Chapter 1

“Ready for a new year?” Professor Dumbledore asked cheerfully, once the last professor in the school had entered the staffroom, even the ones that didn’t normally come here. It was time for the annual school preparation meeting, before breakfast on the morning after the letters went out.

Professor Snape immediately looked at the empty seat that had held a different person each year for the last four decades. “I notice we’re still short a Defense Against the Dark Arts Professor.”

“Ahh, yes,” Dumbledore chuckled. “I thought you’d notice that. Professor Quirrell will be rejoining us this year as such- but he won’t be arriving at the school until early August.”

Professor McGonagall scowled in response. “Even though he has to know nobody ever holds that position long?”

Dumbledore shrugged. “I’m sure he, like all forty before him, believes he will be the one to change that. And it remains to be seen whether he actually will, does it not?”

A round of shrugs was the only response.

“I don’t suppose he told us when he wants his schedule, did he?” McGonagall asked.

Dumbledore smiled. “He tells me he’ll take whatever we have to offer. Lemon drop?”

McGonagall ignored the offer, though, and instead let out a sigh. “Good. That last one was a headache. Anyone have any new scheduling preferences?”

Heads shook.

She nodded in response. “Excellent. I’ll have the class schedules distributed two minutes after I get back to my office.”

The entire room seemed to heave a sigh of relief at those words. The prior year, the DADA instructor had been ridiculously particular with his class schedule- and had kept changing it on them, which had caused this meeting to stretch all the way through lunch.

Dumbledore chuckled. “Alright. We’ve also got our materials budget from the Ministry this year- and dear Quirinus has already opted out. We have forty-two galleons and eighteen knuts for general classroom supplies…” He looked up at Professor Snape. “And only sixty-three galleons, four sickles, and two knuts for potions supplies.”

Right as Snape wrinkled his nose, the door opened to admit the caretaker.

“Ahh, Argus,” Dumbledore greeted. “Glad you could join us. Anything to add?”

Filch glanced up at him, bearing a rather unusual expression. “Aside from the usual? Yeah… Anyone know where all the owls got to?”

Several people blinked.

“Come again?” Dumbledore asked.

Filch shrugged. “Not that I’m complaining- it’s been years since I could clean the place properly- but as near as I can tell, there’s not a single owl left in the castle. Where’d they all go?”

McGonagall scowled. “The letters should have been sent out to the students yesterday,” she supplies. “Wouldn’t that…?”

Filch shook his head. “No, that’s only ever two hundred and fifty letters or so, and we’ve got just over six hundred owls.”

“Shoo, bird. Trixie does not believe these stones need- Wait. Is that-? Is that a letter, addressed to Trixie?”

The massive bird nodded its head, gesturing with its wing for her to take the letters.

She accepted them in her magic. “T-Trixie could have sworn mail was delivered by pony, rather than by owl,” she commented, flicking through the envelopes to read the names and addresses.

After raising her eyebrow at the near-identical envelopes addressed to each and every pony presently on the rock farm, she ripped open the one with her name on it and scanned the missive. The bird, on the other hoof, waited patiently for something.

“Hog-warts?” she asked slowly. “What kind of a name is that…? Whatever- this is excellent news! Though… Trixie has no idea where this Eng-land is. And what do they mean, they await Trixie’s owl…?” She tilted her head slowly, and looked up at the owl. “Does it mean, they expect you to carry Trixie’s response?”

It bobbed its head in a nod.

“Trixie thanks you! Trixie will be right back!”

His uncle’s face went from red to green faster than a set of traffic lights, and didn’t stop there, letter held high above his head. “P-Petunia?”

“Oh hi, what would you- Oh, is that mail?”

The bird on the sales counter dropped the letters from its beak, giving a hoot.

“Okie dokie lokie! Let’s see…” Pinkie had caught the letters the moment they were released, and had hers opened and in front of her less than a second later. “Huh. I’ve got a funny feeling Twilight’s gonna say yes, so that. But what will the Cakes say?” She vanished into the backroom for a minute before reappearing, a single, new letter held in her hoof. “Alright, here’s our answer- and would you like a treat before you go?” She offered an owl-sized cupcake in her other hoof.

“Hoo.”

“There’s another one!”

“Huh-? I didn’t know you carried mail, Owlow- Wait. You’re not Owlowiscious.” She blinked at the owl. “Somepony have you carrying their mail?”

“Hoo.”

Blink. “You know, I have no clue how, but I understood that. Um…” She turned her attention to the already opened letter. “Um…” She looked back up at the owl. “Are you serious?”

“Hoo.”

Facehoof. “I should’ve seen that coming. Are they serious, I guess. Inviting me to magic school.”

“Hoo.”

“... Huh. You know what, that sounds like something Discord would love. And… Hang on. These ponies aren’t unicorns, are they?”

“What the hay-?”

The owl dropped the two letters on the counter in front of it. “Hoo.”

Blink, blink. “Uh, okay.” A golden magic aura then opened one of the letters, and she started reading it, before looking up sharply. “Wait. You’re from the other side of the Gate, aren’t you?”

The owl nodded.

“Oh, that makes so much more sense. Um…” Her horn glowed briefly. “... Yeah, I’m in trouble alright. Do you want to ride, or fly? I need to see Twilight about this, before I reply.” She glanced at the other letter. “Er, before we reply.”

“Hoo.”

A cream-colored mare walked into the room, and spoke irately. “What do you need to see Twilight about?” Immediately, a sealed letter was stuffed in her face.

Both unicorn and owl wait patiently for her to read it.

“... Okay. Where did this come from…?”

“Remember my Gate project? I opened the gate about a week ago. And now, these came through it. About eighteen hundred such letters have already made it into Equestria, and there’s more on the way. Pretty sure this ‘Hogwarts’ has no clue just who they’re inviting- these letters feel spell-generated, not handwritten.”

“Ahh, then yes, we definitely need to go see Twilight.”

“You see, if they can’t deliver them, they’ll just give up,” his uncle spoke, while trying to hammer in a nail with a piece of fruitcake.

“...aren’t unicorns, are they?”

The doors exploded open right as soon as Twilight finished speaking. “No, they’re not,” Lyra said, galloping in with Bonbon right behind her and an owl on her back. “A week ago, I opened an interdimensional portal in my backyard. Now, all of the sudden, these have started coming through- about eighteen hundred have already made it to Equestria. Until now, I didn’t know magic even existed on the other side- it’s even emptier than Pedestria, magically speaking! So, whatever magic this ‘Hogwarts’ wants to teach, it’s likely very different from ours- and, possibly, even conflicting.

“It’s also a whole ‘nother nation, that isn’t nearly so happy-go-lucky as we are here in Equestria- and I’m the only one that’s crossed the Gate so far. I think I’ve worked out the spells to give us similar ‘human’ forms when we cross, rather than Pedestrian forms, but you’ll probably want to check that over before we emplace them.

“And of course, there’s the other option: We announce that these letters were sent without permission, send all the owls back through, and seal the Gate.”

Twilight blinked. “So, this is first contact for them, right?”

“Uhh… Yes, it would be.”

“Then let’s not cut them off, that wouldn’t be very friendly. How hard would it be to educate everypony on the proper etiquette of that world before we send them through?”

“Not… too hard, at least. It’s kinda similar to Pedestria, just a little less flexible, absolutely no magic, and skin color is much more limited: Peach-ish, with an optional brownish darkening to almost black. I have been able to acquire a few books on the topic- and they aren’t that lengthy, so you should be able to finish them in under an hour if you want to. They also don’t summarize very well, so we could probably cover everything important in a… oh, five-minute crash course, and serve some twenty or thirty ponies at once.”

“Alright. Do you want to go through with that, or…?”

“Definitely. I opened that gate because I wanted to learn about other universes- and, assuming all goes well, this sounds like a great way to do that. If all doesn’t go well, the Gate is only tethered on this end- we’ll have only to get our ponies back home and seal the Gate, and they’ll never see us again. I imagine we can add an emergency teleport to the Gate transformation spell, to force everypony back to this side the instant I start closing it, no matter where they are?”

“Sounds good, let’s do it.” Twilight looked up at her owl, then down at the second letter it had delivered, before calling out to the hallway. “Spike? You’ve got mail!”

The named dragon’s response echoed down the passage, confused. “What? When did that happen?”

Petunia shredded two dozen letters in her food processor.

“Well now, this is interesting. Hey, Lulu?”

“Mm?”

“Before you go, you might want to check your mail.”

“Mail? I have mail?”

“Yep.”

“Oh.” She then opened her letter, read it, and facehooved. “Well, this is insulting. Somepony thinks I’m so far behind the times I need to go to magic school.”

Chuckle. “You know, they’ve invited me too.”

All traces of sleepiness disappeared in an instant. “What?”

Nod. “It’s making me curious what cave they crawled out of.”

Right at that moment, a scroll appeared in a blaze of green fire.

“Alright, that’s it,” his uncle declared, pulling tufts out of his mustache.

“Huh?” She left her sister’s letter on her desk, and opened her own.

“Hoo?”

“She’s in the bathroom. Um… What the hay is Hogwarts? Um…” She galloped to the door, and opened it as soon as she reached it. “Gah! Oh, I was about to look for you!”

“Huh? Wait, did you two get letters from Hogwarts too?”

“Yep!”

“Yep! So, we saying yes, or no?”

Heads nodded.

“Cutie Mark Crusaders Witches!”

“I got about an ‘undred of these at the front desk.”

“Wha-? I have mail? Delivered by owl? I’ll have to admit, that’s new.”

“Hoo.” The letter floated slowly away from the owl’s beak.

“Right. Thank you.” He took the letter, and dropped it into the blender on the side of his vanilla-pudding-filled hot tub. “Would you like a treat while you’re here?”

“Hoo.”

“Ahh, no biggie. Anyways.” The letter then finished shredding itself despite the lack of a blade in the blender, which he then poured into a nice tall cup, which he swirled the purple drink with for a second before downing it in one gulp. Then he took the fragments of the letter, mixed them with the drink, squoze them into a cloth, and tied it around his head like a headband, which he then discarded into the chocolate-pudding-filled swimming pool next door. “Oh, I see. Yes, that’ll be quite interesting.” He then drew a normal, but completely clean, letter out of the mud puddle next to his hot tub to hand it to the owl. “Here’s my answer, thank you. Have a nice trip!”

“I mighta sat on it at some point, but it’ll taste alright.”

A series of professors sat in stunned silence, staring at the veritable mountain of letters of varying shapes and sizes that the owls had just delivered to their table.

“It’s… a good thing we already ate,” Professor Sprout stated.

Professor McGonagall drew her wand, separated the letters into two floating stacks with a quick spell, and sighed. “This is going to be a busy year,” she stated.

Professor Snape raised an eyebrow at her. “Lots of students?”

She nodded, and pointed at the first stack. “That is two hundred ninety-seven letters from new students accepting their place here,” she stated, before pointing to the second stack. “And that is six hundred thirty seven letters turning down the same.” She heaved a sigh, allowing her arm to fall back to the table. “And the letters only went out yesterday.”

“Well,” Professor Dumbledore nodded cheerfully, “we found the owls!” He paused dramatically, but only Professor Sprout smiled, so he continued. “I’ll go write a few letters to the proprietors of a few shops in Diagon Alley- they might need to stock extra, and fast. Then we’ll have to see just how quickly we can find the owls again, eh?”

Author's Notes:

Apologies, I meant to publish it at noon today... but got sidetracked.

On the other hand, there's one thing that's remained constant. And that is...

... I still need money. Patreon, Ko-Fi?

Chapter 2

Dear Hogwarts Staff,

We, of Equestria, would like to thank you for the invitations to your school. We believe this is most fortunate; however, this may also prove to be a challenge.

The thing is, Equestria has been and still is magically isolated from your world. We’ve recently opened a gateway, and expect that is how your letters found their way to us; however, all non-Equestrian humans, magical and non-magical alike, are magically barred entry to our lands.

This could present a significant problem, as none of our number know where to get any of the equipment on the list, nor where Hogwarts might be, and our scouts through your lands have not been able to find any. Fortunately, though, we have observed the formation of magical bonds upon any given Equestrian accepting attendance, and have been able to trace these bonds on our end. As such, it is our intention to assist with the process as much as possible- in moving our people through our Gate as required, so as to acquire supplies and reach the school.

To that end, given the relatively close start of term and even closer acceptance deadline, we find that negotiating by mail may not be fast enough. So, while fully willing to negotiate by mail, we will also be making ourselves available in person, at Renfrew Skatepark- look for the blue-and-white-striped hair, her name is Lyra Heartstrings- from dawn ‘till dusk, starting immediately.

While on the topic of negotiation, there is one other thing that will require negotiation: Currency. Our currency bears little or no similarity to many of the currencies we’ve been able to identify across your world; if any purchasing is to be done or payments to be made, an exchange must be negotiated.

Signed,

Agent Candy Stripes, Royal Equestrian Secret Service

Princess Twilight Sparkle of Equestria

Spike, Assistant to Princess Twilight Sparkle

P.S. I, Princess Twilight Sparkle, and Spike, my assistant, have both received invitations as well and wish to accept them. I will be accompanying Lyra in Renfrew.

Hagrid sighed as he parked his motorcycle in the parking lot of a skatepark. Ever since the acceptance letters had started coming in, the teachers- and Dumbledore- had all been swamped by them, and they’d been having him run around to introduce the muggleborns. Unfortunately, though, the first one had taken him almost three full days for the full process- reach, introduce, take through Diagon Alley, and return. So, he’d made a request when he got back to the Castle the night before; much of that time was traveling to and from the castle. That morning, Dumbledore had granted his request… and so he’d set out with his motorcycle.

He pulled the letter he was answering today from the pocket in his overcoat that he’d decided to use for the day’s letter, right next to the one holding all the other letters and notes from students he needs to visit, and read it through again.

It still struck him as odd to find a P.S. on what is, ostensibly, an official communication, but it’s not his job to be picky. He double checked the sign, just to be sure- yes, this was Renfrew Skatepark. And he was looking for…

He looked up, just in time to see a girl with blue and white hair and a skateboard fly at least fifty feet off the top of a ramp, doing some fancy trick in midair, before vanishing back down behind the wall.

He sighed, checking the description on the letter, before dismounting his bike and walking into the park to find the girl.

He got a better view of the girl when she next flew high into the air, and decided that that had to be Lyra. A quick glance around the park then revealed a large number of helmeted boys with skateboards, simply staring at her as she raced around the park; there were also a few other skateboarders on the ramps, but none flying nearly as high as her.

He watched her fly up a third time, and scowled. He didn’t particularly want to put himself in harm’s way by descending into the bowl-like ramps, and he also didn’t particularly want to startle her into a potentially fatal crash… so he ended up stopping to wait.

She didn’t stop, though, repeatedly flying high into the sky.

A few minutes after he arrived, a dark blue haired girl, with twinned pink and purple stripes down the middle, drew his attention. He’d seen her moving more slowly around the skatepark earlier, wobbling on her skateboard- but she hadn’t drawn his attention like she did then, by falling off her skateboard.

Lyra promptly stormed down a ramp… and made her board jump over the blue-haired girl’s board, before launching herself into the sky again.

So the blue-haired girl scrambled back to her feet, snatched her board, and ran across the park to the edge, where she then scrambled out of it… and looked up at Hagrid. “Well Hello. Looking for something?”

He snorted. “Yeah. Waitin’ for Lyra.” He gestured towards the girl in question.

The blue-haired girl blinked, then facepalmed. “I should’a guessed,” she groaned, before turning to the park, putting a hand up to her mouth… and yelling. “Lyra!”

Lyra, mid-trick on the opposite side of the park, glanced up briefly, landed on the slope, and made a very fast and snake-like path over to the nearest slope. She then flew up only about six feet, did a flip, and landed solidly on her board, on the flat bank next to them. “You know Twilight, that wasn’t very polite to the other skaters.”

The blue-haired girl- apparently Twilight- winced. “Sorry. But, uh, we’ve got visitors.” She gestured towards Hagrid.

“Duly noted,” Lyra muttered, before looking up at Hagrid. “So, who might you be?” As she spoke, she stepped off her board and flipped it up into her hands, where it seemed to disappear tracelessly.

Hagrid blinked, realizing that Twilight’s board had also disappeared at some point. “Er… Lyra Heartstrings?”

Lyra noded. “That’s me.”

“And…” He turned towards Twilight. “Princess Twilight Sparkle?”

Twilight blushed, for some reason. “Ah, heh heh… Yeah.”

Lyra grinned. “She’s a bit of a new princess, and she doesn’t like it much.”

Twilight rounded on her. “What-! Why do you say that? I’ve been liking it well enough!”

Lyra folded her arms, raising an eyebrow. “So you’ve been enjoying the duties and the titles and the formalities and the bowing and the-!”

“No!” Twilight screamed, at vastly lower volume than she had when calling Lyra. “Nonononono! That stuff is terrible!”

Lyra shrugged. “Because that’s most of what princesshood is, and what I was talking about.”

“... Oh. Then I guess you’re right.”

“Ahh…” Hagrid muttered.

Lyra glanced up at him. “We’re old friends,” she stated, by way of explanation.

“Old friends?” Twilight asked promptly. “I’d say we’re current friends!”

“Twilight, how long have we been friends?”

Twilight opened her mouth to speak, paused, and closed it again, counting on her fingers. After a few seconds, she shrugs. “I… I don’t know, it’s been too long.”

“My point exactly.” She grinned up at Hagrid, before turning back to Twilight. “Eff wye eye, depending on when you consider our friendship to have started, it’s anywhere from twenty three to twenty seven years ago.”

Twilight gave her a level-lidded glare. “Really?”

Lyra shrugged. “What? Photographic memory can be useful.” Scowl. “Sometimes.” She glanced up at Hagrid. “More often than not, it’s dead depressing.”

Twilight facepalmed. “Rrrright. Forgot about that.” She looked up at Hagrid. “Soo, ahh…”

“Shall we, ah, go somewhere a little more private?” Hagrid asked.

Lyra promptly bowed genially. “Lead the way,” she offered- while Hagrid suddenly noticed that neither girl was wearing the helmets and various other pads they’d had on earlier.

They must have put them in the same place as the skateboards.

“Ahh,” Hagrid muttered, glancing around for someplace suitable. Normally, the introduction was supposed to happen in the student’s home, not in a public park.

Lyra then solved his quandary rather simply. “Or we can set up some privacy spells in a corner of the parking lot.”

“Ahh, yes, let’s do that, then,” he stated, before leading the way back to the parking lot, to the corner he’d parked his motorcycle in.

Once there, it took the girls only a couple of seconds of strange gesticulations to set up their privacy spells. “There, that should keep anyone from realizing what we’re up to,” Lyra indicated, before glancing back at the skatepark. “We’ve been keeping our magic down to magician trick and ‘sleight-of-hand’ levels, so far- since the general population we’ve seen doesn’t have it… or seem to know it exists at all.”

“Ahh,” Hagrid muttered. “Yeah, about that. I don’t know that I’m the right one to tell you this, but…

“Well, wizardkind is kinda secret from the muggles- what we call non-magical folk.”

Twilight nodded. “So, magic in general is being kept secret from those not capable of it?”

“Er, yeah. Statute of Secrecy. There’s some exceptions, but they’re mostly for relatives of a witch or wizard.” He scratched his beard with one finger. “And with the, er, isolated magic thing… The Ministry o’ Magic watches for rogue magic use- including any underage stuff.”

Lyra ahhhed understandingly. “So maybe that is what that ambient flux detection network we saw was all about. Wouldn’t be very effective against any but the most powerful of our spells, though, being innate in nature.” She rubbed her chin. “It’d detect any kind of self-powered enchanting we might do, though.” Shrug. “Our Gate draws its power from our side, not this side, so it won’t show up on that network. Good thing, too, as we don’t yet know if it’ll be safely possible for someone not from our side to come to our side.”

“But anyways,” Twilight injected, before gesturing for Hagrid to go on.

Hagrid nervously fingered the top of the pocket the Princess’ letter was in; Professor McGonagall had informed him that Lyra’s reply had come in a different letter, which he has in that neighboring pocket. He read Lyra’s letter earlier, though- it’s a very straightforward ‘yes we’re coming’ message, for her and someone called Bonbon, with no additional details. “Er… for the, ah, negotiations…” He scowled. “You need to go to Gringotts for the currency negotiation, the rest is just shopping, so…”

Lyra looked at Twilight. “So, if we just go get our stuff, and negotiate that currency exchange with Gringotts, then we’ll know where to take everyone else to get their stuff.” She rubbed her chin. “Leaving only one unknown, where we take ‘em on September First.” She glanced up at Hagrid. “But that can be taken care of later, right?”

Author's Notes:

And so, this is up. Finished it only yesterday, but that's in time for the schedule- and the next chapter should be easier... in theory. Sorry, but I'm fresh out of good A/Ns to post...

Patreon, Ko-Fi, Discord.

Chapter 3

It took Hagrid a good two hours to get to the Leaky Cauldron. The two girls had willingly hopped into the sidecar on his motorcycle, once he mentioned how far it was- then he’d flown most of the way, having made his takeoff and landing outside of either city… and under cover of the invisibility charm Dumbledore had given the bike. They seemed to be fascinated, briefly, with the motorcycle itself- Twilight especially. Lyra had said something about books to keep her from poking at it.

When he finally parked his motorcycle near the Leaky Cauldron, the two had started chatting about something he couldn’t understand in the slightest. “Alright, we gotta walk now,” he announced, as he dismounted.

“Got it,” the girls chorused, hopping out of the sidecar- one with a backflip, the other with an eye roll.

“What?” Lyra asked Twilight. “It’s not like there’s any rules against it.”

Hagrid sighed. “C’mon,” he instructed, leading them out of the alley and down the street towards the Leaky Cauldron.

The two girls continued chatting on the way- though this time, it seemed Twilight was asking Lyra questions about stuff on the street, rather than the two discussing something obscure.

“Ahh, here we are,” Hagrid finally states. “The Leaky Cauldron. It’s a famous place.”

“... Huh,” Lyra muttered, looking at it. “Never woulda-!” She broke off, making a quick step to snatch Twilight by the arm before she could wander too far away. “Twilight, stop! We can come back for that later!”

Twilight turned to Lyra. “But-!”

“Sorry, Twilight, but we don’t have any money they’ll accept- and your royal status means nothing here. We won’t be able to get any of them right now. All you’ll manage to do is annoy the shopkeepers.”

Twilight glowered at her, but relented.

“Besides,” Lyra muttered. “That’s a standard- er,” she glanced briefly at Hagrid, “muggle bookstore. It won’t have anything on magic in it- and I’m sure there’s one of those where we’re going.”

Hagrid heaved a sigh, and guided the girls wordlessly into the pub. He could already feel the burn in his legs from chasing one or both of them away from the Forbidden Forest throughout the coming year.

Tom, the barkeeper, looked up as he entered. “Ahh, Hagrid!” Then he paused, glancing down at the girls. “Business again?”

Hagrid nodded tiredly. “Yeah. Got me getting ‘em all this year, an’ there’s quite a few, too.”

Meanwhile, Twilight was examining something in midair that nobody else could see, and Lyra was scoping out the pub- and waving cheerfully at anyone that looked at her long enough, including Tom.

Tom smiled back at Lyra. “Well,” he muttered, looking back up at Hagrid. “It sounds like you’ve got your work cut out for you. Good luck!”

Hagrid nodded again, and ushered the two girls across the pub, towards Diagon Alley.

“... To the backyard of a pub?” Twilight asked, once they emerged into the courtyard.

Hagrid didn’t smile, took a deep breath, and spoke. “Alright, remember: Two up, three across.” He tapped the brick with his umbrella.

Lyra burst out laughing.

Hagrid looked at her funny.

Twilight, after watching the portal open, also looked at Lyra- while pulling her through, after Hagrid. “What’s so funny?”

Lyra stifled her laughter, grinning like a loon. “It’s a gate in the backyard,” she stated simply.

Twilight stared at her for a few seconds, evidently thinking hard about something… then she spoke. “I don’t get it.”

“It’s a Gate in the backyard,” Lyra repeated, emphasizing the word and only barely containing her giggles.

Twilight blinked, then her eyes went wide, and she let out a burst of laughter herself.

Hagrid took a deep breath, and let it out. “Welcome to Diagon Alley.”

The two girls stopped laughing immediately, looking straight into each other’s eyes.

“Diagon,” Lyra began.

“Alley,” Twilight finished.

“Diagonally!” they declared together.

“Wonder if there’s a place called Dragonally,” Lyra mused, drawing an amused snort from Twilight. Then she shrugged. “We could probably reach it, if we opened a gate in Spike’s backyard.”

Twilight let out a snort of laughter.

“Anyways,” Lyra muttered, looking back up at Hagrid, who was staring uncomprehendingly at them, “Lead the way? Our supplies won’t buy themselves, usually.”

“Usually?” Hagrid asked, blinking.

Lyra nodded. “Yeah. I’ve known a few spellsmiths to experiment with self-purchasing supplies. None successful, though, that I’m aware of- but it’s still theoretically possible, and we don’t know what you might have in this world. None of our scouts have found any of your spellsmiths- but that might be because our Gate-in-the-backyard came out in the muggle world.”

Hagrid stared for another couple seconds, before looking quickly away. “Oh. Uhh… This way.” He led them towards Gringotts. The girls fell in behind him and, after a few seconds, started chatting animatedly again. They kept pointing at various buildings, signs, and so on, around the Alley- and discussing everything in terms that sounded like utter gibberish to him.

Finally, he spotted Gringotts up ahead- and announced it, gesturing slightly. “Gringotts.”

Lyra responded instantly, looking forwards at it. “Wow, fancy.”

Twilight answered her. “Very fancy. That’s something on the level of most of the Canterlot nobles.”

Lyra nodded. “Yeah. I hope their Vault is either offsite, or very, very well protected… or both.”

Hagrid paused. “Er… Don’t let them hear you say that. Very proud creatures, Goblins.” He gestured towards the door. “And there’s the first one.”

“Huh,” Lyra muttered, putting her hand to her chin. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen something- or someone- quite like that before.”

Twilight stayed silent, so Hagrid continued. “Wizard’s bank. Safest place in the world for anything you want to keep safe- except, perhaps, Hogwarts.”

“Must have some pretty impressive security,” Lyra muttered, before looking over at Twilight. “I wonder how it compares to Celestia’s Vault?”

Twilight snorted. “Really? You’re going to compare it against that?”

