!” put in Sweetie Belle.

“Or a cutie mark in adapting your world’s fashions to ours!” said Apple Bloom.

It took another month before he finally caved in. Coming into the clubhouse one fall afternoon to see all three fillies walking confidently on their hind legs while wearing dresses — well, more properly, sacks, that went from their necks almost to the floor — was the final argument. And he lost.