“What? I suppose I could compare it to the security of our local bank, but that’s about the same as all the muggle banks- and bank robbers are a thing in this world.” She ignored Twilight’s alarmed gasp, continuing uninterrupted. “So, for it to qualify as the ‘safest place in the world’, it simply must be comparable to Celestia’s Vault- which is rather well-known as the ‘safest place in the world’ for anything she wants to keep safe. Only, until now, neither world has known of each other- so, neither ‘safest in the world’ includes the other, and I’m curious how they compare- which one, if either, can honestly include the other.” She put her hand to her chin again. “Then of course, I’m curious how a school could possibly be a safer place than a vault.”

They were plenty close enough to the doors for the guarding goblin to take notice at that point. Hagrid watched him out of the corner of his eye- but, aside from looking a bit put out at the girl’s final comment (though not at her in particular), he didn’t do anything unusual. It was fairly well known amongst those in the know- Dumbledore, the heads of house, and himself- that the goblins weren’t exactly impressed with how Hogwarts was harder to penetrate than their bank. By his understanding, they’d been working to fix that deficiency as quickly as they could- and to their credit, they grew well ahead of their competition, and already enjoyed a monopoly on wizard banking and safekeeping; Dumbledore didn’t exactly offer to store people’s gold at Hogwarts.

Then, they reached the second set of front doors- the silver ones, with the inscription. Hagrid paused, to let the girls read it.

“Nice poem,” Lyra muttered, and looked towards one of the guards. “With a nice, strong message, too.”

“Uhh… What’s it say?” Twilight asked her. Hagrid blinked, looking down at her.

Lyra looked at Twilight with a strange expression. “What-? Didn’t-! Wait.” A pause, then she facepalmed. “We forgot the written component of the translation spell. Just a sec.” She put her hands on Twilight’s shoulders, and closed her eyes.

The goblins on either side of the door looked at her.

Hagrid looked as well. “Ahh…”

“Okay, that should do it,” Lyra announced suddenly, withdrawing her arms.

Twilight looked up at the door. “Ahh, much better. Thanks!”

Lyra looked back up at it, and back at Twilight. “So, why didn’t you tell me earlier? There were plenty of signs at the park.”

Twilight reached the bottom of the missive on the doors before answering. “I thought they’d be gibberish to you too.” She looked down at Lyra. “Speaking of which, if we forgot the written component, how’d you understand it?”

“Back when I was the only one, I didn’t use spells on the Gate, I used spells directly on me. And I only used a translation spell for the first three days- a lingual absorption spell on the third one ended the need for such.”

One of the Goblin guards caught Hagrid’s eye and bowed his head gravely, almost apologetically, as Twilight responded.

“Lingual-!? You got that working?”

Nod. “Yep, that was when I got it working. Very painful, though, and takes almost six hours to complete.” Scowl. “Speaking of which, we’re going to have to adjust the translation spell on the Gate anyways- make it a host-drawing, self-renewing spell. That would self-cancel once knowledge of the language involved was acquired, or upon return.”

Twilight scowled too. “Why don’t you tell me about these things?”

“I was planning to. After I’d found something from this side to prank you with.” She grinned. “Then the owls came, and I didn’t need to.”

Twilight gave Lyra an irritated shove, but the other girl cartwheeled out of the way- which seemed to anger Twilight even more. “And what about that? Where did you learn it?”

“Ahh… Another spell. This one took over twenty-four hours to complete, though- you mighta noticed when I stayed home ‘sick’ for two days? Yeah… that was the gymnastic spell. I didn’t want to have to rely on my magic if I got into a sticky situation.” She rubs the back of her head. “Which, ahh, did happen, once. Pretty sure it was local law enforcement, and I think they thought I was a runaway.”

“... Oh,” Twilight muttered irritably. “So you figured that out too. Tell me about these things! Please!”

Lyra shrugged. “I was planning on telling you about it too. Once I found something.” She then promptly dodged a second shove from Twilight, with a well-timed backflip.

“Come on, you two,” Hagrid groaned, giving up on the idea of keeping them out of the forest, so much as reducing their time in the forest. He’d have to erect a fifty-foot wall to keep Lyra out… and even then.

The two goblins both gave him relieved looks before they bowed all three of them into the bank proper. Fortunately for Hagrid, his statement- and the inside of the bank- seemed to have distracted them from their quarrel.

Author's Notes:

Woo, I made it!

Patreon, Discord, and if you really want to use Ko-Fi, I'll let you dig for it. I don't like them, because they're deceptive about creator funding- we do not receive all. I don't have any more chapters for this story on my Patreon at the moment, but every chapter goes up there before it goes up here.

Chapter 4

Madam Malkin looked up when the door to her shop chimed again. There was nobody in her shop right now- a rather infrequent occurrence, at that time of year. The Hogwarts letters had to have been sent out a few days ago; there had been a steady stream of Hogwarts students coming in- somewhat noticeably fewer first-years than normal, and at that point, only a couple upper-year students had needed new robes. Funny, there were usually at least three times as many of those.

Immediately upon seeing them, she figured the two girls entering her shop would probably make her top ten list of strangest customers on their looks alone. They were both Hogwarts first-year age, and wearing color-coordinated muggle clothing. That itself wasn’t all that unusual; about five out of every ten years, she’d get a set of twins, and they would tend to do that. The truly unusual part about them would be their hair. They were both wearing muggle clothes, but their hair was very clearly magically done; there was no way a muggle dye would hold those vivid colors so neatly separated in the wind outside- and those colors were most definitely not natural.

One had wavy blue and white hair, with the division between the colors visible- and sharply defined- all the way down to where the tip of her hair peeked out from behind her waist. The other had long, straight, and dark blue hair, with pink and purple stripes all the way down it and a split at the front that gave it the appearance of a solid wood wig that someone had hit with an axe. It still moved smoothly when she did, though, so that clearly wasn’t actually the case- even though that split stayed, her hair moving almost like it was made of fabric.

No adults came in with them, she noticed. A quick glance out the window explained it- Hagrid was walking towards Fortescue’s. He didn’t like entering, as his bulk would almost always knock something over in her small shop, so he’d developed a habit of sending whatever muggleborn first-year he happened to be escorting in… and going to get them ice cream while he waited.

“Hogwarts, dears?” she greeted.

“Ahh, yes,” the blue-haired girl nodded.

“I take it you already know what we need for that?” the wavy-haired girl asked curiously.

“Yes, I do,” she smiled, guiding them to the stools in the back of the shop. “Just one at a time, please,” she instructed- and, as the blue-and-white-haired girl hopped up on the stool, she made a quick guess as to the size that would fit her and pulled it out, before slipping it over her head. Unlike some fairly rare muggleborns she’s had in here, that have no idea what she’s doing, the girl cooperated fully, quickly running her arms into the sleeves and holding them out for her.

Then the other girl spoke up. “Huh. We ought to be able to get away with just one or two- I imagine Rarity can make-!”

Madam Malkin was in the middle of an involuntary wince at the girl’s willingness to go someplace else when the first interrupted, looking down from the stool.

“Absolutely not! Madam Malkin here is a tailor, a profession unique to this world. Her job is to take this no-doubt mass-produced base and make it fit as well as possible… such that, when you get a bunch of Hogwarts students right next to each other, they all look the same. Can you imagine Rarity being willing to make fifty of the same thing?”

“Of course not, Lyra! I’d only be asking her to make three!”

“Twilight, can you imagine Rarity being willing to make even three of the same plain thing? Hay, even one would be torture to her! And that’s three… what, per each equestrian coming? Which would push it to over ten thousand of effectively the same thing!”

The blue-haired girl- apparently Twilight- opened and closed her mouth a few times. “... Well… Okay. But I’m sure we could find a tailor in Equestria.”

Lyra sighed, rolling her eyes. “Twilight, tailors are like computer scientists. They don’t exist in Equestria, I’ve checked.”

Twilight blinked. “Computer scientists? What’s that?”

“A profession on this side. I’ll have to introduce you to computer science at some point.” A scowl. “I haven’t seen anything computer-driven in Diagon Alley, so I’m starting to think it’s just the muggles.”

Madam Malkin let the silence fall for several seconds before speaking up. “I can’t say I’ve ever heard of Equestria before,” she began.

Lyra chuckled good-naturedly. “I can’t say I’m surprised. Equestria has been- and still is, actually- magically isolated from your world. Until a week and a half ago, that is, when I opened a gateway to connect the two. Then a few days ago, a bunch of owls made their way…” She gasped suddenly. “I almost forgot! Do you know about how many new students Hogwarts gets every year?”

“Hmm?” Madam Malkin muttered, finishing up with the lower hem of the girl’s robes and moving up to one of the sleeves. “I usually see around forty first-years each year, and often a hundred to one fifty upper-year students. Why?”

“... Oh. Then, ahh, I might recommend finding some seasonal help… and stocking extra, and fast. We’ve already confirmed over two thousand Equestrian students this year, and they’ll all be coming here for their robes.”

She froze after that, for a second, before resuming. “Two… Thousand?”

Twilight nodded. “Yep. And every last one of them was invited directly by Hogwarts.”

Lyra nodded as well. “The latest estimate for the final count, at the acceptance deadline, is anywhere between eight thousand… and about eighteen thousand, depending on who the owls get to.” She sighs. “And, if we assume that the Gate is still open for next year and it resumes sending invitations to the ones that couldn’t be invited by the deadline this year, and so on, I think the estimate is that it would take around eight years to invite everyone eligible, after which point it would- theoretically- drop below the maximum, and start inviting everyone as they became eligible, as I imagine it has done on this side for years.”

“I hope Hogwarts knows what they’re doing,” Twilight muttered.

Madam Malkin chuckled briefly, stepping back to get a better look at Lyra; she’d finished the sleeves. “That should be you done, my dear,” she indicated.

Lyra promptly lowered her arms to a normal position, and gave her robes a twirl. “Nice, I like it.” She then slipped them off, handing them to Madam Malkin, and stepped off the stool. “Will you need to pin the other two, or will the one work as a template?”

“It’ll work as a template,” Madam Malkin informed her, accepting the pinned robes and laying them on the counter.

As she did so, Lyra turned towards Twilight. “Your turn, then.”

Madam Malkin smiled, making her initial size guess- she was mighty well practiced with that- as the girl trotted up to and stepped onto the stool, before approaching to start preparing the robes. Twilight cooperated just as fully as Lyra had.

Twilight’s fitting went silently, though it wasn’t an uncomfortable silence. Both girls, despite Lyra’s declaration that tailors didn’t exist in their homeland, clearly had some not insignificant experience with being fitted. They did both seem amused, though, like it wasn’t quite going down as they were used to- which, if she was honest with herself, she wasn’t surprised by, either. Lyra did say they had designers, and both of them seemed to know this ‘Rarity’ rather well.

Then, it finally came time for her to draw her wand, finalize the hems of both robes, duplicate the measurements onto two more robes and a cloak each, and magically apply names to the labels on all of the above. Seeing the two girls staring unblinkingly at her while she had her wand out was… unnerving, so she did her best not to look at them until she was finished, and pocketed her wand.

“... Huh,” Twilight muttered. “I… I don’t think I’ve ever seen ambient magic used that efficiently before.”

Lyra put a hand to her chin. “The magic bond mighta been part of that, but I want to say at least some of that efficiency wasn’t specific to that bond.”

Twilight looked at her. “Wait, there’s a magic bond?”

“Yeah. There’s a symbiotic thaumic bond between her and her wand. Very low-key, but it peaked while it was in her hand- so it’s probably something that either only she can use, or that she can get the most utility out of.”

“Ahh, something like that,” Madam Malkin muttered, packaging the two girls’ robes separately and making her way to the register. “I’m not familiar with how it works, but I know you’ll never get as good of results with another wizard’s wand. Ollivander will probably tell you more than I can without asking, whenever you get your wands.”

Lyra held up a bulging pouch she almost certainly hadn’t been holding a minute ago, shaking it slightly to make the coinage inside tinkle. “Sounds good to me. So, how much?” The pouch looked to hold at least a couple hundred galleons.

She named the total… Then, with a distinctive crash that shook the shop, Twilight suddenly had a very large bag of coins on the floor next to her.

“Heh heh,” Twilight muttered, opening the top to pull out a single golden galleon; the total was just over a galleon.

“Ahh…” Madam Malkin muttered.

“We’ll each pay for our own robes and stuff,” Lyra chuckled. “We’re shopping together, but buying separately.” She glanced at Twilight’s bag. “And Princess, I still think you didn’t need to hunt up the biggest bag you could find and stuff it with as much of the treasury as you could fit.”

“Hey, it’s not the biggest I could find!”

“Only because the biggest wouldn’t fit in your pocket.”

Twilight blushed, looking away, while Madam Malkin silently counted out their change.

As Lyra accepted her change, she spoke to Twilight again. “How about this: We can use my gold for the rest of our purchases today, it should be enough. So long as you repay me- from that- at the end.”

Finally, both Lyra’s pouch and Twilight’s bag- the latter of which would have fit both of the girls, had it not been full of gold- disappeared tracelessly, and they thanked her and headed out of her shop, carrying their new clothes.

Madam Malkin let out a small sigh, watching them as they went. Definitely the strangest two customers she’d ever had. If she knew one thing, it was that Hogwarts was in for the year of their lives.

… And Lyra’s packaged robes just vanished into thin air as they reached the door, Twilight’s following suit as they made it outside.

She smiled. Hopefully, the students won’t be the only ones learning at Hogwarts this year, and strange abilities like that could then be shared across wizardkind.

Author's Notes:

Well, I'm a bit late. But hey, unlike Just Like Magic of Old's chapter yesterday, I'm not running on extreme low blood sugar as I post it, so I can actually come up with something decent here! And, whether I'm late here or not, it went up on time on my Patreon...

... In theory.

Admittedly, this story has had more than its fair share of hiccups, as I try to decide exactly how which meeting should go down. Madam Malkin's, here, flowed pretty easily once I got past Hagrid in the last chapter; I think it's because she has little to no development of her own in canon. Ollivander, scheduled up soon, is proving to be very difficult... because he's very unique. And of course, once I finish his scene, we'll be onto the more interesting parts of when people meet ponies... Which will, of course, include SilversongDraco, Harry, Hermione, the Weasleys... Depending on how things go down, I might even write a bit of Ron; I avoided him in The Gate because in canon, he reads as highly manipulative and, ah, I had difficulty writing that in a protagonist. I've got some six hundred thousand words more practice, now, so that might be different...

Anyways, Patreon, Discord, if you're interested. Happy reading!

Chapter 5

Hagrid determinedly suppressed his worry as he led the two girls to Ollivander’s. He’d suspected, when they emerged unladen from Madam Malkins, that they’d put their new robes in the same place as their skateboards- and had asked to make sure they had their robes. They’d both confirmed, so he’d given them their ice creams and started leading them calmly to the next store on the list- for parchment and quills.

Only, when he’d gotten there, he’d found out they both already had an extensive supply of both of the above, though they appreciated knowing where the local supplier was.

After that had been Flourish and Blotts… which was fairly uneventful, all told. Twilight had wanted to buy a stack of books thrice her own height, but Lyra had stopped her, saying it wouldn’t fit in her pocket… and that they could come back to buy half the bookshop later, once everyone got their stuff for Hogwarts. The store attendant had been mildly alarmed when she said that, especially when Twilight evidently made plans to do exactly that.

Then they’d headed to the potion equipment store, for their cauldrons, scales, and gloves. Why Lyra had explicitly asked if dragons could talk, Hagrid couldn’t figure out- and neither, apparently, could the attendant that served the girl. While they were there, the girls had discussed some things that sounded enough like potion making techniques to Hagrid for him to be fairly certain that Professor Snape would just love to have them in his class… and not necessarily in a good way.

The astronomists’ had been next, where they’d talked about the kinds of telescopes on display… and the kinds available in Equestria. Apparently, Twilight had a fifty-foot telescope back home- something which had alarmed the shopkeeper.

Then the apothecary, which both of them had explored thoroughly… without touching anything. Not unlike most muggleborns, though with better self-control.

Then, because Lyra had wanted an owl, they’d gone to Eeylops Owl Emporium… and both he and the proprietor had been driven a little crazy by how they seemed to be chatting with the owls. So of course, the cage for Lyra’s new owl had vanished tracelessly, while Alto himself- she’d already named him- rode on her shoulder.

He took a deep breath as he came even with the store, and turned towards it. “Here we are. Ollivander’s,” he informed them. “Only place for wands, Ollivander’s.”

Garrick Ollivander looked up from his worktable in the back of his shop when the door chime went off. He had customers. Fortunately, he was just selecting the materials for his next wand, not actually making anything; he’s been expecting a large number of customers, and he really didn’t like putting a half-made wand into stasis or forcing a customer to wait until he finished it.

He rose smoothly, and made his way to the front of his shop. He’d had a much lower customer density than he was used to, for the Hogwarts invitation period. Usually, he would see between forty and fifty-five customers over about two weeks following the letters- and, at that point, he’d seen exactly six in just over a quarter of that time.

He paused briefly when he spotted the customers. One he recognized- Hagrid. He had been here only a few days ago, guiding a nervous muggleborn boy and his mother through the alley. Now, he had two girls and no adults with him, suggesting one of the rare cases of a muggleborn witch or wizard being thrown out of the family upon receipt of their letter.

Perhaps the strangest part about the two girls wasn’t how their hair seemed to defy the laws of physics as he knew them, but the owl riding on the blue-and-white-haired girl’s shoulder… with no cage or luggage in sight. Compounded with that, both girls seemed to be studying the shelves from their place next to Hagrid (who had leaned tiredly against the wall to wait this time), as if there were something there to learn, rather than with the normal curiosity. As he made his silent approach, he picked out a few words they were muttering to each other.

It seemed the lighter-haired one, with the owl, was having more success in whatever studying they were doing. She was saying something about ‘bonds waiting to happen, but none complete’.

He stepped into clear view. “Good afternoon.”

Both girls gave a small start, turning to look at him. The owl spread its wings partway for balance, before refolding them. Hagrid opened his eyes.

“Good afternoon,” the owl-toting girl greeted him in turn. “This is where we get our wands, right?”

He was immediately taken aback; her cheerful, almost happy-go-lucky attitude was quite unusual for anyone entering his shop, let alone anyone that had been disowned. It was making him curious what their situation really was, or if it was just that they were a little bit crazy. “Who do I have the pleasure of working with today?” he asked. They didn’t look like they came from any of the pure-blooded families.

The owl-toting girl answered him with the same, unusual cheeriness. “I’m Lyra Heartstrings, and this is Twilight Sparkle.” She gestured towards the other girl. “We’re here to get our wands?” She looked up at the shop. “And, ahh, probably warn you about what’s coming, too.”

He paused, raising an eyebrow. “Oh?”

“Yeah. We come from a land that’s magically isolated from the rest of the world… and about a week and a half ago, we opened a gate through that barrier. We’re just the first two… and we’ve already confirmed over two thousand to follow, this year.”

He blinked. “How many total?”

Lyra shrugged, while Twilight spoke. “We don’t know yet. The estimates for the final count range from eight to eighteen thousand right now.”

“... Ahh,” he muttered. It certainly sounded like he’d have a busy month and a half- though fortunately, since he had about a hundred and thirty five thousand wands for sale at that moment, he needn’t worry about running out… this year. It did sound like he’d be at risk of running out in the coming years, though- and it was distinctly possible he could run out of time to serve them all. “Shall we get started?”

“Yep!” Lyra answered cheerfully.

“Ahh… How about you first?”

She grinned. “Why not?” Then she looked up at her owl. “Think you could ride Twilight’s shoulder for a few minutes, Alto?”

“Hoo.”

“He might need my shoulder to be unoccupied, for his measuring tape.”

“Hoo.”

“Yeah, I know. Please?”

“Hoo.” The owl- Alto- spread its wings and made a quick hop to Twilight’s shoulder.

Ollivander blinked. “You can talk to owls?”

She nodded. “Yeah. I think it’s a part of the magic we have, unique to our… civilization, on the other side of our Gate. The same magic that makes it possible for us to safely pass that gate, actually.” She glanced up at Alto. “I’ve noticed that the owls seem to possess a different form of that same magic, allowing them to pass safely. Good thing, too, with how many Hogwarts letters needed to cross.”

Twilight scowled at her.

“... Ahh,” Ollivander muttered. “So, which is your wand arm?”

“My wand arm… That’d be my dominant arm, right?”

“Dominant arm?” Twilight asked, blinking.

“Yes,” Ollivander nodded.

“Ahh… Um, I don’t know, to be honest. Probably ambidextrous.” She shrugs. “Dominant arms aren’t nearly as prominent- or common- where we come from.”

“Really?” Twilight asked.

“Alright then,” Ollivander smiled. It wasn’t often he got an ambidextrous customer- fortunately, they were often easier to find the right match for. “If you could hold your arms out for me? Yes, just like that.” He drew his measuring tape, and set it to work.

Lyra glanced back at Twilight. “Almost everyone in this world seems to have very prominent dominant arms- such that ambidextrousness is actually rare. From what I’ve seen so far, the wizarding community is no different.”

“Wow,” Twilight muttered.

Ollivander smiled to himself, and started his normal spiel to the girls, pulled down a few boxes, stopped the measuring tape, and started trying wands. He did find it interesting that Lyra had to ask if the unicorns could talk. He’d told her they couldn’t, but that the same was technically true for owls, so he didn’t know if they could talk to unicorns. Both girls had, for some reason, found that funny.

Hagrid had then mentioned that they’d asked before if dragons could talk, and asked them if they were going to ask about phoenixes too.

Lyra’s answer had been straightforward, and confused both men to no end. “Nah, those can’t talk where we come from. Very intelligent, though.”

Eventually, both girls had wands- Alto had hopped back to Lyra’s shoulder as soon as she was done- and had paid from a small pouch stuffed full of coins that Lyra had gotten from somewhere.

“Hmm,” Lyra scowled, her pouch vanishing into thin air, and her wand following suit- just like Twilight’s. She scanned the shop visually. “That took about seven minutes, for the two of us. If we assume that’s about representative of all of our people, and that he works eight hour days with customers back to back, about how long would it take?”

Ollivander winced; that would be a lot of work.

“Well,” Twilight scowled. “Depending on which estimate we look at, it ranges anywhere from two months to five months.”

“And September First is in about a month and a half.” Lyra scowled. “Hmm… You know, I’d hate to ask this of her, but do you think Starlight would be willing to help with that?”

Twilight rubbed her chin. “Probably, yeah. We’d want to make sure there was someone to help her with, you know…”

Lyra shrugged. “So we just stick one of your friends in each of her first waves, and trust her for the rest.”

Twilight nodded. “Good point. And she’d probably be willing to help, depending…”

“Hmm…” Lyra looked skywards. “... Yep, she’s accepted her offer.”

“Really? Then yeah, she’d most likely be willing to help.”

“With… what?” Ollivander asked.

“Mm?” Lyra asked, turning to him. “Oh, spreading the load. Starlight is good with time manipulation, so with her help, we could have our people coming in here to get wands in manageable waves from now through, what, February?” She glanced briefly at Twilight, who nodded. “And yet all have our wands by September.”

“... Ahh.”

Author's Notes:

Oops, I'm late. Oh well, it went up on time on my Patreon... on which I'm about ready to post chap. 6 for patrons, and the public next week. Oh, and I have a Discord as well, if you're interested.

In any case, this about finishes off the first wave. Meaning, we can start seeing more people meeting them in the Cauldron, or meeting other ponies as they shop, in future chapters.

And I have a little question, pertaining to upcoming story events, here.

Chapter 6

Tom already knew something was up by the time the two girls sat down at his bar. Hagrid had shown them through Diagon Alley the day before, so presumably, they were Hogwarts students.

Of course, hardly fifteen minutes had passed after they left, with Hagrid, back to the muggle world… before they had appeared, as if by apparition, alongside some twenty or thirty more, also funny-haired, first-years… Which, he’d noticed, most of them seemed to be female. They’d then headed to Diagon Alley as a group, and he hadn’t seen them come back at all that night.

Now, they just appeared out of thin air, looked around contemplatively, and headed straight for the bar.

It was still early in the morning, so aside from the morning rush he dealt with fifteen minutes prior, the pub was pretty empty. He stepped peaceably over, somehow already knowing that these two would be his most important customers for the entire day, and greeted them. “Good morning.”

“Good morning,” the blue-and-white-haired one greeted him in turn. “I’m curious, what would you recommend for a drink while on the job?”

That brought him pause. People normally stopped by to unwind after work, not during… and usually got at least a little drunk. Which was probably not a very good idea for someone that still had work to do, so he’d need to find something non-alcoholic, but still with plenty of kick in it. Something that would provide the relief so many came to his pub to find, yet without the side-effects.

He glanced sideways at the small shelf full of virgin menus that he hadn’t touched in years. Perhaps… Yes. Butterbeer might have only produced a mild release effect compared to some of his stronger drinks, but it was plenty strong in its own right- and did not, unlike so many of his drinks, rely on its mild alcohol content to achieve that effect. As such, he figured, he had a solution.

“I’ll have to admit, I don’t get very many people coming in to drink before their work is done,” he began.

The other girl, with a paired pink and purple stripe in her dark blue hair, let out a snort of laughter.

He grinned. “But I believe I might have something that fits the bill: Virgin butterbeer.”

The blue-haired girl raised an eyebrow, but the brighter-haired girl spoke. “Huh. Does it taste any different from the non-virgin version?”

He shook his head. “A regular butterbeer only contains a half a standard drink of alcohol per tankard, so it’s not missing much.”

“Hmm,” the girl looked at her darker-haired companion, then back at him. “I can’t say I’ve ever heard of butterbeer before. Can I get one of those virgin ones, then?”

“And I’d like a regular Butterbeer, please,” the darker-haired companion smiled.

“... Okay then,” he answered. “Coming right up.”

It took him about a minute to prepare and supply the two foaming tankards.

When he returned five minutes later, having served two other customers, he found both tankards empty… and both girls watching him almost expectantly.

“Ahh,” he muttered uncertainly, looking at them.

“Soo, how much do we owe you?” the lighter-haired girl smiled.

“Ah.” He glanced down at the drinks, totalling the memorized prices in his head rather than going back to review their tab; that had been all they ordered. “That would be twenty knuts.”

“Twenty knuts?” the darker-haired girl asked, sounding almost shocked, before turning to her companion. “I’m really starting to think that the exchange rate might not be as fair as we thought.”

The lighter-haired girl shrugged in response. “Me too. By a margin of, at a guess, an order of magnitude. But the rate’s set in stone for five years, so it’s not like we can go back and fix it.” She pulled out a small, bulging pouch, and casually flipped a silver sickle onto the counter, looking back up at him. “Go ahead and keep the change. And, ahh… Tom, was it?”

He let the coin sit on the counter for the time being. “Yes, Miss…?” He trailed off, inviting her to provide a name.

“Oh, sorry. I’m Lyra Heartstrings, and this is Princess Twilight Sparkle. We’re both accomplished mages from another world, and first-year students at Hogwarts.” He gasped- that would explain their apparition earlier- but she ignored it. “Anyways, we’ve got an estimated nine to eighteen thousand more coming after us, with over twenty-five hundred confirmed, and having a local base of operations would be… Advantageous, to say the least, to helping things run smoothly. Would it be okay for us to use your pub as such?”

“Ahh… What would that…?”

“Basically, a few of our team members would set themselves up in here, from morning through evening each day. The rest of the team would guide the rest of our people through Diagon Alley in groups, managed by the members set up in here, to get everyone the stuff they’ll need for their first year at Hogwarts. In the meantime, we’d have a second team that would base themselves in here all along, to intervene if something happened.” She shrugged. “We could expect both teams to rack up a truly enormous tab- we would want it all on the same one- but with how much gold the Princess here extracted from the treasury, and how lopsided the exchange rate ended up being, we’ll have no problem paying it off- and as a matter of fact, I figure we can even pay a hundred and fifty percent for everything, too, in exchange for quote ‘basing rights’.” She grinned at Twilight, using air quotes for her last two words.

Twilight rolled her eyes. “Why must you joke around with everything, Lyra?”

Lyra shrugged. “Why not? I mean, like I just told him, we’re both accomplished mages. Hogwarts won’t offer us anything we can integrate directly into our intrinsic magics, as it’s too different- and, I rather doubt it’ll offer us anything we can’t already do by other means. So, why are we here in the first place, but to explore, try it out, and have fun? Possibly, eventually, create open trade between our nations?”

“Lyra!”

“Or, how about, why did I open that gate in the first place?”

“Lyra, stop! We’re here for a lot more than just fun! You know the Ear- er…” She glanced briefly at Tom. “You know that they will undoubtedly benefit from a Hogwarts education! They’ll be able to use active magic for the first time in history!”

Lyra shrugged. “Yeah, I know.” She looked up at Tom. “In our nation, the population is divided right about evenly into three tribes- the Raeth, Aethr, and Etrah tribes, specifically. All three have magic, but the Etrah tribe’s magic is all passive, and the Aethr tribe’s magic is all subconscious. The Raeth tribe- to which we both belong, alongside every other mage from our world- is the only one capable of what we call ‘active magic’, being consciously controlled magic. Simply put, if you wouldn’t call it Accidental Magic, we would call it Active Magic. The Hogwarts letters have been going indiscriminately to all three tribes, so presumably, a wand can bypass that limitation.”

Twilight rolled her eyes. “Though, it’s a bit less of a bypass, since wand magic is intrinsically different from our magic- starting all the way back at where the power comes from!”

Lyra nodded. “Yeah. That’s why I expect all three tribes to be equally capable when it comes to wand magic.” She shrugged. “Pre-reform Starlight would be happy.” Then she scowled. “Discord, on the other hand, might be disinterested. Though, he did RSVP, soo…”

“Wait, what? Discord is coming!?”

“Yeah, he accepted his offer. Exactly how much, ahh, stuff he does really depends on what Hogwarts already has to offer.”

“Celestia help us.” Twilight put her head in her hands.

“Hey, I don’t think it’ll be that bad. I mean, they have talking pictures and mirrors. I’d be willing to bet he’ll love those- I’m sure they’re great for having a conversation with someone long gone, but could you imagine being unable to save an amazing moment, or never being sure that you were getting a faithful reflection out of your mirror?”

Twilight’s head snapped up again. “Ahh… That brings back memories, actually.”

“I know, that’s something he did for us once. Theirs are a little more consistent- and all over the place. Personally, it strikes me as a response to needing to feel like they live in a magical society, and so making everything around them magical. If the pictures got caught up in that…”

Both girls spoke together. “What else did?”

Twilight nodded slowly. “Discord’s probably going to have fun finding the answer to that.”

Lyra grinned. “Of course he will.” She glanced up at Tom. “Is there some kind of conflict between the wizards and the- you call ‘em ‘muggles’, right?- that might explain it?”

Tom blinked. “Not… Well, yeah. A lot of the pure-blooded wizarding families believe muggleborn or half-blood witches and wizards to be inferior… and muggles themselves, even worse.” He shuddered. “You’d think we didn’t just have a huge wizarding war against one such muggle-hater end just ten years ago!”

Lyra let out a snort of laughter. “Well, next time someone starts a war like that, sic the muggles on him. They may not have magic, but I’ve seen a bit of what they do have- and it’s no less deadly for it. Like, flatten an entire city in ten seconds flat, deadly. And they can do that so quietly you won’t know they’re coming until after they’re done.”

“... Ahh.”

“Wait, they have stuff that destructive?” Twilight asked.

“Yep! Nuke ‘em from orbit, only way to be sure!”

Twilight facepalmed. “Of course they would.”

Author's Notes:

It's been a busy week... Well, in terms of getting a game working, that is. BotW is not easy to hardmod, even on the WiiU (which is easier than the Switch) and after it is extracted from the disk (giving me full write access to all its files, not just the update data). But I think I've figured it out... if I remember to restart the console before I test my installation. (For some reason, testing w/o restart causes it to lock up the console...)

But anyways, this is ready.

Patreon and Discord, if you like.

... And I'm curious how you think I did with Tom?

Chapter 7

Professor McGonagall tried to be inconspicuous as she took a deep breath. If she was honest with herself, she did that every time she led a new muggleborn student into the Leaky Cauldron, bracing herself for the worst. It was quite rare, in this day and age, for muggle parents to abandon their children to the wizarding world- but the most common point for them to do that was upon entering the Leaky Cauldron.

When Hagrid had returned a couple nights before, he’d reported on exactly what the Equestrians were going to do; they’d explained it to him in more detail. Thus, the staff had known to treat the letters from Equestrians like letters from wizarding families. It had taken that entire day to separate out the muggleborn notes remaining… and it had been found that there simply wasn’t enough days left before the deadline for him to attend to all of the muggleborns himself. Combined with how they’d also realized just how many teachers were necessary to process all the owls that came in through the entire day, that meant that Hagrid had been reassigned to get Harry Potter… and Professor McGonagall herself had been sent out on muggleborn duty, as usual.

By her understanding, Professor Flitwick was going to get two muggleborn as well over the next few days, reducing her duty count to just one per day, up to the deadline. And that, assuming they all said yes- which they usually all did, whether they meant to or not.

The Grangers, who she was escorting at the time, seemed like a pleasant family. Most of the disowners seemed like that, though, so she wasn’t so certain. Their daughter, a young witch that had eagerly accepted the offer after her carefully-designed demonstration, was particularly eager- which did tend to suggest her parents were not the disowning type. Most of the disowned children had been nervous on the way in… but she’d had a few cheerful ones get disowned over the ages as well.

In either case, she fully expected the girl to end up in either Ravenclaw or Gryffindor, whatever happened. And, with how heavily strained the castle finances would be for this number of students, she couldn’t expect to be able to provide any gold for the girl’s education, should she be disowned.

She braced herself for the worst as she led the trio to the door. She’d already explained to the parents that they wouldn’t be able to see it without touching a witch or wizard- which included their daughter, who was rather obligingly holding their hands.

Then, she opened the door, entered, and held the door for them.

Then she did a double-take. The pub did not look like she was used to it looking.

“... Colorful,” Hermione observed bluntly.

The pub was a lot fuller than Professor McGonagall had expected, and a lot more cheerful. And, Hermione was right, more colorful as well. Not only were the witches and wizards in attendance wearing their usual kaleidoscope of colors, but there were dozens- possibly hundreds- of first-year-age children, each with their own vivid hair colors, milling about. A couple dozen of them, in one corner, appeared to be wearing golden armor. Tom, and all six of his servers (four of whom were also funny-haired first-years), were running to and fro, serving varied drinks- mostly butterbeer, it seemed- to all the students.

In between them all, placed proudly on five different tables throughout the room, stood five towering cakes. She could just see the remnants of a sixth, with only a few pieces left on the massive platter, and the several other tables littered with other sweets and treats throughout the room. Floating above the crowd were hundreds of balloons as varied in color as a bag of Bertie Bott's in flavor. Cheerful music wafted through the air, and a colorful dance floor could be found off to the side, flashing different colors to the tune of the music… with plenty of those first-years stumbling in failed attempts at dancing, and a few older witches or wizards either helping them learn or just dancing.

Then of course, there was the huge banner hanging across the entire width of the pub, directly above the bar, with ‘Welcome to a New World’ written on it in huge lettering.

“Ahh… I hope we’re not crashing someone’s party,” Mr. Granger muttered quietly.

Very suddenly, a first-year girl with a startlingly pink mane of fluffy pink hair dashed out of the crowd so fast someone slower than Professor McGonagall would have to be excused for thinking she’d apparated. “Of course not,” the girl cheered. “Everyone’s invited to this Welcome-to-the-Wizarding-World party!” She suddenly had a plate of cake in her hands, though where she’d gotten it from, even McGonagall couldn’t tell. “Cake?”

Professor McGonagall took a deep breath, committing an image of the pub to memory… then concentrated on the Hogwarts wards. It was harder to communicate through them when she was away from the castle, but she could still do it. It took her close to two seconds to properly formulate and deliver the image, during which all three Grangers stood still, stunned silent.

Professor Dumbledore’s response came back almost immediately. “What.” She got the distinct feeling of shocked silence from all three other heads of house, and allowed herself a small smile.

“Is there something missing…?” the pink-haired girl asked, looking somewhat saddened.

Then another girl, this one with light blue and white striped hair, trotted up next to her. “Patience, Pinkie- remember, these people aren’t used to you.” She glanced up at the Grangers. “And something tells me these people aren’t used to magic in the first place.” She then stepped forward, and held her hand out to Hermione. “I’m Lyra Heartstrings- and it’s nice to meet you,” she greeted.

The pink girl- Pinkie?- scowled, but all three Grangers started moving with a start, and shook themselves out. “Ahh… Nice to meet you too,” Hermione answered, gingerly accepting the hand.

Mrs. Granger breathed a sigh, looking up at Professor McGonagall. “Do… How long do we have, for…?” She gestured around at the party.

At that very moment, Professor Dumbledore spoke again, over the Hogwarts wards; of the other three, only Snape had recovered from his shock, now quietly curious. “You’re… guiding someone, aren’t you?”

“Ahh,” Professor McGonagall muttered aloud. “Yes… though the Grangers seem to want some time here too.”

“Hmm,” Dumbledore mused. “I don’t see any reason to stop them. Probably be a good chance to learn about some of the Equestrians, I’d say.”

Lyra spoke up suddenly, looking up at the adults; while McGonagall communed with Dumbledore, she’d asked Hermione if she was going to Hogwarts, and gotten a yes. “If you want to party first and shop later, that’s no problem- as a matter of fact, we’ve got teams going shopping at regular intervals, about twenty-five every ten minutes or so. We’ve got, let’s see…” She glanced at her wristwatch, whose face lit up as she looked at it, in a manner that practically screamed ‘muggle tech’ to Professor McGonagall. “About six hours before the last one heads out, today. And they’ve got almost a half-hour of leeway before the first shop closes, so…” She shrugged. “If you want to shop first and party later, I might suggest joining the next party- about three minutes, expect the shopping trip to take about an hour and a half- and we’ll still be here for several hours yet. And tomorrow too, if you like.”

Pinkie bounced up and down so fast she couldn’t possibly have been only falling back to the ground each time. “Yes! And the day after, and the day after, and every day until we’re all done! It’ll be superduper fuuuuntastic!” She leaped several feet into the air, one hand pumping even higher, floated in place for a half-second or so, and dropped back to the ground in a blur.

Professor McGonagall’s jaw articulated up and down a couple times, staring at her.

“Don’t ask,” Lyra warned her. “Some of the concepts involved in how she does that defy logic in ways that even the greatest mages of our world can’t understand. Still remember the time Twilight tried to explain Pinkie Pie… I think she actually caught fire, right?”

Pinkie nodded energetically. “Yep! Then it all went out, though she was still smoking a little, and she was like ‘okay, I’ll accept it’.” She tapped her chin with one finger. “Come to think of it, I think she’s still the record holder for the slowest to accept that Pinkie Pie defies explanation…”

“What, not me?” She put on a mock offended expression.

“Well of course, Lyra! You’re the one that made it possible, so of course you don’t count! Cake?” She offered the plate she was still holding.

Lyra chuckled. “No thanks, I still gotta finish my last piece. Hot sauce?” She held up a red bottle she hadn’t been holding a moment before, with an image of a flame on its label.

All three Grangers and Professor McGonagall stared as Pinkie nodded. “Sure!” The girl popped the bottle open, poured it all over the slice of cake, and swallowed it all- plate, bottle, and all- in one fell swoop. “Mmm, good stuff.” Then she burped, producing the plate with a few crumbs on it, and an empty bottle with that fire label. She promptly vanished for a second before reappearing with four plates, each with a fresh slice of cake, which she offered to them. “Cake?”

“Uhh…” Mr. Granger uttered.

Lyra put a hand over her mouth and started snickering, while Pinkie giggled openly.

“That never gets old,” Lyra snickered.

Hermione then became the first to accept the plate offered to her. “... Thank you?” She sounded very confused.

Author's Notes:

And then, there was Pinkie Pie.

Patreon, Discord.

Chapter 8

It took Hermione Granger over half an hour to straighten everything out in her head and stop gawking at everything in amazement. She’d always known she was a little weird; nobody else had strange things happen around them all the time. Well, almost nobody, but he was basically a nobody anyways. And she’d noticed that those strange things always seemed to be in her favor, whatever they were. Fortunately, she wasn’t the one that that gang had chased all around the school every day for months. She wasn’t the one that had been caught sitting on the chimney. She wasn’t the one that…

No, she was fairly sure she actually was the one that turned the teacher’s wig blue. That other boy got in trouble for it, but the teacher had been yelling at her, for the failed group assignment, when his wig changed color. It wasn’t her fault she’d failed it- the other members of her group had been so lazy they easily made up for every other kid in the school; she’d done as much as she could herself, but the assignment had been designed such that she couldn’t do it all herself. Since then, she’d learned to control those funny occurrences, to a degree.

So of course, for as much as her Hogwarts letter had been a surprise, she really hadn’t been surprised to learn that she was a witch- it simply explained the things that she could do. She had been surprised when Professor McGonagall had shown up, and demonstrated more refined magics with her wand- and had made up her mind. So, Professor McGonagall had taken her, and her parents, out to London, to this tiny pub.

Well… it was tiny, when she looked at it from the street outside. She’d thought it a bit weird that her parents couldn’t see it unless she was holding their hands, but accepted that as the magical people wanting to stay hidden… for some reason.

Then, she’d stepped in. She’d been wholly unprepared for what had happened next- and, by her best guess, Professor McGonagall had been blindsided by it too.

Now, after taking half an hour to reorganize her mind, she watched the crowd- and nibbled on the cake she’d been given when she’d first entered- for around fifteen minutes. It was a good cake, but she noticed something about the crowd during that time.

That is, a lot of the funny-haired children her age… didn’t behave like children her age. Most of them behaved more like she’d expect her parents to.

She finished off her cake, gave her dishes to Pinkie Pie- who just happened to be collecting them at that moment, she determinedly did not think about that- and made her way towards Lyra’s booth, where the girl was working with a few other girls to do… something, she wasn’t quite sure. It seemed to involve a lot of technology, though, and they all had calm, serious expressions, and lots of foaming golden liquid. Unless she missed her guess, they were doing something to coordinate those ‘teams’ Lyra had mentioned earlier. She reached their table, and looked down at it.

Set out in the middle of the table, they had a large… tablet, she thought, lying flat, with a map of something displayed on it, and numerous dots marching across it or standing in place. Each of the girls at the table also had a sleek smartphone, with what looked to her like close-ups of different parts of the map- the only exception being Lyra, who would call someone every ten minutes or so, before the next group appeared out of thin air and headed out the back door of the pub. They also each had devices she recognized as radios, which they would periodically speak into. “Uhh, Lyra?” she asked.

Lyra looked up. “Yes Hermione?”

She blinked. She couldn’t remember ever giving the girl her name. “Uhh…”

Lyra blinked. “Oh, sorry. I have a… unique advantage, that lets me do that. And sometimes, I…” She trailed off, rubbing the side of her head with one hand and looking at her sheepishly.

She let out a small chuckle. “Oh, ahh… About that, actually.”

Lyra slipped sideways in the booth. “Why don’t you take a seat?”

“Ahh… Thank you,” she muttered, sliding into the booth. Then, she blinked at the table in front of her; where once it had been clear, there was now a foaming mug of golden liquid. “Uhh…”

“That was Lightning Dust,” Lyra informed her. “She’s having a competition with Rainbow Dash right now, to see who can serve the most.” She grinned. “She’s also winning.”

She blinked, looking between Lyra and the mug. “Um…”

“Go ahead,” Lyra smiled, gesturing towards it. “There’s no alcohol in it- and if you don’t like it, one of us can finish it off for you, no problem.”

“Oh.” She carefully lifted the mug, and sniffed it uncertainly.

“It’s called Butterbeer,” the stoic-faced girl on the other side of the table, with curly pink and purple hair, informed her. “Virgin butterbeer, to be exact- the normal stuff has a very mild alcoholic content, and doesn’t really taste any different. It’s a nice butterscotch drink.”

She raised her eyebrows, gave it a sip, and then went for it again- it tasted good. After she’d satisfied her curiosity, and reduced the mug’s contents by about a quarter in the process, she lowered it again. “Thank you,” she began. “Um… Lyra?”

“Mm?”

“Why do you and…” She gestured towards the room. “So many others, not act like…?” She trailed off, blushing as she realized what her question must sound like.

“Like eleven-year-olds?” Lyra finished cheerfully. “Simple: Because we’re not. I’m thirty-four, and Bonbon here is thirty-five.” She gestured towards the girl that told her about the butterbeer. “However, a little gimmick of our gate has us taking on eleven-year-old bodies on this side. I wasn’t able to fix that during the first few days after I opened the portal… then the Hogwarts letters started showing, and I’m not sure that I want to fix it now, aside from making sure we age properly on this side as well.” She glanced out at the main room. “Thus, as near as we can tell, Hogwarts’ spellwork believes every last Equestrian is exactly eleven years old… Except, as near as we can tell, the ones that are younger than that. Should make for some rather amusing classes this year, I daresay, with Princess Luna in attendance.”

She blinked. “Princess Luna?”

“Yes. She’s the Princess of the Night, well over a thousand years old… and, on this side, in the form of an eleven-year-old girl, just like you and me.”

“... Oh. Wait, what gate?”

“Our gate. Up until a couple weeks ago, our world- Equestria- was magically and physically isolated from yours… both the muggle one and the wizarding one, which are magically isolated from each other. Then, I opened a gateway through that barrier, and forged a way to this world. That gateway… Well, it’s in my backyard at the moment, but we’ll be moving it to Twilight’s castle or something at some point. On this side, I’m sorry to say I can’t tell you where it is… because, if you were to try to cross through it, it’d kill you. We can pass without issue, but only because we possess a certain magic facet unique to the other side that allows us to do so. One of my projects, once we get everyone’s stuff for Hogwarts, will be to find a way to make it possible for someone from this side to pass through the Gate safely… after which point we can consider revealing its location, and of course, make diplomatic first contact.”

“Who’s Twilight?”

“Oh, that’d be Princess Twilight Sparkle. Perhaps the only Equestrian Princess that doesn’t like being called a Princess, she’s also the newest one, at only thirty-four years old… and almost definitely going to be a Ravenclaw.”

“Ravenclaw?”

“Yeah- one of the four houses at Hogwarts.” She glanced up at Bonbon, who had said something Hermione hadn’t caught, then down at the big map. “ ‘Scuse me a second.” She woke her phone up, pushed the button to call the contact she already had open onscreen, and held it to her ear. “Yep.” Then she hung up, locked it, and put it back down on the table, looking at Bonbon. “Coming.” Then she turned back towards Hermione. “Sorry about that.

“The four houses, Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, and Slytherin, each value different qualities. We haven’t been able to find anything on how the sorting actually works- almost like it’s an insider secret or something- but the houses themselves are easy enough.

“Gryffindor values courage, bravery, nerve, and chivalry. As you might expect, by their very nature, Gryffindors tend to get in trouble more than any other house- but they also tend to earn the most House Points at the same time, making their position in that ranking easily the most volatile.” She shrugged. “I expect to be a Gryffindor myself. Of course, the Crusaders will definitely be Gryffindors, too, so if you get sorted to Gryffindor, keep your eyes open. And probably if you’re not a Gryffindor as well. They turned eleven only last month- and have been known to get into all sorts of strange situations… that can very easily hurt those around them, if they aren’t paying attention.

“Hufflepuff values hard work, patience, justice, and loyalty. They only very rarely break the rules, but they work themselves into the ground at times. They’re probably the most stable in terms of House Points. My friend Applejack is an apple farmer… and expected to be in Hufflepuff.

“Then there’s Ravenclaw. They’re very studious, valuing intelligence, creativity, learning, and wit. You’d think they’d get better grades with values like that, but I’ve heard a few rumors that they’re graded harder to match- and generally given harder assignments. Twilight- and her friend, Moondancer- are expected to be Ravenclaws… and straight-A students regardless, knowing them.

“And finally, Slytherin. They value ambition, cunning, leadership, and resourcefulness. It’s kinda hard to tell what to believe about them- I’ve seen lots of breakdowns that agree on the other three houses, but conflict on Slytherin. Personally, I think they’re just given a bad name because their founding father a few thousand years ago, Salazar Slytherin, wanted to keep magic training to the all-wizarding families.” She shrugged. “Ignoring the clearly biased accounts, and the ones from questionable sources, that’s about all we know about them- and we actually expect both Princess Luna and Bonbon here to be Slytherins.” She gestured towards the girl, then frowned at the ceiling, putting one finger in her chin. “Not unlike the bad name Hufflepuff seems to have been given, as a ‘load of duffers’... Blatantly false, by the way.”

Hermione blinked a couple of times. “Y… You said Gryffindor values chivalry, right?”

“Yeah?” Lyra nodded.

She looked at her drink. “I hope I’m in Gryffindor.”

“Oh? You have problems with…?” Lyra asked, her tone softening.

“Oh, no, no,” she said, shaking her head quickly. “I just… Well…” She took a deep breath. “I… I’m a ‘model student’ basically wherever I go. So much that my peers find me intimidating, and…” Her expression darkened, and she took a long drink of her butterbeer before she went on. It really was good stuff. She took a deep breath. “And nobody will talk to me.” She looked up at Lyra. “I learn things, I know things… but nobody will let me help them. Nobody will let me work with them, even if they’re supposed to, for a group project.”

Lyra put an arm over her shoulders. “Good thing we’re here then, right? Did you know, I graduated second in class, behind only Twilight, from Celestia’s School for Gifted… ahh…”

“What?” Hermione asked, blinking.

“Well, um,” Lyra began. “The last word of the title is, unfortunately, a national secret… But, that’s the best school in our entire nation, led by Princess Celestia herself- Luna’s older sister, and the other ruler of the nation.” She scowled. “Unfortunately, just about nothing I learned there will be applicable at Hogwarts, thanks to the differences in magic.” She sighed. “And it’ll be even less applicable to you, since wizardkind in general is incapable of our Equestrian magic, even though we’ve already confirmed we’re plenty capable of wand magic. Another thing I’m planning on fixing sometime, once I get the whole safely-travel-the-Gate thing working. It is looking like I should be able to get both at once, though- I believe the saying is to ‘kill two birds with one stone’ on this side.”

The two girls at the table that Hermione hadn’t been introduced to wrinkled their noses. Bonbon raised an eyebrow.

“Ahh… What is it on the other side?”

“Plant two trees with one seed, usually. I’ve also seen it as busting two clouds with one kick, and so on.” She grinned. “Rainbow likes to say it as busting ten clouds with one kick, Twilight likes to sort two books with one glance. Pinkie likes to throw two parties with one cannon- yes, she has a magic ‘party cannon’ that helps her decorate, don’t question it- and Rarity likes to sew two dresses with one needle.” She grins. “I think Princess Celestia likes to bake two cakes with one pan. Then of course, there’s all the regional differences- different parts of the nation have different ways of saying the same general expression. I once visited a town where it was to guide two ships with one sail.”

“... Okay.” She took another swig of her drink. “Can… May I ask what your, ahh, Equestrian Magic does?”

Lyra paused for a half-second. “Uhh… Yeah. Though, to fully explain that, I’ll have to explain the three tribes, too.”

She smiled attentively at her.

Lyra grinned. “Okay, alright. Well… Most of Equestria is divided into three tribes- the Raeth, Aethr, and Etrah tribes. That’s R-A-E-T-H, A-E-T-H-R, and E-T-R-A-H, by the way- probably the oldest words in our language, dating back some several thousand years ago- nobody knows exactly how long, because it was hard to keep track of time through the Chaos Years- back to when civilization on our world was first founded.

“Anyways, in our world, we simply don’t have muggles. Instead, everyone belongs to one of those three tribes, about evenly distributed… and each tribe has its own tribal magic the other two can’t use. Like, physically can’t. There’s also the more generalized Equestrian magic that they can all use, but it’s fairly… ahh, inactive. Ubiquitous Equestrian magic is what makes our hair look so unique, for example- and what makes us quite so durable… especially the younger girls for some reason. I’m not sure yet if the older ladies- including myself- will have picked up that durability while so physically young on this side. There’s a little more to it, but all that really does is reduce how tightly we have to hold onto something.

“Alright then. The Etrah Tribe, of which Bonbon is a part, is very… down-to-earth. Their tribal magic is almost entirely passive in nature, but it has plenty of effects. For example, as a rule, they’re much tougher than any other tribe. Their tribal magic makes even the adults far tougher than any young girl of the other tribes. Their little girls…” She grinned at Bonbon. “Virtually indestructible. They’re also impressively strong, enabling them to rather easily accomplish things anyone from the other two tribes would require heavy machinery to manage. For example, most of them can bench press something like fifteen hundred pounds. Bonbon, however, has gone through some rather extensive training to hone not just her muscles but her magic- and can lift quite a bit more.”

Bonbon grinned at her across the table. “Last time I checked, almost two years ago, I broke the machine. It was rated for about eight thousand pounds.”

“Yeah- I could never do that no matter how much training I went through, because I’m not an Etrah. The Etrah Tribal Magic also makes them good with plants- they’re natural farmers.”

“... Okay,” Hermione mumbled, staring at Bonbon with awe. “I… I guess I know who not to annoy, then?”

Lyra laughed. “Oh, I wouldn’t be too worried about that. The other two tribes held their own pretty well against each other and against the Etrahs throughout the Three Tribes Era.”

“... Ahh. Soo… what’s next?”

“Next up would be the Aethr Tribe. Which would happen to include both Cloudchaser and Spitfire here, and both Rainbow Dash and Lightning Dust.” She gestured to the last two in order. “Their magic is also mostly passive, but they do have some more active components. In Equestria, they can fly- and in either world, they can interact with clouds as if they were solid objects. I understand that lightning and rainbows require attention to produce, making them active magic.” She grinned. “They can also walk on walls and ceilings, though I hear it’s very disorienting, nevermind a bit weird to anyone else that happens to be in the room.” She smiled. “Makes them very difficult to knock down, too. They’ve also got a durability boost in their tribal magic, but it’s much more focused on blunt force trauma than Etrah magic, and not as strong.” She shrugged.

“Helps us survive a crash,” Spitfire grinned.

“Yep! Though Rainbow Dash in particular has been known to crash hard enough to hurt herself. Which is not surprising, to be honest, since she’s the only Equestrian known to be capable of exceeding the speed of sound.” She shrugged. “It’s in her name, after all.”

Hermione blinked, then chuckled. “Are you…?”

She shook her head. “No, I’m not an Aethr. Rather, I belong to the last one, the Raeth tribe. So does Twilight, Moondancer, and any other Equestrian spellsmith. Well…” She shrugged. “Technically speaking, Twilight, Luna, Celestia, and Cadence- the four princesses- actually don’t belong to any of the three, as they’re immortal and possess the magic of all three, but they’re still classified as Raeths, even though Cadence was an Aethr before she ascended some fifty years ago.

“Our magic is entirely active. No durability boost, no strength boost, etcetera. In return, we get direct control over every aspect of it- and with it, the ability to design and cast spells to do an array of different things. There are spells I can use to mimic the Etrah strength or durability, or the Aethr flight, cloudwalking, or ceiling-walking abilities. However, they require concentration to use- and are not passive effects of the magic, like it is for them. On the other hand, if I wasn’t a Raeth, I could never have opened the gateway between our worlds, and wouldn’t have a hope of making it safe for people from this world to pass.” She sighed. “Most Raeths don’t bother learning any more than a few basic spells, like levitation- which is mostly instinctive anyways.

“Those that go to Celestia’s School for Gifted… uhh, Raeths, basically, are a little different, in that we study all kinds of magic. However, some magics- such as teleportation- are exclusive to the elite even within Celestia’s School. So basically, I know it, Twilight knows it, and a few others do.”

“Soo… Which one would be the worst one to, ahh…”

“Get on the wrong side of?”

She nodded.

Lyra chuckled. “All of the above? I mean, if an Equestrian wants to ruin your day, they’re going to ruin your day, unless they’re stopped by another Equestrian. The same holds true in Equestria, actually. And even within those tribes, we vary in power by quite a bit. Me, Bonbon, and Spitfire are all some of the most powerful of our tribes- but we’ve also learned to cope with that power, so you can be fairly confident we won’t be blowing up in your face. So, the answer to your question might well be none of the above.” She shrugged. “We don’t know enough about your magic just yet to tell if we’d be at an advantage in a fight… or if you would be.”

“Or neither,” Hermione nodded understandingly.

“Or neither,” Lyra agreed.

“Well, that happened,” Cloudchaser muttered, when Hermione finally left, at least an hour after she’d arrived. Lyra had explained a few bits about Equestrian magic, and quite a bit more about the local human magic that she’d seen so far. In turn, Hermione had chatted- and rather energetically, at that- about her experience with the non-magical world. Lyra had a little bit of knowledge about it to let on, but most of that was Hermione explaining things to Lyra. The girl had gotten very excited in the process, like it was something she loved to do… and didn’t often have an opportunity to do.

Spitfire chuckled. “One way to say it. You know what I think?”

Bonbon looked up, through her eyebrows, at Lyra. “You were scanning her, weren’t you?”

Lyra flinched. “Well no, but-!” Spitfire began.

“Guilty as charged,” Lyra stated. Spitfire fell silent as she continued. “But I didn’t do anything to her, I promise! Only looked! And, not in any inappropriate ways!”

Bonbon sighed. “You really should be asking permission before you make those scans,” she stated.

“On the other hand, I’m now reasonably certain the Gama Papa and the Mike Echo are going to be one and the same… and likely fall under the Papa Tango as well.”

Bonbon shook her head with a sigh. “Convoy.”

Lyra blinked, and went for her phone to call Twilight… again. “Right.”

“Uhh… Anyways, you know what I think?”

“That Hermione has no friends?” Cloudchaser suggested. “Should be pretty easy to fix, once school starts.”

“Well, that too, I guess,” Spitfire sighed. “I was thinking more about that boy she mentioned at her school, that… Harry, was it? What’re the chances he’s a wizard?”

“Virtually certain,” Lyra answered. “How about, what are the chances he’s the famous Harry Potter? I mean, she said he’s in her year, and this year also happens to be the year the famous Harry Potter turns eleven and, theoretically, comes to Hogwarts.”

Bonbon looked up sharply. “True…”

“If he is, it’ll be a pretty good shock when she finds out, won’t it?” Cloudchaser mused.

Author's Notes:

Well, got that out of the way. It should now be pretty evident who the Raeth, Aethr, and Etrah are... and, of course, Lyra mentioned a few different code words after Hermione left, didn't she?

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So, who do you think is going to win that competition Lyra mentioned- Rainbow Dash, or Lightning Dust? (Assuming Rainbow realizes she's falling behind)

Chapter 9

Draco Malfoy couldn’t believe his eyes when he stepped out of the floo at the Leaky Cauldron. He’d been here before- hundreds of times, in fact. But not once had he seen the Leaky Cauldron so… colorful. Streamers hung from the ceiling; a massive banner hung over the bar, reading ‘Welcome to a New World’. There was a girl with fluffy pink hair filling balloons so fast it was almost like a rope of them was ascending to the ceiling as she traversed the room. He was fairly sure that even magic couldn’t fill balloons that fast without popping them- but he was uneducated as of yet, so what did he know?

Then of course, the girl reached the end of her row, and disappeared upstairs in a blur… to reappear a half-second later with a truly enormous cake, which she plopped down on an empty table far faster than he would have thought possible, before vanishing for another one.

Finally, the fire flared green again behind him, and his mother- Narcissa- stepped out of it… before pausing to look around. “... Funny, I don’t think I’ve seen this before,” she muttered, joining him off to the side.

It took his father another two or three seconds to appear, during which no less than six more cakes- each at least as tall as he was- made it into the room, alongside numerous tables full of cupcakes, party favors, and other treats.

Right as his father stepped out of the floo, a set of four girls with vivid hair appeared out of nowhere… carrying what even Draco could recognize as muggle technology from halfway across the pub.

Lucius stiffened when he saw it. “Come,” he instructed, and led the way.

Draco followed him. The pink-haired girl stopped by very briefly, to say something so fast that neither he nor- judging by their expressions- either of his parents could understand. As Lucius led him and Narcissa towards Diagon Alley, he watched the four girls laying out their muggle tech on one of the booth tables, and seating themselves around it. One of them, with white and light blue hair, looked up and waved cheerfully as they passed. Lucius hissed, but Draco was very suddenly not all that concerned with that.

She had spotted him. And unlike the pink one, or the other three girls, her eyes didn’t just slide past him and proceed. Her eyes met his, and she stared, making him instantly uneasy. He tried looking away, but even when he couldn’t see her, he could feel her eyes boring holes in the back of his head. He glanced back just before closing the door out the back of the Leaky Cauldron- and sure enough, she was still staring. One of the other girls looked to be trying to get her attention… and he had just enough time to make out two red-haired boys by the floo before the door landed shut.

Hopefully, the Weasley family could distract her. He shuddered at the thought of walking past her again if she should happen to be still there when he finished his shopping trip. Would she stare at him like that again? He wasn’t sure.

If there was one thing he was sure if, it was that he hoped- prayed, even- that she didn’t go to Hogwarts as a Slytherin. He didn’t think he could stand being in the same house as someone that had stared at him quite like that.

Fred and George Weasley, having run on ahead of the rest of the family, were in time to see what looked like the Malfoy Family departing for Diagon Alley. Well, Fred was; George was still re-orienting himself from the Floo when the door landed closed behind the last Malfoy.

Halfway across the room, at one of the booths, was something that had caught Fred’s attention. There were four girls, each with vivid hair, dealing with a bunch of muggle stuff. Well… two girls. The third one, with wavy white and light blue striped hair, was standing next to the booth, holding a couple of muggle devices in her hands, and staring after Malfoy. The fourth, with curly pink and purple hair, was poking her, apparently trying to get her attention.

“C’mon,” Fred muttered to George, as soon as the latter fully re-oriented himself, before moving closer. Whatever else they were, these girls were a source of curiosity.

As they got closer, they started picking out what the girls were saying.

“Oy! Lyra!” The one with the curly pink and purple hair poked the staring one again.

Finally, the blue-and-white-haired girl responded. “... Huh.” Then she turned. “Yes, Bonbon?”

They could tell that Bonbon- the one that had been poking her- rolled her eyes, even though she was facing away from them. “Lyra!” Bonbon retorted angrily. “What was that about?”

Lyra looked back at the door to Diagon Alley for a second, then at Bonbon. “He’s…”

Bonbon put her hands on her hips. “You didn’t do anything to him, did you?”

“No, no, I didn’t touch him. I just happened to notice something, and it got my attention.”

“Gee, I didn’t notice. What did you do next, scan him fifty times?”

“No, only thirty-seven times. And no, I didn’t change anything, either. That’s not…” She glanced at the door again, before turning more fully to Bonbon. “That boy, their son, is Draco Malfoy. And if anyone was ever unsatisfied with their lot in life, that’s him.”

Bonbon’s tone became cold, but Fred could somehow tell the cold was not aimed at Lyra. “You mean to tell me,” she began, “that he’s a victim of-!”

“No, no,” Lyra interrupted, shaking her head. “Nothing like that. Near as I can tell, he’s actually been spoiled by his parents, and if I had to guess, a household servant as well. But, he’s not satisfied with his lot in life. Like, terminally unsatisfied, absolutely hates it.”

“... Seriously?”

“Yeah. It’s- It’s a bit hard to explain, and even harder to narrow down. It’s…” She paused, looking towards Diagon Alley. “It’s almost like he’s had everything handed to him on a silver platter, but doesn’t want it- wants to work for it.”

“You mean there’s actually someone like that?”

“Why do you think he attracted my attention like that? I didn’t think it was possible either, until I saw him!” Then she blinked, and looked up, past Bonbon, at Fred and George. “Can I help you?”

Bonbon turned on the spot, looked them over, rolled her eyes, and sat down at the booth.

“Hello,” Fred began. “We couldn’t help but notice your…” He trailed off, as his mind failed to supply something non-creepy to ask about.

“Hair,” George supplied. “How it’s colored down to the strand, but the colors never mix, even when your hair shifts.”

“Yeah,” Fred continued, trying to look like they’d planned it. “How did you do that? Even the finest color changing charms won’t do that.”

“Oh, heh heh,” Lyra muttered, suddenly uneasy, and looked at the other three girls for a second. “It’s… A little complicated?” She looked up at them. “But that’s not what you came to ask about, was it?”

It was the twins’ turn to be nervous. “Ahh…” Fred muttered.

“Err…” George muttered.

“Didn’t think so. You were listening to what I was telling Bonbon, weren’t you?”

They nodded meekly. Their intent was not to make an enemy.

“Then why didn’t you say so?” She glanced in the direction of Diagon Alley, before her tone shifted completely, a note of eagerness coming in. “Do you know the Malfoys?”

“Er… Not really,” Fred began. “But, ahh…”

“The Malfoy Family is one of the oldest of the ‘noble’ pureblood wizarding families,” George stated.

“And they’re both rich and very powerful,” Fred nodded. “Makes, ahh…”

“So,” Lyra grinned, “he will have been spoiled as a matter of course, and as a member of a ‘noble’ house, is expected to maintain a ‘noble’ front at all times?”

“Ahh, yes,” George confirmed.

Lyra looked at Bonbon. “Almost sounds like Diamond.”

Bonbon raised an eyebrow at her… then tilted her head contemplatively. “... Yeah, I can see the similarity,” she eventually answered. “And speaking of Diamond, you still need to call her.”

Lyra blinked. “Right!” She whipped out a small object that Fred instantly recognized as muggle stuff, touched it a couple times in very quick succession, and put it to her ear.

Draco Malfoy was, if he was entirely honest with himself, scared out of his mind as his Diagon Alley shopping trip drew to a close. He’d stuck to the plan, of course, so nobody knew he was anything less than the fully confident front he projected.

The problem was, starting from just a few minutes after he’d hit the Alley, waves of some twenty-five funny-haired first-years- mostly girls, he’d noticed- were regularly coming into the Alley to shop. He couldn’t shake the feeling that they had something to do with that one that had stared at him in the Leaky Cauldron- and by the time the final preplanned tangential excursion was complete, the entire Alley was flooded with them, and it was very hard indeed to shop for much of anything… Except wands. For some reason nobody had told him, at Ollivanders’ shop, he’d had priority over all the funny-haired girls buying wands.

And then, trying to simultaneously stand out as a Malfoy and blend in as a first-year, it became time for him to return to the Leaky Cauldron and, in it, the Floo back to Malfoy Manor. It was almost an hour and a half later than they’d planned; the waits at the various shops they’d actually needed to go to had been relatively short, but also excruciatingly long. Except at Ollivanders’, of course.

Several of the… girls had tried to strike up conversation at the various shops, while they waited. None of those conversations had lasted long- and, more often than not as near as he could tell, it wasn’t his fault. Only once had it been cut off by happenstance, when that girl’s… wave had continued on to the next shop on their list. That had been the shortest such conversation- but, thinking back on it, probably the only one that might have gone on for any duration, had it not been interrupted. The girl had introduced herself as ‘Diamond Tiara’, an… interesting name at the best of times.

And the way she had said ‘moms’ instead of ‘parents’ sounded… off to him.

All the others had, by his best guess, quickly formed negative opinions of him, from what he had no idea, and left by themselves.

He took a deep breath as Lucius tapped the wall to get back to the Leaky Cauldron. That Diamond Tiara girl had, despite having the shortest conversation, told him the most, albeit only with her parting statement. “Oh, I gotta go. I’ll have to ask my moms if I can stay for the party in the Cauldron, maybe catch you on your way back through. Bye!”

He had almost been able to feel Lucius sighing irritably when she said that. If there was a party there, they would probably be invited by happenstance- and be socially required to stick around and participate for at least a little. Add in the complete social no-no of disapparating directly from Diagon Alley, and they had no choice.

Draco, at least, had a little hope: That that Diamond girl would be there, and willing enough to chat in some corner to take up his time… and distract him from the strange blue-and-white-haired girl. As terrified as he was of Diamond, having a peaceful conversation with her was the least terrifying thing he could think of.

When Lucius opened the door back into the Leaky Cauldron, and Draco spied the kind of party that was going on inside, he tried very hard to look like he both knew what was waiting for him here, and was looking forward to it. He could tell that both of his parents were doing the same, and likely with more success than he- though, judging by the slight sagging of Narcissa’s shoulders, and the sudden stiffening of Lucius’ body, they weren’t having too much success either.

Both his parents quickly spotted a small cluster of social elite adults in the far corner, and started making their way over. “Go play with the others,” Narcissa urged him tonelessly, as they drew near; he had followed.

He knew what she meant, though. All those other nobles were wearing some of the most painful-looking smiles he’d ever seen- to the point that, even if he just sat at the bar ordering butterbeer and shunned the entire party, he’d have more fun than if he joined them. And of course, in telling him to ‘go play’, she was acknowledging that he actually had that option, which neither she nor Lucius had. They had to join the others, for social reasons that he understood only peripherally… and didn’t want to understand at all. Or deal with.

He quickly picked a destination- the bar, on the opposite side of the crowd as those girls in that booth; he’d spotted them on the way past, but he didn’t think that blue-and-white-haired girl noticed him.

Fortunately, for as full as the pub was, the bar itself was pretty vacant. He climbed up onto a barstool, faced the bar, and sighed to himself. He looked over towards his parents, ignoring the sound of someone taking the seat next to him. Just how long would they take?

“Okay, why the long face?”

He turned to look at the girl that had spoken, quickly schooling his face into calm disinterest. She was the one that had just taken the seat next to him, and it took him a couple seconds to place the hair.

It was Diamond Tiara, sitting on the stool such that she could lean back against the bar, and doing just that, her hands folded behind her head. It looked quite relaxing, but Draco couldn’t do that, for social reasons he didn’t understand at all. He idly wished he could do that too, as he tried to decrypt the girl’s words.

He didn’t come up with anything- she’d spoken too far outside his vocabulary. “Long face?” he asked.

The girl didn’t even bat an eye. “You look mighty unhappy,” she stated, by way of an explanation.

He blinked, and thought for a second, trying to find a way out. He couldn’t find one, so he settled for disputing it. “I do?”

She let out a laugh. “And I thought you sounded familiar in Madam Malkin’s,” she chuckled. “This is a Pinkie Party. Social restrictions like that are often more harmful than not- especially at a Pinkie Party. I mean, really.” She gestured towards where his parents were communing stiffly with the other nobles. “Those idiots are over there ‘enjoying’, quote unquote, themselves. Yet they’re probably actually having the worst times of their lives, because there’s so much here that they want to do, and can do, but don’t think they can do.” She sighed, and held out a closed fist towards him. “I was in that boat too, once.”

He looked at the fist. “Uhh…”

“Fistbump?” she offered, gesturing lightly with it.

He didn’t respond.

She dropped it. “Whatever. Cake?” She gestured out somewhere behind him.

He looked, then blinked. For a moment, there had been nobody there- then, with a blur of color, there was suddenly a girl, with blazing rainbow hair, grinning from ear to ear and holding two plates of cake, complete with cutlery.

“Thank you,” Diamond told the girl, accepting one of the plates, before turning back to him. “You want some?”

“Eh.”

The rainbow-haired girl responded. “Oh come on! It’s amazing!”

He shook his head.

The girl scowled. “Party pooper.”

A sudden blur of pink replaced the girl with a different one, this one equipped with poofy pink hair, six plates with cake and cutlery on them (which she was juggling with one hand, somehow), and a cannon. “Did someone saaaay, party pooper?” she demanded.

Diamond chuckled. “Rainbow did.” She turned back to Draco. “Seriously, this cake is to die for. Try some!”

“Well,” the pink-haired girl mused, putting a hand to her chin and looking contemplatively at the ceiling without interrupting her juggling act, “Not to die for, because you wouldn’t be able to eat it if you died, would you? Unless,” Both her hands came up to her face this time, pumping excitedly, the juggling act maintained by her knee. “Unless it was a ghost cake, now that might be to die for!”

“Ahh…”

“Don’t mind Pinkie,” Diamond chuckled. “It’s a rare day when she doesn’t confuse me at least once. Best not to think about it. But seriously, cake? Pretty sure she baked it here at the Leaky Cauldron, too.”

“Ahh… Okay,” he muttered. “I’ll- er, thank you.”

The pink-haired girl- Pinkie- had placed one of the plates of cake into his hands the moment he’d started to extend them to accept the cake. The part that amused him the most, was that the slice was utterly undamaged, the cutlery resting neatly on the side of the plate.

Just like the five others she continued juggling with an elbow.

“You’re super-duper welcome!” Then she vanished, canon, juggling act, and all.

“... What,” he uttered.

“That’s Pinkie Pie,” Diamond assured him. “Try not to think about her too much. Lyra is probably the only one whose head wouldn’t explode by trying to understand her… and that’s because she’s the one that made it possible.”

“... Oh.” He placed the cake on the bar in front of him, lifted the fork, and carved a careful piece out of it.

It was good.

Author's Notes:

A wild Malfoy appeared!

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You know, I've actually already finished writing this entire act, fully 5 more chapters, all currently available on my Patreon... and Act II is coming along nicely too; I expect to be posting the first few chapters of that to Patreon very soon.

Chapter 10

Only two owls fluttered into the Great Hall to deliver mail, and neither one went for Professor McGonagall. It was the first time in two weeks that had been true.

The sigh across all gathered was clearly audible.

“So that happened,” Dumbledore muttered.

Professor McGonagall turned to Professor Dumbledore. “Are we past the deadline?”

Dumbledore blinked, and looked down at his watch for a second. “Ahh, yes, we are.” The answering sigh of relief, from all of the other staff at once, made him smile. “So, what’s the final count?”

“Way too many for a single class,” Professor Flitwick stated.

Professor McGonagall nodded as well, brandishing her wand to summon a few dozen large scrolls. “Yes. We’ll have to count them next.”

The sun was going down outside by the time the gathered heads of house finished their work in the staffroom. They had counted the number of names on each of the scrolls the teachers had used when opening letters- and had just set the spell working on the sorting scroll. It was expected to take much of the remaining month to complete the scroll, but at least it wouldn’t require any more human intervention to fully alphabetize the names onto a single scroll.

Professor Dumbledore added the forty or so numbers together, and rechecked his work, before looking up at the rest. “It would seem we’ll be having an interesting year,” he mused.

“Oh?” Professor McGonagall asked.

“Did we get six hundred students or something?” Flitwick asked.

Dumbledore shook his head. “Twelve thousand, two hundred ninety-six. First-years.”

McGonagall blinked. “Where are we going to put roughly three thousand first-years per house? The castle might self-resize, but it doesn’t go that far.”

Snape sighed. “I hope we won’t have to deal with six thousand students in one class?”

“Definitely not,” Professor McGonagall answered promptly. “It’s too late to explain it away as a mailing error, or to delay the Hogwarts Express, so we’ll have to rearrange the schedules.” She scowled. “Though, it will be… difficult, at best, to have enough time to teach them all, even if we go for class sizes of a hundred- including upper years, which would end up with all four houses in one class.”

Flitwick winced. “We’d have, what, minimum a hundred and twenty class sessions per week?”

“That’s… impossible,” Sprout scowled. “The greenhouses won’t fit more than thirty at a time.”

“Not to mention that there aren’t a hundred and twenty waking hours in a week, weekends included,” Dumbledore sighed. “I’ll have to put a few ads in the Daily Prophet… and hope someone bites.”

Snape and Flitwick both scowled. “That…” Flitwick began.

“Sounds like a great way to invite a disaster,” Snape grumbled. Then he tilted his head. “Perhaps we could set up an extended teaching program, have our NEWT students to help with the instruction?”

McGonagall tilted her head. “Possibly. There aren’t enough of them, though- we’d have to throw in the OWL students as well. All the way down to the third years, even, and that’s still asking a lot of them.”

Dumbledore nodded slowly. “... True. Across all the required subjects, we currently have a teacher per… oh, sixty students or so, including upper years. In order to handle twelve thousand five hundred total students, we’d need… what, two hundred teachers?”

“And we can’t expect nearly as much teaching activity out of even an NEWT student,” Flitwick chimed in, “or we’d overwhelm them with their own schooling as well- and be virtually guaranteed to get a sub-par educational experience for all involved. Call it one every, oh, five students, if we go entirely on an extended teaching program.”

“Which computes to twelve hundred,” Dumbledore calculated. “And we’ve only got two hundred forty returning students- even including second years, and the ones that shouldn’t be at the head of a classroom for any reason.”

“Hmm… Well, given Professor Binns’ style, we could probably set his first-year classes in an expanded classroom, and batch them by the thousands,” McGonagall muttered. She looked up at the rest. “His classes don’t have any practical components, so he uses a lecture-and-homework method, which works fine for large numbers at once. That should help simplify things at least a little bit.”

“That leaves Charms, Transfiguration, Potions, Herbology, Astronomy, and flight lessons,” Dumbledore nodded.

McGonagall nodded as well. “Madam Hooch often complains about having too much free time- and since first years aren’t allowed their own brooms, nor on the teams, she could probably teach them in waves through the year. Twenty per class, as per normal, with twenty sessions per week, and she tells me it usually takes about three sessions for most students to catch on. Call it four hundred students every three weeks or so- and with our thirty-six-school-week year…” She scowled. “That’d only take care of forty-eight hundred students through the year. Add a few more sessions, and increase class sizes to thirty, and she will be able to get them all.” She shrugged. “The rest of us, however, have much more to teach.”

“What about Princess Twilight Sparkle?” Sprout asked suddenly.

“Pardon?” Snape asked.

“Well, she was working with Lyra- and that Equestrian Secret Service agent- to help the shopping experience go smoothly. Perhaps we could send her a letter, see how plausible an extended teaching program amongst the first-years would be? Just because, we already know at least some of our Equestrian students are already masters of their own, just… not with what we have to teach. I’d be willing to bet at least some of them will soak it up like a sponge, and be able to pass it on.”

Dumbledore nodded. “And of course, Princess Twilight Sparkle would be the only one likely to know about that kind of thing. Worth a shot.”

Snape winced. “Eh.”

“We’ll have to contact the Ministry too,” Flitwick mused. “Inform them of the… anomalous attendance count, and request additional funding. A hundred and five galleons won’t be enough to cover any one of our subjects with this many students, let alone all of them.”

Dumbledore sighed. “Yeah.”

“And none of that solves the problem of where they’ll sleep,” McGonagall scowled.

The room fell silent for a second, before Snape spoke up. “If the castle self-expansion won’t be enough, can we help it along?”

McGonagall winced. “We could, in theory, but I doubt it’d work out very easily, and we’d risk a lot of damage to the castle. Completely aside from the time required to walk across a dormitory large enough to fit three thousand students.”

“Hmm,” Dumbledore muttered. “You know how the dormitories for different years or genders in the same house all occupy the same physical space in the castle?”

McGonagall tilted her head. That was true; the ancient spellwork of the castle made excellent use of the ‘space’ the dormitories occupied, multilayering the space so that every dormitory of the entire house- across all years and both genders- technically occupied the same physical space, and was only accessible by the entrance. Even the division rooms, that the seven dormitories for each gender connected to before the stairway to the relevant common room, occupied that same physical space. “True. That spatial multilayering is theoretically limitless, so if we further subdivide the first-years by… oh, last name, then first, as many times as necessary, we should be able to set them up with traditional five-student dormitories.”

“Oh!” Flitwick squeaked. “We’ll probably want to separate the British students from the Equestrian ones. They’ll feel mighty lost if we sprinkle them throughout the Equestrians, never be able to connect with anyone in their own room.”

“For that matter,” Dumbledore mused, putting a finger to his chin, “we could take the current split between rooms, and add a door- for the Equestrians, to be subdivided like that. And have the first-years door be explicitly labeled British first-years… Or at least, non-Equestrian.”

“That… Should work,” McGonagall nodded. “We’ll want to get the spellwork started as soon as we can, to make sure it has the time to set everything up.” She sighed. “It’s entirely possible we won’t see anywhere near as even a distribution between houses in the Equestrians as we have seen in British students in the past.”

Draco Malfoy stared at the ceiling.

It was three days after that fateful shopping trip. Just that day, he’d gone out with his parents for something they couldn’t have gotten during the Hogwarts shopping rush… and he’d found himself looking for those strange girls. Not the blue-and-white-haired one Diamond had introduced to him as Lyra (and subsequently smacked, when the girl had started staring again), but all the other, totally unfamiliar ones… and Diamond herself.

He hadn’t been able to find any of them. So, lying awake in bed and staring at the ceiling, he was trying to figure out why he had felt disappointed when he hadn’t been able to find the terrifying girl.

Sure, the cake had been nice. Diamond had introduced him to Pinkie Pie, the baker, and ordered him as much butterbeer as he wanted. She’d said something about alcohol that he hadn’t understood, beyond that the ‘virgin butterbeer’ she was ordering tasted no different from the regular, and unlike the regular, he could have as much as he wanted of it without getting drunk.

She'd then taken him around the room, and introduced him to various people. And of course, the way she occasionally said it as “Po- er, people” was nothing shy of cute.

She’d introduced him to a few very important people… who all, for some reason, seemed to be coming to Hogwarts this year.

There was Princess Luna, Diarch of Equestria. Diamond had half-bowed to her, before stopping herself and apologizing. When Draco had made a full bow, Luna had explained Diamond’s odd bowing behavior, saying something about ‘on vacation from princesshood’, and how she wanted “everyp- everyone” to treat her like they would anyone else.

There was Princess Twilight Sparkle, who she introduced as a princess but didn’t treat like a princess. For some reason he never learned, Princess Twilight had mentioned wishing ponies would quit bowing to her… then blushed cherry red and clammed up. Diamond had laughed it off and changed the topic, but he couldn’t quite shake the feeling that she was doing it deliberately.

Then she’d brought him to the booth with Lyra in it. She’d introduced him to her ‘moms’, Lyra Heartstrings and Bonbon… who were both the same age as she. Then, when Lyra stared at him, she’d smacked the girl. Lyra had argued with her briefly… until Bonbon said something about ‘as bad as Spoiled’, that made all the color drain out of Lyra’s face in evident terror. When he’d asked what ‘spoiled’ she was talking about, Diamond had answered quickly.

“We don’t talk about her.”

She’d said it with such a finality that he’d had to wonder if that was how they referred to The Dark Lord, instead of ‘You Know Who’ or the like. So, he hadn’t asked.

At that same booth, she’d introduced him to two other girls, Cloudchaser and Spitfire. The latter of which, reportedly, was the captain of the ‘Wonderbolts’... which she had characterized as the Equestrian ‘Air Force’, whatever that was. He’d pretended to understand more than just that it made the girl a very dangerous girl.

He’d then been introduced to a series of lesser figures. Three mischievous-looking girls, named Scootaloo, Sweetie Belle, and Applebloom. A boy with a scowl at least twice as wide as it should have been, simply named ‘Discord’, and the shy girl with the pink hair seated next to him, Fluttershy.

Eventually, she had introduced him to another boy, seated peacefully at the side of the room and relaxing while he sipped his butterbeer, that she called her father: Filthy Rich.

If he was entirely honest with himself, that wasn’t the strangest name he’d heard that day.

The boy had definitely come from a rich family; he had that refined look to him. But, he’d also been the same age as Diamond, so couldn’t possibly have been her father. He did put on a look of amusement when she labeled him as such, and asked Diamond if she was having fun. If he was entirely honest with himself, the boy did behave more like what he would’ve expected of an adult. He didn’t ooze the noble-of-the-land that his father did, and that he was required to ooze himself, but his behaviors did put him squarely in the social elite, in the rich sector.

Then Diamond had told him that Filthy owned and operated a bank in her hometown… which, even when he asked, she wouldn’t tell him what the town was called. After that, they’d found an empty booth in the corner of the pub to chat in for the rest of the time.

There had been some interesting revelations. For instance, when he’d asked the question that had been bugging him- in his father’s voice- ever since he’d accepted the cake, she hadn’t had a clue what he was talking about with ‘blood purity’. He’d taken that as a bad sign, and purposely not jumped to conclusions as he explained the whole pureblood-versus-muggleborn thing.

She’d laughed, and informed him that she and all the rest of the Equestrians belonged to ‘none of the above’... and that, while they might have no ‘wizard blood’ in their veins as he would know it, not a single one of them had a non-magical ancestor that had lived within the last ‘few thousand years’. Reportedly, ‘nop- nobody’ knew about anything that had happened before a certain point, but they did know that at least some magic had already developed by that point… and everyone had it.

He had also heard that Twilight was the scholar of the entire town, and that if he had questions for more details, he’d have to ask her instead. He’d asked, and confirmed- she was indeed talking about Princess Twilight.

He scowled at the ceiling. So, why had he found himself hoping he’d meet that girl again, that girl that was on a first name basis with a member of her royalty? Neither he nor his father were on a first name basis with any other nobles, up to and including Minister for Magic Fudge!

Was it because she was on a first name basis with a member of her royalty, yet seemed so careless at the same time?

Author's Notes:

And now, we have a month of time between the Diagon Alley noise and the Hogwarts Express... Someone has some work to do.

And somepony made a slip of the tongue...

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By the way, earlier today, I decided I was satisfied with its direction and posted the first four chapters of Act II to my Patreon today- meaning, fully 8 chapters are available for early access to my patrons. What's more, my patronage has grown literally every month this year, so far- let's see if we can't keep that going, eh? The higher that number gets, the easier it is to stave off the depression- and the easier it is to write this story... or to translate Just Like Magic of Old to past tense... or to write any new stories. As a matter of fact, if it climbs high enough, I can quit my job... and work on my writing full-time.

Chapter 11

Hermione stared at the solid metal barrier between platforms nine and ten.

It was time. Well, it was two minutes past ten in the morning, but neither she nor her parents were fans of being anywhere close to late.

“You ready?” Emma, her mom, asked her.

She took a deep breath.

“We can come onto the station with you,” Dan, her dad, reassured. She knew that; so long as they are touching her- or any other witch or wizard- the first time they go through the barrier, they should be able to pass through it at will, just like she should be able to.

She nodded. “Yeah. I’m ready. I think.” She resisted the urge to glance up at them.

Ever since she’d opened up some of the extracurricular books she’d gotten from Flourish and Blotts, she’d been dreading the day she’d board the train to Hogwarts.

The day she’d next meet the boy Dudley’s gang liked chasing around the schoolyard. She’d seen him clearly before, knew his name- but never thought much of him.

Until she’d read Rise and Fall of the Dark Arts… and learned that he was famous. Like, the famous Harry Potter.

She dreaded meeting him, and having him condemn her for changing the color of that teacher’s wig… or for not standing up for him. Not that she could have stopped Dudley or any single one of his gang members if she tried, as she never had that fine of control over her ‘Accidental Magic’ and has always been on the weak side, physically. Besides, she had no idea how Harry survived some of the beatings Dudley had given him. She’d studied a couple of them from afar, for her research paper- the one that the teacher gave her a hundred and ten percent on- and concluded that she would have been killed several times over, had she been in his place.

It wasn’t a happy thought. She hoped- prayed- she wouldn’t have to enlist a few of the ‘Etrah’ Equestrians to protect her from him. Which, actually, she had good hopes for that- the times she’d seen, he never really fought back with any force. The blows he’d given Dudley and gang when they’d caught him, before they could pin his arms, amounted to panicked blows. And, by her math, they might’ve bruised her, had he been attacking her, but that would have been it.

Perhaps it was how he always seemed so small, almost stunted, at school? Perhaps he was undernourished, so his muscles couldn’t grow properly, leaving him understrength? Or maybe it was something he did just because, when he already knew he was screwed?

She shook her head to clear it. Something to worry about later… hopefully. “Okay. I… Can we go slowly? Just in case it doesn’t work?”

“You sure you’re ready, Hermione?” Dan asked.

“Yes, I’m sure,” she stated, and started forwards at a steady walk.

Now that she was thinking about it again, the Equestrians… had a very peculiarly named country. Did Equestria have anything to do with the Equestrian peoples she’d found in her books? Was it named after a large population of them?

She was drawing closer to the barrier, and focused her mind on it, losing speed. If it didn’t work, and she crashed into it, she didn’t want anything to go flying. She felt her parents’ comforting hands on her shoulders- and as much as she knew they needed it to make it across the barrier, she also knew they only needed the barest of touches, and were deliberately going beyond that.

She counted down the last few feet, then inches, in her mind, ready for whatever the transit would feel like… or the collision.

Then, just as suddenly as a collision would have been, the scenery around her changed.

The transition was seamless; she was just suddenly on the platform.

Both her parents were looking around, trying to reassert their location; she quickly joined them.

While the station outside had been the normal hustle and bustle of the train station, Platform Nine and Three Quarters- identified by the wrought iron archway she’d just come in through- was pandemonium. There were only a few Equestrians visible, off on one far side of the station, doing something with a couple of strange towers with what looked like chains of symbols glowing all over them. Lyra seemed to be inspecting and manipulating them with threads of golden light from her fingers, while Bonbon looked to be on the phone… which Hogwarts: A History informed her wouldn’t work at Hogwarts. She found herself briefly hoping, for their sake, that they read that as well, and leave their technology at home.

The rest of the station had what looked like fully grown witches and wizards running up and down it and shouting things at each other, in front of the train.

She stopped to look at the train, blinking a few times.

There was a scarlet steam locomotive, with its tender, with the words Hogwarts Express written on the sides.

There were nine matching scarlet passenger coaches with golden livery, the Hogwarts emblem, and so on.

Then there were dozens, hundreds, of passenger coaches coupled behind those. Some of them were a different shape, and at least one still had ‘Amtrak’ written on it, a team of wizards working quickly to turn it a plain scarlet.

And in front of the scarlet locomotive were four bright yellow diesel-electric monstrosities, ‘Union Pacific’ written across their sides, and a massive black steam locomotive at the head with its equally massive tender.

She blinked twice.

Why, exactly, was the Hogwarts Express pulled by one passenger locomotive and five freight locomotives, four of which were diesel-electric?

One of the calls going up from the wizards running back and forth down the train- interesting, it looked like they had extended the platform by quite a ways, and in a hurry at that- then caught her attention: “Ack! The first ones are here!”

“Are we… early?” Dan muttered.

One of the Equestrians trotted over- one with a teal stripe in her wavy purple hair. “Hello! Coming a bit early, I guess?”

“Er, yeah,” Dan answered the girl. “Who might you be?”

The girl blinked, looking taken aback, for about a second, before she shook it off. “Oh, sorry. I’m… used to everyone knowing who I am. The name’s Starlight Glimmer- and you would be?”

“Emma and Dan Granger,” Dan gestured to Emma. “And this is our daughter, Hermione.”

“Hermione?” She sounded mildly surprised. “Sweet!” She offered her hand for Hermione to shake. “Nice to meet you! I didn’t get to participate in any of Pinkie’s parties, but Lyra had a lot to say about you- and all good.” A sigh. “I’m almost certainly going to be a Slytherin, though, and she said there’s about no chance you’ll end up there. Regardless, let’s have a good, fun year, eh?”

Hermione grinned, and chuckled lightly, accepting the hand… and wondering which tribe Starlight belonged to. Whichever one it was, she could feel a certain strength to the girl’s hand, though it was a metered strength. So, Aether or Etrah, then. The ones with strength boost. “Nice to meet you too,” she muttered.

Then Starlight glanced over at the train. “And yeah, you’re a bit early. We asked- they normally start seeing the first few early birds in about…” She glanced at her wristwatch, which immediately demonstrated itself to be a smartwatch. “Twenty-five minutes or so.” She glanced back up at the train. “So, they’ll be ready for us to start boarding in another fifteen minutes, according to what they told us earlier.”

“... Ahh,” she muttered. “So, what’re you doing here?”

She shrugged. “Security, mostly. Lyra’s here right now, so I don’t really need to worry about it- but it’s my job to keep people off her stuff while she’s at the other side.”

“So, what is she doing?”

“Mm?” She turned back to the odd pillars, and grinned. “She and Twilight are one-upping old Starswirl the Bearded, and building a portal that Equestrians can walk through to get from our base directly to this station. And only Equestrians- any non-Equestrians that tried passing would simply get wet, since they’re making the portal surface out of water.” She shrugged. “The concept build in their backyards last week worked flawlessly, so they’ve been working on this much bigger one. At this point, she’s just pentuple-checking her work here, while Twilight gets the other end. I think she’s doing it mostly just to make Twilight happy- with her perfect recall, she doesn’t need to look it over again to be sure it’s perfect.” She grinned. “And- don’t tell Twilight- she gave it a trial run last night, it’s already confirmed to be working nicely.”

“Okay.” She looked up at the train. “Do you know why there’s so many freight locomotives on a passenger train?”

Starlight grinned. “Yep! That’s because that’s how many they needed to pull the number of cars they had to tack onto that thing in order to fit twelve and a half thousand students.” She snorted. “Speaking of which, the train is about four and a half miles long, if you happen to fancy walking from one end to the other. We’ve arranged for a magic-based speed-travel, so the Equestrians can take all the trailing cars, and the non-Equestrians can take the lead cars. Feel free to mix, if you like, but that way everyone can get onto the train in a reasonable amount of time.”

“Ahh,” she muttered. “I…” She looked at the train again. “... Did they run out of space or something?”

Starlight chuckled. “Heh heh, you could say, yes. Thing is, because Lyra opened the gateway from Equestria to your world a couple months back, Hogwarts’ attendance lists changed rather dramatically. I understand they normally only have about three hundred students at the school each year, and this year, we’ve boosted that count by at least forty times. Speaking of which…” She turned back to the other Equestrians, and called out to them. “Lyra!”

Lyra looked up from the tower thing, wearing an expression of immense boredom that vanished in an instant, before she came jogging over. “Oh, hey, Hermione! Yes, Starlight?”

Starlight grinned. “Well, I just told her about Hogwarts’ attendance anomaly, and I believe you had something you wanted to ask?”

Lyra grinned. “Yep! How much did you cover?”

“Just the general information, really.”

“Hmm,” Lyra muttered, looking at Hermione for a second, before dropping her hand back down from her chin. “Well, Hermione, you know about how massively we’ve overloaded Hogwarts this year, right?”

“Uhh,” she muttered. “She said attendance went up by at least forty times?”

Lyra nodded. “Yeah, thereabouts. We don’t know the exact number, because we don’t have attendance counts for non-Equestrian students, but…” She shrugged. “Anyways, we’ve been in contact with Hogwarts over the last month. They haven’t been able to hire any additional teachers- and expecting the teachers they have to manage all of us would be expecting the impossible of them- there just aren’t enough hours in a week, even if food, sleep, homework grading, and so on all took no time at all.”

Hermione blinked. “Then…”

Dan tilted his head. “Does that mean they’ll be dropping students?”

Lyra smiled, and shook her head. “No- that’s what we’ve been working with them about. Many of our Equestrian students are already masters in their own right- and even of the ones that aren’t, many of us will pick up new material virtually instantly, and/or be gifted in that particular material. So, we’ve set up an extended teaching program with the Hogwarts staff, so they only need to teach one class, and we’ll handle the rest, passing on the lessons we receive to our peers, such that everyone gets a good education out of it.

“Of course, in an effort to expand the talent pool, among other things, we haven’t restricted that search to Equestrians. We haven’t been able to interact very much with very many of the non-Equestrian students, but of the ones we have been able to meet, we’ve been able to identify two that would be good matches for that program.”

“Uhh…” Dan muttered.

“Are you telling me…?” Hermione muttered.

“That you’re one of those two? Yes. It’s completely optional, don’t worry- and you wouldn’t be alone at the head of that classroom, either. You’d have at least one other student-teacher with you, to help cover any deficiencies and provide a quality learning experience for all involved.” She shrugged. “And a crash course with some of our finest before your first class, so you would at least know what to expect.”

“So… what happens if I say yes?”

Lyra shrugged. “Then you’re on the list. I can’t guarantee anything until after the sorting ceremony, but I can say that if you say yes, you will most likely be tapped for such a role. If you say no, I can guarantee you won’t. And the deadline for that decision would be bedtime tonight, if you want to think on it a bit first. I’m sorry I wasn’t able to reach out to you sooner- we only finalized the agreement with the school late last night.”

She could almost feel her parents raising their eyebrows; they know her.

“No, no,” she began. “I’ll do it. I was just surprised.” She looked up at her parents, who were smiling down at her. “I’m going to have a good year.”

Author's Notes:

Well hey, I'm not late this time.

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Chapter 12

Hermione glanced at the clock, standing nervously on the step into the train car. Unless she had missed him or the massive clock over the entrance archway was off, Harry had about eight minutes left to board the train, and hadn’t entered the station yet at all. She glanced sideways at the Equestrians' portal, just as it finished spewing hypervelocity students down the station, and Lyra started shutting it down.

Watching her power it up had been… entertaining. Had she understood a single thing about what all those light patterns were doing, she might’ve called it educational as well, but she hadn’t.

First, between the two pillars, a film of energy was formed. She’d expected that to become the portal surface, but quickly found out that it wasn’t, as Lyra pumped water into it… and that water flowed up effortlessly into a six-foot-tall sheet a millimeter thick and at least fifty feet across. Then, energy waves had battled across the surface of the water, coming from the two pillars, until they formed a dense layer of vibrantly glowing energy overtop the water… and finally cleared, to show the Equestrians on the other side. The Equestrians that then stepped through the opened portal.

Shutting it down appeared to be much simpler. The portal seemed to shimmer and twist as it slowly collapsed away from the pillars, which had gone mostly dark. Eventually, it vanished completely and Lyra, apparently satisfied, turned to walk away, the energy film holding the water in place simply vanishing… leaving the station platform to get a little wet.

She turned to look back at the station entrance just in time for someone to appear, walking briskly. Her breath caught for only a half-second, though, before the red hair registered. Not Harry, then. Funny, he must not be the only one running late… unless, of course, she missed him.

She continued to watch eagerly. The portal was silent for almost thirty seconds… then a much smaller boy with a mop of messy black hair exploded through it at a dead run.

She recognized him from across the entire station.

That was Harry.

She looked up at the clock. He was okay- according to the clock, he still had six minutes to board.

She watched him look around, stop running, and stare at the train.

She jumped off to run over to him, and stopped several feet away. “H… Harry?”

He looked at her. “Yes…?”

“I’m sorry.”

He blinked. “Come again?”

She took a deep breath. “I- I’m sorry about that teacher’s wig. And that I never even tried to stop Dudley.”

Harry blinked a few times, staring at her, before letting out a laugh. “Nah, don’t worry about it. The Dursleys would just have found something else to lock me in my cupboard for, and if you’d interfered with Dudley, you’d just have gotten beat up alongside me.” He shrugged. “Or had to explain to your parents how you got on top of the chimney.”

She shrugged. “That would’ve been easy.” She’d just have explained it away as one of the random things she hadn’t yet gained control of, and they would have accepted it.

He snorted. “I wish.”

The sudden movement of the minute hand on the clock caught her attention, and she looked up at it. “We have three minutes to get on the train.”

Harry blinked. “Right.” He put his weight behind his trolley once again, pushing it towards the train. “Wait, where’s your luggage?”

She blushed. “It’s, ahh, already on the train, actually. Would… Would you like to join me?”

He shrugged, completely oblivious to her continued reddening. “Sure.”

Then Lyra trotted up next to them, as they reached the door into the train. “Oh, hi Harry!”

Harry jumped, turning to look at her. “Oh. Hi Lyra.”

Lyra blinked. “Uh, by the way, that envelope can also forewarn you of people approaching from behind- it’s omnidirectional, if you want it to be. Um… Would you like some help?” Hermione had just made a huge heave on the end of the trunk, trying to lift it up the step, but she couldn’t get it to budge.

“Uh- Yes, please,” Harry answered.

The trunk promptly glowed faintly golden and floated into the air. Hermione gasped in surprise, and fell over backwards, into the train car. She scrambled back to her feet, thankful that she had elected to wear jeans under her Hogwarts robes for the first few days at least, rather than the skirts that the girls were rather unsubtly urged to wear. “Oof… Um, a little warning next time?” She looked at Lyra.

Lyra winced. “Sorry about that. It’s just… Well, I’m a Raeth. It’s what we do.”

With Lyra’s help, it took only a matter of seconds to get Harry’s trunk stowed in Hermione’s compartment as well, then Lyra closed the compartment door, and sighed. “Well then. Harry, I have something to ask you.”

Hermione blinked. “Wait. You mean- is he- ?”

Lyra nodded.

“Oh.” She blushed, and busied herself with looking out the window. A whistle blew, almost instantly drowned out by the noise of the diesel-electric locomotives’ air horns.

Lyra then explained the teaching thing to Harry, and asked if he wanted to participate. Hermione kept watch on the second hand of the clock on the top of the archway.

“... You really think I’d be able to do that?” Harry asked. “I haven’t… studied, or anything.”

Lyra shrugged. “So? Neither have any of the rest of us. This isn’t about how much you know already, but how much you can learn and pass on. Which is quite a lot. Interested, or no?”

He shrugged. “Why not? Yeah, I’ll do it.”

“Oh-kay,” Lyra smiled, rising to her feet. “Thank you! Now, Bonbon’s going to be expecting me about fifteen cars down the train, so-!”

“Wait,” Hermione said suddenly, snagging the girl’s wrist with one hand.

“Mm?”

“The… Equestrian nation. Equestria. It doesn’t happen to be related to the Equestrian peoples, does it?”

Lyra tilted her head confusedly, then nodded in sudden recognition. “Right, yes. Er, to answer your question, no, there is no relationship whatsoever. I mean, we have centaurs, griffins, hippogriffs, and so on on our side as well, but they’re very different from the ones you have here.”

“Ahh.”

“Well then,” Lyra continued. “If you don’t have any more questions…? Whelp, I’m off.” She bowed, and closed the door.

Hermione took a deep breath. “Sooo…”

“So that happened,” Harry muttered- and paused, briefly, when the train began to move. “How was… magical life?”

She let out a snort. “I’m not a very good sample for that. For one, I’m muggleborn- and for two, my… ‘accidental magic’ was very potent from very early on, to the point where I’ve learned to control a few little bits of it. Weird, mostly random bits, of course- like, I can start the microwave without touching it, but it doesn’t work with the oven. So… I had a bit of a weird childhood. Then Professor McGonagall showed up, and I found out I was a witch.” She looked up at him. “Earlier, Lyra said something about an ‘envelope’... If you don’t mind me asking, what envelope?”

He blinked. “Oh, that. About a month ago, she stopped me in the Leaky Caldron to tell me about some kind of ‘love envelope’ that I have… apparently. Still don’t understand any of it- and she tells me I can use it to learn people’s names without asking.” He shrugged. “I’ve tried. All I’ve been able to get, though, was what mood someone is in- not particularly useful, since Dudley flees in terror every time I enter the room, ever since Hagrid came.”

She blinked. “... Huh.”

Draco Malfoy knew that his father would disapprove of what he was doing to Crabbe and Goyle.

They didn’t realize anything was off, of course. Why would they? They were about as perceptive as brick walls! So, fully aware of the number of cars the Hogwarts Express normally had, he had started his search for Mr. Harry Potter in the tenth car and progressed towards the back of the train… such that he was virtually certain the boy was behind him. The two cronies fully believed that he was making a thorough search of the train, and hadn’t skipped nine entire cars. He’d only had to mumble some gobbledegook about ‘sensor nets’ and ‘extra cars’ and he could be sure they couldn’t catch his folly if they tried.

Of course, he wasn’t really looking for Harry. He was not looking forward to being forced, for ‘social reasons’ he didn’t understand, to abduct the boy into his way of life- the way of life he despised with every little bit of his being.

Instead, he was looking for that Diamond Tiara girl… and praying that four and a half miles would be enough cars to take up the entire journey with ‘searching’ for the boy.

Assuming, of course, that Diamond Tiara doesn’t think of some clever way to ditch his bodyguards for him.

Exactly as expected, he’d encountered almost exclusively Equestrians… and Gryffindors. The only exception, after the first car at least, was a first year, and one that he rather suspected would be a Gryffindor at that.

He was in car number twelve- the third car of his search- when he heard a voice behind him, that made him cringe.

“Malfoy?” It was the voice of Lyra Heartstrings, sounding surprised.

He turned, hoping, praying Diamond was with her.

She was alone. And Crabbe and Goyle were cracking their knuckles, so she was standing in what could only be a ready stance, her face showing a calculated nonexpression as she watched them.

It was terrifying.

He stepped between them, purposely putting himself between them and her. They were too thick to not start a fight if he didn’t preempt it.

She regarded him for a second, then them for another second, before relaxing her stance and expression. “... Huh. Are those two always like that?” She sounded disgusted.

He nodded minutely. If only she knew. “What?”

She wrinkled her nose. “Ew. Anyways, what brings you back this far on the train?”

He nearly winced. “Looking for Harry Potter.” He glared briefly in Crabbe’s direction without turning his head; neither of the two will have seen it, but Lyra will have.

He saw her eyes narrow briefly, and her answering minute nod, before she put her hand to her chin. “Hmm, I don’t know. I’ve been looking for him too, but he doesn’t seem to be anywhere I check. Think he mighta gotten left behind? I know I didn’t see him come through the gateway onto the platform, so… Maybe the muggles didn’t let him near the station?”

He blinked. He had seen her out the window earlier, talking to Harry, before he’d disappeared from view; neither Crabbe nor Goyle had seen. Yet, had he not seen that, her performance was completely convincing. Was she good at that kind of thing? “You mean he’s not coming to Hogwarts?” He messed up the tone a little bit, but got it mostly okay.

She laughed. “Oh, no, he’s coming alright, I’m sure Dumbledore will make sure of that, probably send Hagrid to his house again… or visit in person, possibly. He just wouldn’t be coming on the train in that case. Bit of a disappointment, isn’t it?”

He blinked. She was really good at that- he’d be willing to bet even his father would be convinced! “... Yeah.”

She sighed, shaking her head. “Anyways, I know Diamond was looking for you earlier, said something about ‘good conversation with someone less destructive than the Crusaders’.”

“Less-!?” he began, eyes going wide.

She chuckled. “Don’t worry, just about everyone fits that description. She’s just not a people person, though, so it’s pretty rare for her to find someone she can connect to. Like you, apparently. I think she was staring out the window in the second compartment down in car twenty-one, if you wanted to go chat with her.” She grinned, glancing at Crabbe and Goyle. “And your cronies had better watch out with her, because unlike me, she’s an Etrah.” She abruptly pushed past Crabbe, and trotted down the passage before he could recover. “Have a good train ride, whatever you do!”

Author's Notes:

And then, they're on their way to Hogwarts. About time, isn't it?

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Chapter 13

It had been a very long time since Draco could truthfully say that he had been even remotely happy, so it surprised him when he realized that much of the train ride to Hogwarts qualified as just that.

Lyra had given him the perfect excuse to abandon his search for Harry. Then, when he reached the compartment she’d mentioned, Diamond had turned out to be alone- and given him the perfect excuse to ditch Crabbe and Goyle.

Well, if he could call batting them away with flicks of her wrist when they tried to attack her an ‘excuse’. In the process, she’d made him instantly glad he was on her good side; when Crabbe had tried to punch her for some reason even he couldn’t figure out, she’d flicked it aside, stretched out her hand, and flicked her wrist against his chest… to throw him down on the ground.

She wasn’t just strong, she was scary strong.

After she’d dealt with Goyle in a similar manner, he’d then accompanied her out of the compartment while they were still dazed on the seats. She’d led him some four or five cars down the train to another empty compartment, which the two blundering idiots had never found… and they’d chatted for the entire train ride.

He’d fully relaxed in the compartment, once Diamond had locked the door. He’d laid down across the seat, spoken freely… and genuinely enjoyed himself.

Too bad it couldn’t last.

So of course, with no idea where Crabbe and Goyle had gotten to, he had gotten off with her… and resumed his ‘noble’ persona. Diamond didn’t like it, and if he was honest with himself, neither did he, but he didn’t have much choice, because of reasons he didn’t understand.

Of course, getting off the train at the 30th car meant a few things, and one was very important: He was in the middle of the Equestrians. He stayed with Diamond, who would make easily a hundred times better of a bodyguard than both Crabbe and Goyle put together… which had an extra side effect.

When twelve thousand first-years followed Hagrid down to the lake, all the British students got in the boats… but all the boats were full by the time Diamond and Draco reached the lake, so he ended up doing exactly what the Equestrians were doing: Walking on water. Should anyone ask, he would later vehemently deny having held onto Diamond’s arm for dear life while he slid across the lake on nothing more than a wisp of bluish light.

It certainly didn’t comfort him that Diamond seemed uneasy about sliding across the lake like that too- but at least she didn’t seem afraid, just uncertain.

When they landed at the underground harbor, Diamond took a deep breath, let it out, and turned to him. “You okay?”

He, having taken the same time to reassert himself, nodded. “Yes. What about you?”

She sighed. “I’m alright. Sorry about that- as an Etrah, I’m used to having my h-feet planted on solid ground. Standing on mere magic like that is something only the Aethrs would be familiar with… and even then, that wasn’t the kind of magic they’d normally stand on.” She glanced back towards the harbor as they climbed the stairs away from it; more Equestrians were still arriving at it as the first-years streamed up the steps. “The way I hear it, Sunset bullied the air into accepting some derivative of that magic, that let us walk on empty air- something even the Aethrs can’t normally do.” She shuddered. “I hope that’s the only time I ever have to ‘air-skate’ across a lake.”

He nodded honestly. “Me too.” Judging by the noises from around him, most of the Equestrians were of the same mind. Air-skating across a lake was scary business.

Diamond kept him company all the way up to the main front doors of the castle, and inside as well, where the teacher that answered the door left them in a rather large room off the side of the entrance hall, and told them to ‘smarten themselves up’ for the sorting.

“How do they sort us…?” Draco asked Diamond quietly.

She shrugged. “No idea. I understand the scholars among us searched long and hard for that, but couldn’t find it- almost like it’s some kind of secret. But it can’t be all that hard if everyone- including Crabbe and Goyle- can be expected to go through it successfully.”

“Point.”

Hermione wasn’t sure what to think.

She, along with the rest of the first-years, had been brought to this room pending their sorting. Through all her research, while she’d been able to find six conflicting accounts on the Slytherin House, she hadn’t been able to find a single note on what the sorting was. The part that had amused her the most was that she’d found no less than three conflicting accounts for each of the other houses… but one of the three invariably had three more that agreed with it, and happened to be the one that Lyra’s account agreed with. Perhaps that’s how Lyra got her info on them?

Then again, could those agreeing accounts be trusted?

Could anything she read in the wizarding world be trusted?

She’d tried to find other sources on what the sorting would be like- but the few Equestrians she’d asked back on the station had just shrugged and used variations on the ‘find out when we get there’ theme. Of course, when two redheaded boys had peeked into her compartment looking for Harry, she’d noticed how Harry seemed a little uneasy- and denied having seen him. They didn’t recognize him, and were about to go, when she stopped them- they were upper years- to ask about the sorting.

One said something about wrestling a troll, while the other said it hurt a lot.

Given that all the accounts in her books tended to agree that trolls were massive and dangerous, and required multiple trained wizards to take down, she rather doubted that was the case. And since the two boys had nodded in response to each other, she’d immediately begun to suspect that they were trying to be funny, and let them go, internally labelling their suggestions as very likely false.

Her ride- and conversation- with Harry had gone uninterrupted from that point to arrival, with the sole exception of the snack trolley they’d bought some of everything from… and when she stepped out of the compartment to let Harry change into his school robes, of course; she’d changed before he ever arrived at the station.

He hadn’t had a clue what to expect, either. He’d voiced that he thought he’d be at the bottom of the class- and, while she fully expected to be at the top of class herself (as she usually was), she had immediately disagreed. She didn’t know where he could expect to be in the class lineup, but she had assured him that some people knew even less about their magic before they went, and still came out in the top of class. She’d even surmised that some of the wizarding students might be at a disadvantage, because they might have to un-learn something they learned incorrectly from their parents!

Then, that teacher- presumably- had brought them in here, told everyone to “smarten yourselves up”, and disappeared to prepare. What was going on? Were they going to test how much they’d studied already, and put those that could already do magic in Ravenclaw? Were they going to unleash a troll, and put those that didn’t run screaming in Gryffindor? Were they going to make them stand and wait, and put the ones that didn’t check the time during the first ten minutes in Hufflepuff? Were they going to… She couldn’t think of anything for Slytherin off the top of her head.

But wait- she’d also said, ‘sorting ceremony’. Sorting ceremony. Not ‘test’, not ‘trial’. Not even a simple ‘sorting’. Specifically a ceremony.

And anyone could go through any part of a ceremony. Those were all just acting anyways.

So what in the world could it be?

Very suddenly, something happened- the door opened. That teacher was back.

It was time to be sorted.

It was time to find out what it was all about.

Author's Notes:

Yeah, I'll admit, I liked the whole scared-of-nothing scene from canon, so it got rewritten from someone else's POV... I didn't realize I could draw it out that much without the ghosts!

Patreon, Discord.

On the other hand, the accelerated publication schedule starts today... And I should be able to deliver, so long as I remember to push 'publish' each day. I've already done all the heavy lifting.

Chapter 14

“Abacus, Golden.”

The Sorting Hat watched amusedly as the first years shuffled about, as the first one this year- and with a strange name, to boot- worked their way forward. There looked to be about twelve thousand, two hundred ninety… six of them, by her quick count. And of course, she hadn’t missed the immensely powerful and unfamiliar spellwork that had gone up over the entire Great Hall immediately after Minerva gave them their instructions.

Nor the much more subtle, and equally unfamiliar, spell that had blanketed all of the first-years before they had finished entering the room. Of course, anyone and anything that wasn’t as sensitive as she, including the esteemed Albus Dumbledore, wouldn’t have a clue they were there, but she didn’t particularly care. It didn’t seem hostile, to the school or otherwise.

Golden Abacus made it out of the crowd, and turned out to be a girl, with brilliantly red hair, and a lot of energy. The girl tipped her in salute to the four houses before putting her on; she was sorely tempted to call the girl out as a Gryffindor before she even landed on her head.

When she did land, she got…

… nothing. That more subtle spell was blocking her normal access, but it wasn’t sourced from this girl. She couldn’t tell where it was sourced from- and started contemplating on how to communicate the issue.

Then, very suddenly, that subtle spell shifted, ever so slightly, and she had access.

If she’d had a jaw, in the normal sense, it would have fallen to the floor under Golden’s feet. She most certainly wasn’t a normal first-year- as a matter of fact, she wasn’t even human.

The girl was, in fact, twenty three years old… and a gold-colored pegasus, with an abacus as her ‘Cutie Mark’, whatever that was.

And of course, when that spell had shifted to give her access, a message had preceded the flow from the girl’s mind, placed no doubt by the spellcaster. Do not reveal what you find.

Which posed no problem, because she only read peoples’- and ponies’, apparently- minds in order to sort them… and never shared anything she found in anyone’s- or anypony’s- mind with anyone- or anypony- else.

There was something rather indisputable about the girl’s mind, though, right from the start.

She was a…

“GRYFFINDOR!”

Besides, she had over twelve thousand more Equestrians to look at. She didn’t need to spend too much time examining their civilization through the eyes of one… and could always recall it later, thanks to her photographic memory.

“Abbot, Hannah.”

That name sounded human, compared to the names she’d found in little-old Golden Abacus’ mind. And, true to the name, the girl turned out to be a regular British human.

“HUFFLEPUFF!”

Her next surprise came when she landed on the head of the girl that had responded to “Bonbon”. The girl had approached in a manner that had made her wonder if she’d be a Slytherin, then…

To find out she was actually a thirty-five-year-old earth pony was completely unsurprising. She’d come to expect that kind of thing from the Equestrians by that point.

The real surprise was that the girl was not just a member but one of the absolute finest amongst a secret Equestrian government organization termed the ‘Royal Intelligence Agency’... or, simply, the ‘Agency’.

She was a trained spy, monster hunter, and so on. She could crumple steel in her bare hands, without breaking a sweat. She could stop a train with a one-hoofed kick- even Applejack, the apple farmer that harvested apples by kicking trees, couldn’t do anything like that.

This girl wasn’t dangerous. Her hooves, now hands and feet, were weapons of mass destruction. Her eyes and ears were the most powerful- and undetectable- scrying spells there were.

She was a force of nature.

She also already knew her mind would be read. Her friend Lyra Heartstrings had told her, via… telepathy? Very few first-years knew how to do that!

“You’re not going to tell anyone, right?” the girl asked.

“I will not,” she answered. “The contents of your mind are yours and yours alone.”

She was on the edge of trying for an agreement with the girl- to reduce the potential danger to the school- when she realized what mission the seasoned fighter was on.

Her mission… was to keep her fellow Equestrians safe as a first priority, but the second priority was to help the school year go smoothly. Which, the girl understood, meant minimizing destruction.

There was a lot of cold logic in those orders, and in how she had understood them… but she had to conclude that, powerful though she may be, this girl was not a danger to the school. Then…

Sorting her was easy enough. She wasn’t brave, so much as fearless. She believed in honesty, but had absolutely no issue with hiding the truth for the greater good- which reminded her of someone a very long time ago. And she didn’t seek knowledge, so much as she sought the ability to perform her part.

But it was only thanks to her expert leadership that the Equestrians had managed to get all their stuff on time. She had created and used resources most wouldn’t even have thought of, and would always complete her mission on schedule, no matter what. She was the very best there was by a fairly large margin, but still sought to become better- and had identified for herself many points in which she could still improve.

Oh, and she was all that at the very young age of thirty-five. Apparently, Equestrians normally lived for as long as four hundred years.

Perhaps more so than old Salazar himself, this girl was very definitely…

“SLYTHERIN!”

When Professor McGonagall called the name “Discord”, she had a very… peculiar experience.

The boy did his best to break the timeline, using his very unique magic, because he apparently wanted to be sorted instantly, and without ever touching the hat.

She agreed whole-heartedly that such a sorting would fall perfectly in line with who he was, and help him get started on his life’s mission of sowing harmless chaos.

Well, as much as an immortal draconequus that was born alongside the magic of his homeworld at least eighty thousand years ago could have a life’s mission. As a matter of fact, as she dug a little deeper, she found that he hadn’t been born alongside that magic, and also technically wasn’t alive- he was the avatar of that magic.

Fairly rare she got to sort one of those.

It was certainly a novel experience. He had all the information she could need right up front for her to look at, and decide.

“Making chaos already, eh?” she muttered.

He grinned. “Yep. Figured I could get started with being sorted without wearing the hat. Any other ideas?”

She chuckled. That was true, he wasn’t satisfied with only his hat trick. “Hmm… I know a lot of people like whistling while they work here- perhaps you could whistle something that can’t normally be whistled?”

“Oooh, I like that one! I could whistle Bethoven’s Fifth! … No, that’s too close to possibility. An orchestra? Nah, too far out- it’d just pass over their heads. Hmm…”

“How about a drum solo?”

He snapped a talon, despite not having any in his current human form. “Ah-HAH, thank you! That’ll be perfect!”

She chuckled. “Alright then. SLYTHERIN!” Time unfroze for the final word… and everyone, including the staff, turned to stare at her. True to his plan, he hadn’t moved yet- and she was still sitting on the stool.

“What?” she asked, moving as if looking around the hall. She didn’t normally need to, as her ‘vision’ was already omnidirectional.

Discord stepped out of the crowd, passing straight through a couple other students to do so, and leaving them completely unphased- they were Equestrians, and probably expected something of the sort. “Well, that was easy.” He then headed for the Slytherin table, whistling an upbeat drum solo.

Lyra Heartstrings was easily the most… interesting Equestrian. All of the instructors were staring at the girl. And, when she landed on the girl’s head, she had a massive, active spell to weave her way past before she could reach the girl’s mind… and instantly understood why everyone was staring.

This was the girl that had been first through the Gate, and been the first Equestrian representative.

She found quite a bit more of interest, too. For example, this girl was the source of the anti-legilimency spell (which the girl thought of as a ‘mental defense spell’, and the reason there was a hole in said spell calibrated specifically for her. She was also one of several maintaining the massive, complex spell covering the Hall. This spell- actively maintained by Lyra, Twilight Sparkle, Starlight Glimmer, Sunset Shimmer, and Princess Luna- was a very powerful time manipulation spell intended to allow the sorting to proceed as normal… and yet take exactly ten minutes. And of course, for every participant to also experience it as just ten minutes.

Something she whole-heartedly approved of, despite not having a heart. Without it, it would take days- literally- to sort them all. With it, it would only take ten minutes… and nobody would notice.

Completely aside from her magical prowess, which offered her a future in Slytherin, the girl also had perfect recall- she literally couldn’t forget. Very rare, those, and almost always Gryffindors.

Not to be outdone, Lyra was the embodiment of the perfect Gryffindor. Mad scientist, always experimenting, exploring, and seeking new, strange things to play with… Specifically play with. And of course, she also had that disdain for rules that any Gryffindor carried.

At least safety was her number one priority, unlike a certain other almost-certainly-Ravenclaw mad scientist the girl could name, making her uniquely powerful- and potentially destructive- perspective rather less of a danger to the school and those in it than a toad. It amused her to consider just how differently the instructors would answer that, as this ‘Papa Tango’ she was working on, with a ‘test subject’ already selected, promised to be one of the most powerful magics ever used on Hogwarts grounds.

“GRYFFINDOR!”

Author's Notes:

I thought I'd try something new for the sorting.

As you can (probably) tell, new headcanon for Discord!

And thus concludes the First Act of On the Implications of Parallel Worlds. Look out for Act Two, coming tomorrow!

Patreon, Discord.

So, my computer components arrived yesterday afternoon. Well... most of them. Got the CPU, cooler, new main drive... and memory. Motherboard- required to use the first three- hasn't shipped yet, I'll probably contact them and ask what's up with it. Plugged the new memory, decided to try gaming...

Turns out a seven-year-old Celeron processor is no good for gaming, no matter the machine's graphics or memory specs. Darn.

Chapter 15

Albus Dumbledore couldn’t count the number of things that had gone wrong… and he knew exactly what he should have done to head it off.

He should have halted the distribution of first-year letters to the Equestrians as soon as the first ones came in, had follow-up letters sent to them to explain it away as a mailing error, and gone through the process to remove them from the attendance lists.

That would have stopped the entire disaster.

It had started when the Equestrians came. He and his staff had already committed themselves to accept them all by the time they realized how many there would be- how much trouble it would cause.

In the commotion of getting them in, he’d completely missed a number of important signs- and been unable to devote his attention to others. His plan was already going off the rails.

For one, Harry had apparently already received his first magic lesson… from an Equestrian. Something Hagrid hadn’t understood. And of course, when Hagrid had reported it, it was a side note- so, not something that got his attention.

It should have. It was very important, as he wouldn’t be able to guide the boy to his destiny nearly as easily, without more preparation… that he had been too late for. Nevermind the number of very strange variables the Equestrians were introducing to mess up his well-laid plans.

For two, the Weasleys had never met him. The twins were supposed to send him a signal after they found him on the train- but they never did. As a matter of fact, they’d sent him the opposite one, to express difficulty in locating him. Probably because of how many cars they’d had to add to the Hogwarts Express at the last minute. He was honestly surprised that all of the Equestrians- and British students as well- were able to board the train within the time allotted.

And then… He wasn’t sure exactly what came next, as the massive workload he’d had since the letters started coming in had combined with the Equestrians’ strangeness- he’d tried visiting the Leaky Cauldron to meet them, but, by the time he got there, they’d already moved on - to make the entire world impossible to predict.

There was one thing that went right, though: The Philosopher’s Stone had been rescued from Gringotts on schedule, and Voldemort had failed to acquire it in his infiltration of the same.

At least Princess Twilight had known her Equestrians, and had been more than willing to set up an extended teaching program with them, so their education shouldn’t interfere too badly with Harry’s.

He blinked, and shuffled quickly through the thousands of pages littering his desk. He found the page he was looking for after a couple of seconds, scanned it again. It was his copy of the final agreement they’d made with Princess Twilight.

He groaned, slumping down in his chair.

It was in the wording. He and his instructors had set the extended teaching program up for all of the first years, not just the Equestrians. Meaning, Twilight could source her instructors from the British students, if she saw fit… and she could also put British students into her extended classes.

Which meant, in the end, that he had no control over Harry’s education whatsoever.

“Why?” he muttered. “Why did this have to happen now, of all times?”

And of course, when he’d tried his passive mindscan on the Equestrians to try and get an idea for how they would react at dinner… he’d been blocked. By every single one of them. Mere seconds before he’d been blocked out of the British first-years as well… including Harry, who he had only just spotted.

Meaning, he had no idea what the Equestrians taught him… nor what he had experienced on the train. He couldn’t provide his more subtle touch of guidance, and would be forced into more overt, less reliable methods.

And, he knew, if he asked for a copy of Harry’s class schedule, Minerva would refuse, and hound on him for manipulating people again. He’ll have to get a copy of all the schedules… which may or may not be very easy, as it likely varies widely on a per-student basis.

So he’d have to get the class schedules, that told when what class would take place where, and who would be in it. He’d have to sift through those to find the ones that Harry was in…

It’d take several hours. At best.

He wished he could scream in rage the way Voldemort would have.

Professor McGonagall’s morning wasn’t much better, though for a very different reason. She hadn’t had plans spoiled on her, but she had had Lyra Heartstrings and Princess Twilight- her first time meeting the latter of the two- approach her after the welcome feast the previous night. They’d asked for one-night-only, overnight access to a space large enough for about fifty people to meet simultaneously, without interruption.

She’d granted it, on the stipulation that she herself would be present for the meeting, and would accompany them back to bed when the time came- the latter requirement mostly just to keep Filch off their tails.

Their meeting had taken place in the Great Hall.

They had needed to know when and where the classes for their student instructors would be- and when which rooms in the castle would be otherwise occupied.

They had Equestrian students from all four houses, and no British students.

Their meeting had taken almost thirty-six hours- which had been crammed into a single night thanks only to an Equestrian named ‘Starlight Glimmer’ who had a very powerful time dilation spell. When she’d asked why they were coming to Hogwarts if they could already do that, Twilight had shrugged, and informed her that British wizards, as far as they knew, were completely incapable of that spell. They apparently wanted to learn the common wizarding magic because it undoubtedly had some things they could use for their magic… and of course, once they learned it, they could combine it with Equestrian principles to advance British magic as well.

They had spent those hours going over the lists of the first years, and details about their personalities and aptitudes. They had very carefully assigned their instructors and students, then planned out the class times and locations, including their one-time crash courses for their instructors, and finally assembled everyone’s schedules. About an hour in, Bonbon had appeared, given Lyra something she hadn’t seen, and helped out as if she’d been there from the start. Lyra had then rolled her eyes and vanished for a few minutes.

She had taken the job of distributing the class schedules at breakfast, as per usual- and, though she’d conscribed the help of the other Heads of House, three thousand class schedules was nothing to sneeze at.

Then she’d had to have her own breakfast… and head upstairs to prepare for her third-year morning transfiguration class.

She was exhausted, but she couldn’t let it show.

Hermione Granger also had a very busy morning. Last night, once everyone reached the common room, Lyra had appeared to confirm her interest in their extended teaching program… and explain it more. She’d asked why it hadn’t been explained before.

“Well, on the train, we didn’t know who would end up in which house, and there was only so much planning we could do at that point. For example, if you’d turned out to be a Ravenclaw, I wouldn’t be here- and neither would Moondancer, who is doing this for the Ravenclaw student instructors. Because there are enough experienced instructors amongst the Ravenclaws that their skill and experience would outweigh your interest etcetera.

“Then, of course, even given that you landed in Gryffindor, there were four different subjects we might’ve offered you, depending on who else landed in Gryffindor.

“With the Sorting that happened, we’ve got an opening in Charms if you want it.”

“Uh, yes?” she’d asked, like it was a foregone conclusion.

Lyra had smiled. “I like the enthusiasm. But before you make your decision final, there’s something you need to know.

“On the train, I mentioned a quick ‘crash course’ to prepare you for the role. What I did not mention is that it’ll be about half an hour long on the outside, but we’ve TARDIS-ed the rooms we’ll be using for them, so it’ll be longer on the inside. You can expect it to take around four hours… then have a very finicky hour-long exam at the end. And repeat, until you pass, with no way out. Yes, there’s a bathroom, and we will have plenty of snacks, but still.” She’d taken a breath. “Considering you’d be for Charms, your crash-course would take place immediately after breakfast tomorrow morning. Are you sure that’s something you want to commit to?”

“TARDIS-ed?” she’d asked.

“Time and Relative Dimension in Space. In short, we’ve separated the rooms from the rest of the timeline. Apply the TARDIS spellwork just a little differently and you’ve got a time machine.”

“Oh.”

“So… Are you sure that’s something you want to commit to?”

She’d looked up at her. “Of course.”

“You do realize that there is absolutely no backing out after this, right?”

She’d blinked. “I do now.”

“And that you will have a co-instructor with you when teaching Charms, but they will not be in the same cramming session?”

“Same.”

“And you’re absolutely sure?”

“Yep!”

“Alright then.”

She’d asked, as Lyra turned away, if Harry would be in the same crash course slot.

“Ah, no, I’m afraid. He won’t be in Charms- and we need the earlier slots for the student teachers with earlier classes.”

After that disappointment, she’d had a rough night, since one of her new dorm-mates wouldn’t stop rearranging her nightstand. In the morning, she’d gone down to breakfast with hardly a single hour of sleep on the clock, had a quick meal, and gotten her schedule.

While there, she’d asked Harry, and confirmed- he’d also finalized his agreement, and would be teaching Defense Against the Dark Arts.

His cramming session would, however, be Tuesday evening… and, lucky him, not followed by anything; his DADA class with Professor Quirrell would be Wednesday morning. She had to go study Charms with Professor Flitwick fifteen minutes after her cramming session, then move on to teaching Charms with Bonbon three quarters of an hour after finishing that!

She stopped outside the door to the room her schedule specified for her cramming session.

There was a large sign attached to the door.

WARNING! Access to this room is restricted to assigned personnel ONLY. All others will be forcibly removed.

There was a piece of parchment stuck to the bottom of the metal sign. Note: Student instructors are ‘assigned personnel’ within and ONLY within 30 minutes of their assigned Instruction Course time.

There was a digital clock attached beneath that one… and, even though Hogwarts: A History had informed her that electricity went haywire here, the seconds on it were updating regularly and, as near as she could tell, accurately.

She took a deep breath, comparing it against her schedule.

She was nearly fifteen minutes early.

She took a deep breath, then slowly, carefully, raised her hand to knock.

Author's Notes:

Isn't it just the worst when you move into a new bedroom with someone else, and they won't stop banging around all night long?

Next to that, the sleep the other two have lost isn't much, is it?

Patreon, Discord.

My new motherboard finally shipped last night... so sometime tomorrow evening, I should have an actually capable computer once again.

Chapter 16

Lyra pulled the door open just moments after she knocked. “Oh, Hermione! You’re early.”

She nodded. “I don’t like being late.”

“Even though ‘late’ doesn’t mean much for this class, unless it’s over half an hour late. But still, that’s a good attitude to have.” She shrugged. “Especially since it’s very highly recommended to show up to the classes you teach at least half an hour early- gives you time to go over your lesson plan with your partner… or come up with such a plan, if need be.”

She tilted her head. “Wouldn’t…?”

Lyra shook hers. “In accordance with Hogwarts tradition, every class mixes exactly two houses… and since we’re using two-instructor teams, that means we’ve used one instructor from each house per class- your instructor partner will not be in the same house. And, to help cover all the bases, we’ve also flipped the pairings- Flitwick teaches the Hufflepuffs with the Gryffindors, and the Ravenclaws with the Slytherins, but you’ll be teaching Gryffindors and Slytherins, alongside a Slytherin instructor partner.”

She blinked. “Then- But I teach just before lunch! If they’re not in the same class…?”

Lyra smiled. “Easy: All of our Slytherin and Ravenclaw Charms instructors had an early breakfast and already went through their cramming sessions. They’re in class with Flitwick right now.”

“Meaning…”

“Yeah, it’s tough. I am sorry about that, but we didn’t have much choice.” She shrugged. “Anyways, come on in.” She held the door wide.

Inside was a large, rectangular room, with three doors off one side. The first was labeled ‘Bathroom’, the second ‘Closet’, and the last one was unlabeled.

In the middle of the room, positioned a little towards the door, stood exactly twenty desks, lined up perfectly in rows four deep by five across, and facing the head of the room. The spacing between them struck Hermione as abnormally large, at a minimum of three feet.

At the head of the room, there was a podium in the middle, a larger ‘teacher’s desk’ sitting next to it. On the other side, in the corner, there was a set of five chairs, four of which were occupied… by people she didn’t recognize, all Equestrians.

And in the middle, a good ten feet directly behind the podium, stood a massive, circular… structure. It was glowing faintly, with five different colors- light gold, dark blue, purple, light teal, and turquoise, in equal parts. It had a wide, inward-pointing cone-like top and bottom, a cylindrical core, and something strange inside the transparent core.

“... Wow,” she muttered. It was quite breathtaking, with the concentric rings of colorful symbols floating in the air around it at several points.

Lyra glanced at it. “Yeah, it’s a sight to behold, isn’t it? That’s our TARDIS core, that makes the whole thing possible. Took all five of us to build it, and we’re the finest spellsmiths Equestria has seen since Starswirl the Bearded. Anyways, all the other student instructors for this session can be counted on to be exactly five minutes early, giving us around…” She glanced at her wristwatch- which, Hermione noticed, was a smartwatch. “Nine minutes to kill. Unless you want to go fetch something first, of course.”

She shook her head. “No, I’m ready.”

“Alright then.” She led her over towards those five seats. “We- that is, me and these four- will be teaching these instructor sessions. We’re also all student instructors ourselves, but…

“Anyways. Allow me to introduce you to…

“Starlight Glimmer.” She held her hand out to the first girl in line, a Slytherin with a teal stripe in her long purple hair. “She’s really the expert on both our unique Equestrian magics and time magic, making her experience crucial for the TARDIS core. She’s also one of very few to have managed self-levitation- an extremely tricky spell even I can’t manage.”

Starlight bowed her head, blushing lightly.

“Sunset Shimmer.” She held her hand out to the next girl, a Gryffindor with red and gold hair that reminded Hermione of a bonfire. “She studied directly under Princess Celestia for a while, then went on to her own research in another world. It was only recently we reconnected to her world, and found out how similar it was to this one. She’s very quickly become a social and legal expert here, even better than me- and her research has given her a very unique perspective that was… immensely useful in figuring this thing out.”

Sunset shrugged. “All in a day’s work.” Then she chuckled.

Lyra grinned. “Then of course, Princess Twilight Sparkle.” The third girl was a Ravenclaw, with a twinned pink and purple stripe in her dark blue hair.

“Please don’t bow,” Twilight pleaded immediately, making all four of the others- including Lyra- chuckle.

The last one, a Slytherin with midnight blue hair, grinned amusedly. “Neither to me. I’m on vacation.”

Hermione blinked. “... Okay.”

Lyra chuckled again. “Anyways, she’s also studied directly under Princess Celestia, moved to my hometown to continue her studies, and very recently joined the elite ranks of the Equestrian royalty… as the Princess of Friendship, believe it or not. She’s really good at it- and while her experience is all with Equestrians, I’ve found most of those principles carry over to this world as well, and we’ve been working to figure out exactly how the two worlds differ. Her unparalleled magic research was crucial for the TARDIS core. And as a matter of fact, I get the feeling you would get along with her quite well.”

Twilight grinned. Hermione raised an eyebrow.

Lyra smiled, and indicated the last girl. “And Princess Luna, Princess Celestia’s sister and Diarch of Equestria. She’s well over a thousand years old- and nobody knows exactly how long, since both she and her sister lived through the Chaos Years. That, combined with her rather unique magical experiences over the last thousand years, gives her unparalleled experience with her rather unique perspective- also immensely useful in getting this thing working.”

Luna nodded calmly, wearing an amused smile. “My dear sister is older than me, but when she took over ruling duties and gave me a thousand years of free time on my Moon, I became better than she at… certain things.”

Lyra chuckled. “Yeah, I missed that, didn’t I? In Equestria, Princess Luna actually physically controls the Moon. Princess Celestia does the Sun.”

“... Ahh,” Hermione mutters, before turning to Lyra. “What about you?”

“Me? Oh. I’m just the one that opened the Gate.”

Starlight snorted. “Don’t sell yourself short, Lyra. You know as well as I do that you graduated second in class at Celestia’s School for Gifted U-Raeths.”

“And that your, ahh, unique advantage was instrumental in making the portal to Pedestria stay open indefinitely,” Sunset declared.

“And that the TARDIS core would have been impossible without that same advantage,” Twilight continued.

“And don’t forget you’re the only person in the entirety of Equestria that can penetrate Tia’s Vault undetected, even when she is in it and knows you’re coming,” Luna chimed in.

“Face it, Lyra,” Twilight stated. “Whether you like it or not, you’re one of Equestria’s elite as well. I’m actually a little amazed you haven’t ascended, with all the stuff you’ve been doing.”

Lyra sighed. “Not that it hasn’t tried,” she muttered.

“Exactly! Do you know of anypon-anyONE, sorry- else that can block harmony?”

“Wait, she blocked harmony?” Starlight asked.

“She stopped herself from ascending?” Sunset asked, before looking at Lyra. “Did you really?”

She nodded. “Fifty-six times, by now.”

“Wow,” Luna muttered.

“What?” Lyra asked. “I wouldn’t be that great of a Princess- and besides, we all know I’d hate it to the extreme.”

Sunset just stared. “You do know that was my dearest ambition for, like, thirty years, right?”

Lyra nodded. “Yeah. Not mine.”

She shook her head. “Whatever.”

“Besides, I’m clearly not one of the best. I was second in class at Celestia’s School.”

“Twilight was in your class,” Sunset countered instantly. “That was inevitable.”

She rolled her eyes. “Whatever.”

Hermione stepped back over to her seat, and sighed. She had passed their exam with flying colors on her first try- Lyra had even told her she’d designed it to be impossible to do as well as she’d done, but she’d done it anyways! After telling her that she’d scored a hundred and seventy-three percent on the practical exam, Lyra had shown her what was in the closet, and the third, unlabeled door.

The unlabeled door had hidden a small banquet hall. All the food in it was timelocked, but would unlock whenever she reached for it- meaning, it would always be fresh. The closet had contained a few supplies… and a bed.

Lyra told her to take what she needed, rest as long as she wanted to… then sit in her seat to return. She’d said something about the ‘layered timeline’ making it possible for her to take as long as she wanted without making anyone wait, or coming out any later than she would otherwise.

So she’d done that. She’d eaten a small lunch, had a good night’s sleep, and eaten breakfast.

She took a deep breath, looking around the room again. She’d put the bed away and everything, so the room was just as spotless as when Lyra had snapped her fingers and disappeared with the rest.

It still had only one desk in it: Hers. It was anchored to the floor, so it couldn’t be moved. After the instruction, Lyra had snapped her fingers, and all the others had disappeared. When asked, she’d said something about ‘multilayering the timeline’ to allow them each to have a one-on-one quiz-and-tutor session as long as they needed… without interfering with the others, or making them wait.

The TARDIS core, however, was not here. Instead, there was a large, empty wooden box bolted to the floor as a marker. Lyra had said that it had stayed behind in the “prime” room that they had done the main instruction in; sustaining all twenty-one additional layers.

Apparently, that twenty-first layer was for the five instructors to eat and rest in as necessary, before moving on to the next student.

She sighed, and sat down.

Immediately, nineteen other desks, with seats and occupants, faded rapidly into existence around her. She glanced around at them, taking in the startled looks of almost everyone in those seats, all looking wildly around- probably experiencing something similar.

At the same time, the five instructors faded into existence at the head of the room.

“Well, that happened,” Lyra began, once the initial confusion died off.

Starlight smiled. “Yes it did. This has been a good week and a half.” A twitch at the corner of her eye, that Hermione was close enough to see by virtue of her front-row seat, suggested that it was nothing of the sort.

“Anyone have any final questions?” Sunset asked the class.

The Hufflepuff that had sat next to Hermione at the beginning spoke up. “Why couldn’t this have been covered before we came here?”

The response was instant. Princess Luna regarded him coolly, but Twilight’s dagger-glare spoke volumes. Lyra sighed, turned her head, and facepalmed slowly. Sunset’s expression flattened into something Hermione recognized instantly as a poker face. Starlight’s hands clenched into fists as she closed her eyes and started into some silent breathing exercises.

“You know perfectly well why,” Luna began.

“Then you could have done it anyways!”

Hermione groaned. There was always someone like that.

Sunset looked sideways, at Lyra, Twilight, and Luna; Starlight was on her other side. “Echo?”

“Yes,” Starlight declared instantly.

“Yes, echo,” Twilight muttered.

“Agreed,” Lyra nodded, turning to look past Twilight at Luna.

Luna sighed. “Make it so.”

Lyra stepped forward. “Alright, Prince Blueblood. I’m really sorry to have to do this to you, but you asked for it.” She held out her hands, and moved one in a circle next to the other.

A massive, circular array of golden symbols whirled into existence in the air in front of her.

She then put her hands together, and pushed on the center.

It glowed brightly, almost like the sun… and a moment later, he was gone. She raised one hand, and snapped her fingers.

When she had first activated the TARDIS core, only a small portion of the symbols surrounding it had brightened. Now, all of them shone brightly, and the oscillating thing in the middle- it was moving up and down- accelerated suddenly.

There was a blinding flash of light, then the five of them were standing in a neat row once again… and the seat Lyra had just emptied was occupied again, though by someone else.

She also had a sudden wave of dizziness, and her head hurt a little- she could remember this girl being in that seat through the entire instruction segment, but she could also remember Blueblood being there. “Ow,” she muttered, putting her hands to her temples. She wasn’t the only one.

“Sorry about that,” Lyra sighed, “but that’s what it takes to remove a student instructor right now.”

The new girl- Cloudchaser- blinked. “So… So… Wait. I remember you asking me if I wanted to teach, and also not asking me.”

Lyra nodded. “Yes. We just created a grandfather paradox, then restabilized the timeline with a predestination paradox. That kind of thing will always give time travelers- which includes every one of us- headaches. Blueblood was just…” She shook her head. “He won’t remember this at all.” She grinned. “Though I’ll have to admit, it was immensely satisfying to incinerate him like that.”

“If only you could do that without immediately undoing it, eh?” the girl to Hermione’s right muttered. She hadn’t caught the girl’s name.

Sunset nodded sagely. “Fortunately, he’s the only one that bludgeoned his way onto the instructor teams- everyone else got here on pure merit, so that should be the only time we need to do that.”

“So,” Lyra announced cheerfully, slapping her fist into her opened hand. “Anyone have any last-minute questions?”

There was a general denial throughout the room… and Hermione suddenly remembered that there had only been girls in the room all along. Yet with Blueblood… No, that was the past that had never happened.

“Alright then,” Lyra smiled. “It would seem we’re done here.” She snapped her fingers.

The TARDIS engine behind her moved a couple times, made a single sliding noise, and emitted a distinct thunk, at the very moment that the door to the rest of the castle blinked back into existence.

Author's Notes:

Think "the noises the TARDIS makes when landing", except without the sweeping, grinding noise until the very end, because they didn't drive with the parking brake on the way the Doctor does.

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My motherboard arrives today. It's already on the truck and "out for delivery", so another five hours and I'll have it. I will finally have a machine capable of living up to my nerdiness. I wonder if my brother will want to help with the thermal compound...?

Chapter 17

Draco was… grumpy, to say the least. Crabbe and Goyle lost almost thirty points each during their first week for missing classes, because they couldn’t follow him to their classes.

But that wasn’t the only thing.

No; he’d quickly found out that the instructors had set up an extended teaching program with the Equestrians. That alone he wasn’t all that worried about, after making friends with Diamond.

The part he was bothered by, and hadn’t told anyone he was bothered by, was that he’d heard that a couple of British students had been invited to that program as student teachers as well… and he had not.

He knew his father would’ve loved for him to be in such an authoritative role; apparently, those student instructors had the power to give and take points, giving it a very real level of authority.

But mostly, he just wanted to be something other than the slave he had been his entire life- obeying instructions, studying, and whatever else. He wanted to be able to make the instructions, the way those instructors do. Sure, there’s two to a class, so he wouldn’t be alone- but he would have just as much deciding power as them, rather than just blindly following them.

But he didn’t. He’d considered asking who he should ask, but decided against it. He’d ask Diamond, when he next got to talk to her somewhere private… maybe.

It was Monday afternoon, of the second week. He’d read that flying lessons would be starting on Thursday- and that he himself was scheduled to start on Day One. He’d been unable to get rid of the blundering idiots over the weekend; they followed him everywhere, as they were “supposed to”.

And today, he’d managed to get rid of them… by taking them to their first classes of the day, and leaving them there while he headed for his own. Thank Merlin that he didn’t share any classes with them; if he’d had to listen to their stupidity for just five more minutes, he was sure he’d have gone mad.

He sighed, picking a wall to lean against in this empty corridor; he’d allowed himself to get separated from the rest of the class after it let out, as none of them had the same next class as he did.

And, he knew, Crabbe and Goyle both also had another class of their own- that was not the same as his, meaning he had just over an hour left before they could even start looking for him.

He wondered how he was going to survive the year without breaking his father’s ironclad rules. If he could shed Crabbe and Goyle indefinitely, he wouldn’t have any problem with that.

A door to his left opened suddenly, and he straightened up quickly. He couldn’t let just anyone see him express any kind of weakness.

Then Lyra Heartstrings stepped out of that door, and he stiffened. Despite what she’d done for him on the train, and Diamond’s introducing her, the girl still gave him the creeps.

She looked at him, evidently utterly unsurprised to see him. “Oh hey, Draco,” she began. “Long time no see, eh?”

He winced. Wish it was longer. “So?”

She winced as well. “Oh come on, do you have to be like that?”

He ignored the question, folded his arms, and surprised himself by wishing the two blundering idiots were with him… if only because they could probably soak up her attention long enough for him to escape. He raised an inquisitive eyebrow.

She rolled her eyes. “What if you didn’t?”

He kept himself from twitching. What she was saying was impossible.

She seemed unsatisfied. “What if you could go somewhere nobody else could? Where nobody cares about appearances?”

He determinedly kept his expression disinterested. What in the world was she talking about?

She scowled. “Whatever, be like that, then.” She suddenly pranced forward, grabbed his arm, and pulled him after her. “C’mon.” He tried to stop her, and to free himself, but she blocked his every move with no apparent effort of her own. She dragged him back into the room she’d just come out of.

The room was filled with… floating golden squiggles? Had she not been here, he might have explored them, but she was here. They were all faint and indistinct, flowing slowly around the room in loops, circles, and other strange, loopy patterns.

She dragged him right to the middle, then released him and dashed to the side.

He stumbled, stabilized himself, and refolded his arms. “What was that for?” he demanded.

She didn’t answer him. Instead, all the gold squiggles suddenly burned bright- and he found himself lifted into the air in the middle of the room.

He let out a small gasp of surprise, but quickly controlled himself- even in the unknown, he had appearances to maintain.

Then, it burned. He bit back the scream of pain that tried to make its way out- he would not show weakness!

Then, just as suddenly as it had started, it all stopped… and he found himself falling back to the floor. He landed, stumbling slightly.

“What the-?” Lyra asked, surprised about… something?

“What was that for?” he demanded.

She ignored him, and the squiggles suddenly started glowing again. He braced himself to be lifted and tortured again- but it didn’t happen. Instead, something in one corner of the room suddenly glowed a brilliant red, a color that spread across the entire room in but an instant before all the squiggles faded back down… and turned gold again.

“What-!?” she asked, before bounding over to him and staring intently at him.

He backed away, towards the door. “What are you doing?” he demanded.

She scowled, and turned away. “But if… Then why did it just… stop?” She sighed. “Whatever.” Then she glanced at him. “Go ahead and carry on with… whatever you were doing. It didn’t work.”

“What is it?” he demanded, folding his arms.

She blinked. “Oh… I forgot that step again, didn’t I? Then I… Yeah, I also forgot to ask permission. Sorry about that. Um…” She glanced at the symbols floating around the room. “At the moment, British wizards can’t use Equestrian magic- and will die if they try to traverse the gate to Equestria. I’m trying to fix both of those issues, but it’s proving very difficult. And given what just happened… it’s looking like it’s impossible to do without an unacceptable risk of death or debilitation.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Unacceptable?”

She nodded. “As in, any risk. The way I designed this thing, it doesn’t dig deep enough to cause permanent damage, and has so many safeties in place to make sure that anything it does change is done in a balanced manner, such that debilitation is impossible.

“Then, it just… stopped. Didn’t change anything, but it got through the outer layers to make its repeat prevention stamp, so…” She blinked. “Because it works by modifying the magical core- and penetrating that too many times, even without doing anything else, can cause critical damage of a completely different sort- so any given test subject is only good for one run, no repeats.

“Then of course, I actually designed it to penetrate, place spellwork inside, and retreat- far faster than trying to make the changes directly, minimizing the penetration time… and it also allows the injected spellwork to reinforce the core’s ‘skin’, so to speak, back beyond its original strength, hence allowing it to tolerate an increased number of penetrations. Not that I want to put that to a test. Ever.” She took a deep breath. “Said spellwork is riddled with safeties of its own… and markers that should be visible to certain kinds of completely harmless scans- even through the magical core.” She looked at him. “I checked for those markers, there aren’t any. It didn’t work at all.

“Which must mean…” She gazed across the room, and a flicker of gold traveled through the squiggles. “... Huh. It didn’t run out of power. So what did happen?” She glanced towards him again. “None of the safeties activated, so it can’t have been anything dangerous, but…” She scowled. “Maybe it failed to penetrate far enough? That would bring it to a silent shutdown- penetrating too far would have triggered…” She pointed, and a group of squiggles off to the side glowed briefly red, “that safety, and shut the whole thing down.” She scowled. “But if it did fail to penetrate far enough, but did get far enough to place the anti-duplication stamp, then…” She sighed. “I… British magical cores must be too different from Equestrian magical cores for me to base it off my own… and it’d be way too dangerous to try scanning someone else’s- including yours.” A low couch appeared behind her in a flash of golden light, and she flung herself down on it. “Meaning, this whole thing is a fruitless endeavor.”

He blinked. “So…”

She let out another sigh. “Kinda disappointing, too. It took an entire week to build this, just to find out that it’s junk. I guess I’ll have to rip it apart now.” She glanced down at her wristwatch, and wrinkled her nose. “Eh, later. I’ve got to go teach.” She sat up straighter. “Which means I need to lock up this room again- these matrices would be deadly dangerous in the wrong hands, functional or not.” She gestured vaguely to the side of the room.

“Teach?” he asked.

“Hmm? Yeah. I’m sure you’re already aware of the extended teaching program?”

He nodded stiffly.

“Yeah… We ended up using almost exclusively Equestrian instructors because we didn’t know any of the British candidates. Hermione and Harry got in as instructors because we met them and learned about them- and their abilities- early enough. You… Nobody knew what to think about you, since we only saw the facade you put forward, and knew it was a facade. Thanks to the sensitivity of the position, that meant you got left out. Though, from what Diamond tells me, you would’ve been a decent candidate.” She shrugged. “Maybe next year, I guess.”

He huffed lightly, before turning to head out the door, and down the corridor. She followed him as far as the door, waved goodbye, and closed it from inside.

He paused again halfway down the next corridor, leaning against the wall. For some reason, he found himself exhausted. He glanced back the way he’d come. Did Lyra have something to do with that?

He turned resolutely back forwards, and pushed himself off of the wall. No, she couldn’t have. He was just imagining things.

He hadn’t gone six steps, though, before one of the school professors rounded the corner ahead of him. It was the hook-nosed teacher that had handed him his schedule- Professor Snape, head of Slytherin house, according to the upper-year students. The man looked harried, like he had too much to do and not enough time to do it in. He’d probably just pass him by- which, if he was honest with himself, suited him.

Contrary to his expectation, Professor Snape paused, upon catching sight of him, then came closer. “Mr…?” he began.

“Malfoy, Sir,” Draco bowed his head slightly.

Snape nodded. “Are you… alright?” He seemed distinctly uncertain.

He shivered involuntarily. It wasn’t even cold outside- so why did he feel so cold? “I… I don’t know.”

Snape scowled, stepped closer, and crouched down to feel his forehead… and recoil almost as if he’d been burned. “Very hot,” he muttered. “You’d better see Madam Pomfrey. This way.” He rose back to his feet, and started guiding him down the corridors, away from his next class.

Author's Notes:

You'll notice it's no longer silent. And it's more developed than in The Gate, too.

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My motherboard arrived yesterday... Took just four hours to plug everything in and get it all set up. Now, it's the fastest computer I've (ever) used. I mean seriously, it shuts down in less than a second!

Chapter 18

Hermione could only sigh, as she arrived for Charms. After the first class last week, she and her Slytherin co-teacher- who turned out to be Bonbon, Lyra’s wife- had been rescheduled to a later time slot. She hadn’t been the only student instructor to have their teaching assignment come immediately after their study slot… but, according to Lyra, she had been the only one that was able to assimilate the information fast enough to teach it effectively in that short of a timeframe.

Which meant that she now taught Charms at about three in the afternoon, rather than ten in the morning.

Bonbon was already there, as punctual as ever. Just like last time, the teaching assignment started half an hour before the students’ class assignment came about, giving her and Bonbon a full half an hour to coordinate their lesson plans and catch up on everything.

For the first class, since she’d arrived with no idea what was going to happen and Bonbon had been working on lesson plans for an hour, they’d just picked one of hers. After that, Bonbon had spent half of that time allotment going over the class roster- and warning her of who to keep her eyes on for her safety and so on. She’d been rather alarmed by that.

“Good afternoon, Bonbon,” she greeted.

Bonbon bowed her head. “Good afternoon to you too, Hermione. I’m sure you’ve heard we’ve shuffled the class rosters a little as well?”

She nodded; her schedule hadn’t changed over the weekend, aside from this class, but plenty of peoples’ had been. For instance, in her second class that day, the only one where she was studying under student instructors, about a third of the class had been shuffled out for different people. “How much has changed?”

Bonbon shrugged. “Not much, actually- only five substitutions. We’ve still got the Crusaders- it is confirmed, we’re the best team for them. Any other instructor team would’ve had a demolished room and, possibly, a severe injury by the end of the class.”

“Wow,” she muttered. The self-proclaimed ‘Cutie Mark Crusaders’- a name she didn’t understand in the slightest- had caused so much… excitement last week that she and Bonbon hadn’t been able to cover any of the class material. She scowled. “What is a ‘Cutie Mark’, anyways?”

Bonbon shook her head. “National secret, sorry. Maybe someday.” She shrugged. “The Crusaders are rather… careless in that regard. We helped them come up with a temporary name for this side of the Gate, but they’ve forgotten it entirely. Too excited, I think.”

She blinked. It was the same thing she’d told her when she’d asked why Applebloom had said ‘everypony’; she was beginning to suspect what that national secret was. “Oh. Okay. So, who did we lose?”

Bonbon listed off five names that Hermione remembered being the boring sort- the slow ones. Four of them were British.

She nodded. “Alright. Then, who did we gain?”

Bonbon grinned. “Well, we got Rainbow Dash, for one.”

“Wait, Rainbow? Wasn’t she the one racing against… whoever it was, to serve butterbeer at the Leaky Cauldron?”

“Yes, she was competing with Lightning Dust- who would have won by twenty percent, had Derpy Hooves not accidentally outdone them both. Speaking of which, we’ve got all three of them now.”

She nodded slowly. “Are they…?”

“Going to be trouble? I wouldn’t expect them to be. Well, except Derpy. Rainbow and Lightning can get mighty bored sometimes, but they’re grown ladies. The only worry I would have is that Rainbow is outwardly disdainful to the notion of ‘studying’. You can generally ignore that facade, though; as an Aethr, she’s mighty excited to learn magic, since the Equestrian stuff is pretty exclusive to the Raeths.” She took a deep breath. “And Derpy… I mean, you’ve seen how much destruction the Crusaders cause, right?”

Hermione shuddered.

“Amplify that by about double, and replace destruction with helping out, and you have Derpy. She’s wonderfully kind- but she’s also wall-eyed, clumsy, and the main mail delivery person in our hometown. Normally, that would mean mail would never get where it was headed… but she has this gift. Even Lyra doesn’t know where it comes from, but she has never once failed to deliver a letter to its recipient. Even when said recipient was swimming in lava in the next universe over.” She shrugged. “Don’t ask me how she did that.

“Said gift has side effects on her daily life. That is, she has… accidents. But they’re not normal accidents- they’re helpful accidents.

“Like the Leaky Cauldron. The deciding event in that challenge happened about three days after your visit. Two of the other servers crashed into each other, and spilled butterbeer all over the floor… Then of course, Rainbow and Dust hit that puddle at the same time at speed from different directions, slipped, and crashed into each other, flinging platters and tankards all the way across the pub. Pinkie had to replace three cakes.

“Derpy had been walking by, and stopped to help them clean up. Then, in the act of mopping up the spilled butterbeer with only three napkins- even Pinkie couldn’t figure out how she did that- she served so many drinks not only in the Leaky Cauldron but all across Equestria that the two speedsters couldn’t possibly keep up. As for how many she served… Well, Tom told us at the end. Had every single day of the year looked like it did the day you passed through, it would have taken six years to make as much as he made that day. He said he hadn’t a clue where she got it all, but he’d seen it all go out, with the orders- and galleons- coming in to pay for it.”

She blinked. “... Wow.”

“Yeah. And that’s actually not why she’s coming to our class, even though she’ll no doubt be amazingly helpful with the Crusaders. Instead, she’s coming because she has difficulty following the instructions the other instructors give her… and we’re smart enough to work with her disability instead of against it.”

She tilted her head. “Wait, wasn’t that in the crash course thingy?”

Bonbon nodded. “Yep. And some people just aren’t that good at it. She’s a pretty extreme case- one that can… overwhelm less prepared instructors.”

“So, we’re getting all the hard cases.”

“In essence, I suppose. Though they’re not really hard cases- they all want to learn magic- they just have their own, ah, unique difficulties, and we’re best equipped to handle them.”

She nodded. “Ahh. So…” She scowled. “Rainbow and Lighting are both Aethrs, but which one’s Derpy?”

“She’s also an Aethr.”

She nodded. “And if I remember right, you’re an Etrah?”

“Yep. From what we’ve seen so far, the Raeths are actually at a disadvantage with British magic- they’re having a lot more trouble getting magic out of their wands. Twilight was the first to get hers working- said something about making the magic ‘sit’ in her wand. We expect Derpy to have a little trouble to start out, since she doesn’t have the greatest control over her Aethr magic as it is, but it should be nothing next to the Crusaders… none of which have a clue how to control their Equestrian magics.”

“Which gives Sweetie Belle about a zero percent chance of successfully casting wand magic, doesn’t it?”

Bonbon nodded. “Or thereabouts, theoretically. Judging by what happened last week, I’d say she’s just as likely to learn wand magic first, and use that as an anchor to familiarize herself with her Raeth magic and learn to properly utilize all of her power.

“Anyways. After those three, Ronald Weasley will be joining us today. Not a great match, but this was the best place for him- he needs someone of your skill to get some of these things through his thick skull, but he’s not nearly as far gone as Crabbe or Goyle- the class they’ve been transferred to is just short of remedial. Perhaps the most worrying thing with Ron is that he seems to have been looking for Harry… but less because of interest and more because he is supposed to, almost. It’s… suspicious, to say the least, so we- basically all of the Equestrians- have taken on a policy of non-information: We won’t help him, or any of the other Weasleys- they haven’t shown any suspicious tendencies, but you know siblings- to find Harry. We’re not blocking him from Harry, though, since we don’t know why he’s looking, but…” She shrugged. “You go ahead and decide for yourself what you will do, as a schoolmate, when he inevitably asks after Harry.”

“We’ve also got Draco Malfoy. Lyra made noises about testing her spellwork on him earlier- I told her to ask permission first, here’s hoping she remembers- so he may not show up today, depending on what happens with that. He’s very familiar with Crabbe and Goyle- but has proven to be a few orders of magnitude smarter than the two of them together, so he no longer shares any classes with them. Be warned, as a Malfoy, he’s from one of the high noble families of the wizarding world.”

Hermione found it very flattering the way Bonbon kept suggesting that it was her skill, not Bonbon’s, that would be needed; unlike herself, the girl’s every move practically preached of high skill and long practice. She was pretty sure she would be surprised if Bonbon could be tripped by an invisible, six-inch wall sliding rapidly- and silently- across the floor. Specifically, a wall that could stand up to her massive Etrah strength.

Then they ran over the lesson plans. She’d come up with one or two this time- so they ended up merging one of hers with one of Bonbon’s.

Finally, with ten minutes to the start of class, they were done. The week prior, the first student had shown up about five minutes early.

“Soooo,” Hermione muttered. Bonbon didn’t feel the need to fill every second with chatter- a trait which she rather liked- but she herself had a lot of questions.

Bonbon turned her head slightly to indicate she was listening. For some reason, that simple act, the calm, almost perfect attention, always made her smile.

“If… Um… That magic Lyra is doing. Is that just to safely travel the Gate, or to make wizards capable of Equestrian magic as well?”

“Both, actually,” Bonbon answered instantly. “Back in the Leaky Cauldron, she scanned a number of British passersby- which includes you, I’m afraid- and was able to determine she wouldn’t be able to do one without the other. Of course, there’d be a third effect, codenamed the Papa Tango, that would also come with them… and is a little less desirable.”

“Ahh. So… I assume much of this ‘Papa Tango’ is secret, but how much can you tell me?”

Bonbon smiled. “You assume correctly. At a high level, the ‘Papa Tango’ is basically a magical transformation into an Equestrian.”

She tilted her head. “Wouldn’t that risk destroying the identity of the, er, subject?”

Bonbon nodded. “Yes. There are ways around that, but even if their appearance, personality, and so on survives intact, they would definitely be changed at the core level- and would likely be forced to relearn themselves.”

“Relearn…?”

Bonbon nodded. “They would have to relearn things like magic… and their own strength. Completely aside from the extra side effects Equestrian magic has, that we are used to, but that they would be very likely blindsided by, even when warned.”

Draco had been to the Hospital Wing before, even though it was hardly the second week of school.

It was the first time he was there for an illness… though it was a very confusing illness. He’d had to stop at the bathroom to throw up on the way up; Professor Snape had waited for him.

Those other times, every Tuesday and Friday, he came up for a haircut, to shave himself bald in an effort to avoid a particularly nasty house curse.

But now…

Draco had been in the Hospital Wing for about an hour and a half, with a progressively more confused Madam Pomfrey running test after test, when someone knocked on the door to the Hospital Wing. He felt absolutely terrible, worse than he’d ever felt in his life.

When he heard the knock, he closed his eyes and muttered. “Please don’t tell me that’s Crabbe and Goyle.”

Madam Pomfrey, who had developed her own very negative opinion of the two boys during his first two visits, finished her latest test, nodded sagely, and went to get the door.

When she returned, it wasn’t the blundering idiots.

It was Lyra Heartstrings.

He opened his mouth to tell her to go away, but she beat him to it. “Hi Draco, Bonbon told me you missed Charms, and it made me worry- it’s possible it could have had side effects, even if it didn’t work. Can… Can I check for those?”

Madam Pomfrey’s eyebrows shot upwards.

He groaned, but didn’t see any other way. “Fine.”

She closed her eyes… and didn’t move, for several seconds. Madam Pomfrey was looking between her and Draco.

Finally, she moved again, and it was to sigh. “I… I’m sorry, Draco. As near as I can tell, it’s an allergic reaction to the penetration.” She looked up at Madam Pomfrey. “It shouldn’t be dangerous, but it’ll probably hurt a lot, and last a long time. And since it’s coming from his magical core, nothing we can do will do anything to even tone down the symptoms.” She looked at him again. “I’d go in to clean up, speed the recovery, but doing that would have a very high risk of killing you.”

Madam Pomfrey scowled. Draco facepalmed.

Lyra took a deep breath. “Anyways, those matrices are still intact… and have a recording function, so I should have a record of exactly what happened. I’ll have to dig through it, see exactly what happened… and if there’s any way to speed the recovery without killing you.” She shuddered. “And that could take months.”

Madam Pomfrey folded her arms. “So what would his normal recovery time be?”

She shrugged. “With an Equestrian, once all the symptoms disappear, they’re gone for good, though full recovery, including things like magic reserve depth and so on, can take half again as long as it takes to get that far.” She took a deep breath. “With an Equestrian, it would have an overall duration of about two and a half months. I don’t know enough about British magical cores to even guess at how long it’ll take, aside from… long.” She looked up. “That’s what I hope to learn by examining the records, among other things.”

She sighed. “In any case, the reaction itself shouldn’t be dangerous, but the symptoms could very easily put him in a dangerous situation. It’s probably best that he stays here- with you- until all the symptoms disappear.”

Author's Notes:

We now know what happened with Rainbow & Lightning Dust's competition at the Leaky Cauldron. Oh, and that temporary name they helped the Crusaders come up with? I have no idea what it was.

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Chapter 19

Draco could have wished that the initial symptoms were all of them, and that they would simply fade away.

He didn’t, though. The initial symptoms, which included spontaneously needing to use the bathroom every couple hours, were very, very draining- both to him and to Madam Pomfrey. He couldn’t eat anything without vomiting it back out less than half an hour later.

Fortunately, they only lasted three days, before they all vanished very quickly… Except the fever, it only reduced.

And of course, had he wished such, it would have been in vain. The sudden disappearance of the initial symptoms was accompanied by fresh symptoms: He was perpetually dizzy, to the point where he couldn’t stand up at all, and he also had a splitting headache.

Fortunately, he could handle that, so long as he could lie still.

At least he could eat. And drink. And, of course, lie down for more than an hour and a half at a time.

Even if the pain kept him up at night.

“Expelliarmus!”

“Good job, Neville!” Harry congratulated, his wand floating back to him in the light blue aura of Rarity’s strange, totally-not-cheating levitation. After Professor Quirrell’s Defense Against the Dark Arts class turned out to be a bit of a joke on Wednesday of the first week, he’d written a letter to his co-instructor, Rarity, and asked Hedwig to deliver it as quickly as possible… without interrupting any classes.

He’d gotten a reply back less than fifteen minutes later, and met up with the Hufflepuff in the school library fifteen minutes after that. There, they’d encountered pretty much all of the other Defense Against the Dark Arts student instructors, from all four houses- and they all agreed, up to and including Princess Luna (who was most definitely not subtle), that Quirrell’s classes were sub-par.

And that they needed to find something else to teach their students.

Fortunately, one of the Ravenclaws had quickly discovered some of the simplest self-defense spells there were. They’d studied, done a touch of practice… and then he’d left with Rarity to teach.

This particular charm, the ‘disarming charm’, simply empties its target’s hand- of their wand. Hopefully. And it was very, very simple- no fancy motions required, no special ingredients, no nothing. Just point, visualize what you wanted to happen, and say the incantation.

A surprisingly large number of students were having trouble- even, Harry was rather painfully aware, Rarity herself. She hadn’t been able to get it to work at all- but that had lined up with about one third of all of the student instructors, for some reason, so it clearly wasn’t just her.

As it had turned out, he himself had a gift for these things; it had taken him all of two minutes to master every single spell they had found. He was one of only three that had managed every last one of them on that first meeting- which had then been scheduled into place, to become a regular meeting event.

In any case, for as much difficulty as Rarity had casting bolts of red light from her wand to disarm her opponents, she had absolutely no trouble catching flying wands- or other objects at times- and returning them to their proper place with her strange blue… aura. He’d called it ‘cheating’ at one point, and she’d been quick to disagree- saying that it was ‘her normal magic, as a Raeth’.

So of course, he’d asked if he could be a Raeth too.

She’d stared at him for a few seconds, before averting her gaze. “Oh, sorry, but no. That’s kinda a biological part of an Equestrian, which of the three tribes we belong to. And we can’t be changed between them, it’s been tried.”

That didn’t stop him from noticing that she did get small responses from her wand sometimes, though never enough to actually perform the spell she was asking of it. Did that mean that the Raeth magic she was using conflicted with wand magic in some way, making it difficult to do one or the other? Rarity had learned to use her Raeth magic already, and was clearly capable of wand magic, so wouldn’t the same be true the other way around? Once he learned enough wand magic, wouldn’t he be capable of learning some Raeth magic as well?

He’d have to ask Lyra. She’d seemed mighty knowledgeable about what the various magics could do back in the Leaky Cauldron… and the other Gryffindor of the magical prodigies that had taught the instructor courses was a lot harder to find. For some reason, Lyra seemed to shine at him from across the room, whether he was looking or not.

Though he couldn’t use it to identify her- he’d noticed that one of the other Gryffindors also shone at him in that same way, and he would rather stay as far away from that girl as he possibly could.

Molly Weasley heaved a sigh, after reading Professor Dumbledore’s latest missive.

She knew the man was using her and her family as tools in his plan against Voldemort… but what choice did she have? If she didn’t cooperate with him, Voldemort might return- and win!

Apparently, he’d been poking his nose about, in his usual manner… and found that Harry was not following his intended path. She knew as well as he did that her Ron had not met Harry on the train, as he was supposed to… and, as a matter of fact, had yet to meet him, even two weeks after term started.

She knew Ron was starting to get desperate- which was never a good thing. She’d done her best, but he had turned out, unlike his brothers and sister, to be the so-called ‘runt of the litter’.

He just wasn’t the brightest crayon in the box.

She wasn’t proud of it… but it made him quite susceptible to manipulation by those he trusted, and one of the most reliable pieces in Dumbledore’s puzzle of a plan.

Speaking of which, she wasn’t sure what she should tell her son. Fred and George were a lot more subtle than he in their search, and by their latest letter, they’d gotten a lead: Someone had mentioned seeing him with a bushy brown-haired British girl named Hermione Granger. She’d looked it up, and the girl was a muggleborn.

She’d informed Dumbledore, who had apparently not known of that- and his response, the letter she’d just read, had been nothing shy of relieved. Harry most certainly wasn’t following the trail Dumbledore had laid, but at least he was moving in the right direction, associating with a muggleborn. He had also, it seemed, gotten ahold of Harry’s class schedule- strange that it took him so long- and even sent her a copy.

She scowled at the page. If she sent that schedule to Ron, he’d no doubt stalk Harry and only manage to alienate himself. He needed a friendly pretext to be able to pull it off- as had been planned for the train. If, however, she sent the schedule to the Twins… They’d almost certainly find him, and they were smart enough that they’d actually be able to use it to their advantage. Meet him directly, probably somewhere innocent like the common room, introduce themselves, maybe even take advantage of being upper-year students to help him out in some way, and cement themselves in Harry’s mind as friendly figures. That’d undoubtedly help them deal with Ron’s tactlessness.

She couldn’t send it to Percy. Dumbledore had decided, and she had agreed, that Percy was best left unaware of the plan- and with his existing tendencies, he already had a rather extreme tendency to follow it. As such, Percy would probably raise all sorts of questions… and was not helping them look for Harry. He might be smart, but he was also very blunt, and would likely only alienate the boy if he knew about the search.

She glanced up as Ginny walked into the room. She was basically the complete opposite of Ron. Very smart, sensitive, and all around a very nice little girl- she was her mother’s pride. As a matter of fact, she was such a perfect girl that Dumbledore had worked her into his plan a few years back and, with Molly’s permission, had put a marriage contract on the books between Ginny and Harry.

It had been one of the toughest decisions of her life. She hated to take the freedom of choice away from Ginny, but the benefits… Not only did it force Dumbledore to plan for Harry to survive to marry her, but it also gave Ginny a quality groom… and Harry a quality bride. She’d hoped they’d be happy together.

Then, two weeks ago, at King’s Cross, one of the other Hogwarts first-years had stopped by her family to ask how to get onto Platform Nine and Three Quarters. He must have been a muggleborn… but Ginny had fallen for him, developed an instant crush on him. Neither she nor any of her boys knew who he was; even Percy had been asked, in her effort to sate Ginny’s burning curiosity, but none had recognized him, even after the fact.

Of course, Ginny was aware of her part in the plan… and the marriage contract. She had been aware for over a year, as a matter of fact. For the first week after King’s Cross, she had seen that knowledge tearing the girl apart- she’d never be able to marry that strange boy.

Then one day, she’d come to breakfast with reddened eyes, like she’d been crying… and a smile on her face.

“If I can’t marry him, I’ll just have to make good friends with him,” she’d stated- or declared, more like. She said it very decisively, almost like the universe was listening. “And, of course, make sure Harry gets along well with him. He can be a ‘family friend’ that we invite on a regular basis.”

After that, she’d been spending most of her free time staring off into space, a dreamy smile and, sometimes, a blush on her face. She was more than willing to work with the plan… but also a very ambitious child.

She would go far in life, definitely. She mostly hoped that Harry wouldn’t be too… restrictive of her- the girl had a lot of potential, definitely.

Draco braced himself for a new batch of symptoms at the three day mark for the second set; Madam Pomfrey had noticed that the first set had lasted for exactly three days.

He wasn’t disappointed.

His entire body burned, like he’d been dropped into an active volcano.

It didn’t last long, fortunately- just a few seconds.

The headache, however, magnified itself to the point where he almost couldn’t think. He spent most of his time curled up in a ball, his arms wrapped around his head, trying to calm the pain. Madam Pomfrey fed him at mealtimes- and though he couldn’t see anything more than a strange wash of random colors when he opened his eyes, he did notice that the food she was giving him seemed to be rather exclusively vegetables. He wanted a good steak, but she didn’t once give him anything that tasted like meat of any kind. Something felt off about his body, but his head hurt too much for him to care.

Author's Notes:

And the pieces of the puzzle start... falling apart, apparently.

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Chapter 20

Hermione scowled at the assembled class, before turning to Bonbon to mutter quietly. “Where’s Malfoy?”

Bonbon shook her head slightly, answering in a similar mutter. “He was bedridden for unknown duration by a severe reaction to Lyra’s… thing.”

“Oh.”

“Here, Blinky. Please take these to the instructors named… but only when they’re not in class.”

The house-elf bowed, accepting the small stack of medical excuses. “Will do, Madam!” Then she disappeared with a sharp crack.

Madam Pomfrey sighed. She knew the elf understood what she meant, and would accomplish her mission flawlessly, so that wasn’t why she’d sighed. The reason she’d sighed was a combination of the fact that she’d needed to send so many medical excuses… and that it had taken so long for her to track down Draco’s class schedule. Had the Equestrians not come, it would have been as simple as finding the first year Slytherin schedule, and sending the notes to the appropriate professors… but with the Equestrians, there were about three thousand student instructors running around… and since she only had class listings, she had to search down every single one of them to identify which ones Draco was part of, and tell who she needed to alert.

This definitely needed fixing.

She took a deep breath, and looked out her open office door into the wardroom, at the curtain- surrounded bed that was Draco’s. She didn’t know why his reaction to Lyra’s whatever-it-was had turned him into a small, shiny silver filly, but it had. His headache had apparently been amplified massively at the same time, so she was fairly sure Draco didn’t realize he had been transformed like that. She did, and as soon as he had transformed, she’d gotten out the privacy curtains. She didn’t need anyone thinking he was an animal, or laughing at him.

She did find it rather interesting how, no matter how tangled and messy they got, it only took one stroke from her hand- not even a brush- to restore the perfectly neat brushed look to both his mane and tail. Nevermind how the two royal blue stripes splitting his otherwise shiny silver mane and tail into even thirds were always clearly defined- all the blue hairs stayed in the blue stripe, all the silver hairs stayed on either side. Even when she deliberately pushed them out of place, they just fell right back into place.

She’d helped groom the… filly since his transformation. She could tell, from the tiny twitches in his facial expression and other bits and pieces of body language making it through the apparently debilitating headache, that it provided him a small relief from the pain. Not enough for him to properly awaken, but some.

And of course, food. As she’d suspected would be the case from the moment she saw what he’d turned into, her diagnostic spells had taken half an hour to verify that he could only metabolize vegetables and water. So, even though he made noises- with that cute feminine voice- about wanting some good meat to eat, she’d only given him vegetables and water. By her best guess, meats- or any animal products, including milk- would mess his digestive system up… and either poison him, or cause him to vomit. Or both.

On the other hand, though, her spells had discovered enzymes for metabolizing foods that would normally be poisonous to humans. That was one of the things that had caused her search for his schedule to take just over a full week- she’d been fascinated by that discovery, and had scanned most the rest of his body. It seemed very much like he could come into direct contact with and ingest almost any plant, including things like poison ivy, without issue.

She found herself hoping that the transformation was just another temporary symptom; she did not fancy explaining why Draco had been turned into a filly… and couldn’t be turned back to a human; she’d already verified that any kind of transformation magic would very quickly wear off, if it worked at all.

Speaking of which, there was another kind of magic that didn’t seem to be affecting him very much.

Back before the term started, she’d been contacted by his father, who had explained his special need.

Because the boy carried a family curse.

His hair would, if allowed to grow much at all, grind his scalp. So, he’d had to come to her twice a week to be magically shaven bald- and he also had to wear a wig.

Then, he’d been turned into a filly… and his mane, tail, and coat were all silky smooth and very soft to the touch.

The curse appeared to have been disrupted. She prayed, for his sake, that it had been broken completely, not just suspended. She hadn’t tried shaving his mane, tail, or fur- but she had placed monitoring spells to alert her to the first sign of injury, to allow her to come shave it the moment it became subject to that curse… if it ever did.

She rose from her seat, and headed over to check on him. As expected, he was still resting; his next meal wasn’t for another two hours, and assuming the seventy-two hour cycle that the symptoms had demonstrated so far continued, he wasn’t due for the next set for another twenty hours or so.

So she returned to her desk, stacked up all the class schedules, prepared thirteen thousand pieces of parchment and folders to put them in, and started down the schedules, creating class schedules for the individual students… for her records, so she knew who to inform next time.

She’d have to ask Professor McGonagall if it was possible to have duplicates of the individual students’ schedules sent to her at the beginning of each year, so she could file them for quick retrieval if something happened.

Lucius Malfoy scowled at his breakfast.

“D-Did Dobby forget something?”

He closed his eyes, and let out a groan. “No. Now go.”

It wasn’t anything the elf had forgotten. No; it was over a week since his last letter from Draco, who had been sending him letters almost daily… then this silence.

He’d even sent two to his son, but gotten no response.

He let out a sigh, and ate his food.

After breakfast, he would write a letter to the school matron, ask her if Draco was still doing okay. If he was still showing up for his regular haircuts.

Madam Pomfrey let out a sigh, upon reading the morning mail, and set it aside to start getting herself breakfast.

She hadn’t expected Lucius to ask about his son… and she knew that, if she told him the whole truth, there was a good chance the boy would face undue hardship. She wasn’t sure how much she could tell him- and to top it off, she knew better than to try lying or stonewalling; the man had a right to know.

The afternoon prior, she’d been with Draco for the seventy two hour mark again. He’d transformed again- into a human girl. He’d kept his mane from when he’d been a filly; it became his new waist-length hair… and she’d checked, it was still silky smooth.

Meanwhile, he’d responded to what appeared to be a severe chest pain.

So she’d stayed up the entire night, studying his new form- she’d noticed about two minutes after the transformation that he still had all vegetarian teeth. He could still only eat vegetables and water, but it looked like meat and other stuff would only give him an upset stomach, rather than a full-on allergic reaction like before.

Aside from that, she’d noticed that his headache seemed to be fading- her estimates put it fading completely at about twenty four hours after this latest transformation. .

She looked out into the wardroom again after her meal. Ever since the headache had started, Draco had been completely unable to sleep. She prayed, for his sake, that the pain would go away soon, and that he’d be able to sleep again. She was even willing to keep him in, under her medical excuse, for a day or two after he made a full recovery, to let him catch up on his sleep!

She looked back at Lucius’ letter, and tilted her head. It’d be two days before any reply to anything she sent got back, and that’d be the day of the seventy two hour mark.

She took a deep breath. If she told him his son had been turned into a horse, or into a girl, he’d probably flip out. But, she didn’t have to tell him the whole truth; as a matter of fact, he’d only really asked if the boy had been showing up for his haircuts.

She would tell him that he had been caught in a minor magical disaster a week ago, and had been recovering in the infirmary since. She’d tell him she didn’t know when he would be fit for discharge, but that she expected it to be soon.

Which she did expect it to be soon. The symptoms seemed to be fewer now, plus he was truly human, save only the vegetarian-only diet. His magic seemed to be inactive, but that fit Lyra’s description rather well- she could discharge him while his magic was still inactive, once all the rest of the symptoms disappeared, so long as he made daily visits to make sure he was still recovering properly.

She heaved a sigh. It didn’t feel right, but it was the best option she had.

She reached for a fresh piece of parchment.

Ginny Weasley stared out her bedroom window.

She wasn’t really staring out the window, of course; that was simply the direction her eyes were pointing.

She was contemplating.

It was something she’d contemplated many times over the last few weeks.

Should she go with the flow, and marry Harry Potter?

Should she instead try and break that marriage contract? Follow her heart?

Should she write to the Ministry and ask for it to be cancelled? It’d never actually be cancelled- Dumbledore and her mother would make sure of that- but her disagreement with it would be recorded. It would be recorded forever- and that record would haunt her for the rest of her life. That was the main reason she hadn’t done it already.

But then, especially once Harry Potter realized she had fallen for another man, would it be possible for them to be friends?

As near as she could tell, that answer was no.

That thought, that she would be forced to choose between her mother and her heart, had reduced her to tears for a week.

Nowadays, it still put tears in her eyes whenever she thought about it, but her mother- and the world- needed her to stay functioning, so she had determinedly suppressed those feelings. It wasn’t easy- such was her curse- but she could do it. She’d decided to declare that answer to be a yes, to herself and to the world. If she had to, she would push Harry off a cliff when nobody was looking. After stunning him, if he could apparate. Or maybe tie him up in the basement.

Well, no, she wouldn’t, but she might just run away, grab that boy her heart had called out to, and leave the country with him. Maybe- maybe even find out where all those new transfer students came from, that necessitated such a large train, and move to wherever that was.

She heaved a sigh.

She could still remember that boy with perfect clarity. Such was her curse- or, in this case, she was more inclined to call it her blessing. She would be able to recognize him on sight, completely independent of any pulls her heart made.

He was… imperfect, to say the least. He’d looked terribly undernourished- a little stunted, definitely small for his age; he was smaller than her. Something that her mother would have fixed as a matter of course, were he to come visit.

But seeing all his numerous scars and the way his glasses were held together with a lot of plastic tape- it couldn’t have been very easy to see through them- told a story of its own.

He had been mistreated. Underfed. And so on.

But he had persevered.

He had an inner strength to him, that she had- rather disappointingly- found absent in too many.

Like Ron. Sure, he was good at chess- but with anything else, he’d chicken out when the going got tough. It was often only by threatening to tell their mother, or having one of the older brothers present, that she’d get him to stick around long enough to finish a task that had been assigned to them.

She sighed again.

She wondered if that boy shared in her curse, or not.

Her curse…

She shuddered. She always did, when she thought about it. She could still remember when she’d gotten it with perfect clarity.

It was the morning of her eighth birthday. Ginnerva Weasley could feel that, even though she could also feel that she hadn’t awoken yet. It was a strange feeling she’d never experienced before.

She opened her eyes.

She could see… white. She sat up, and looked around.

Endless… white. As strange as it was, she found it oddly calming to look at, rather than the alarm she knew she should be feeling.

She was lying, now sitting, on a circular platform of this whiteness. It was almost like a bed, though it was soft to the touch and as solid as stone. She even looked down- and found that she was wearing some kind of strange, pure white robes. Even her skin seemed to be pure white.

She crawled to the edge of the platform, stepped off of it, and stood up, looking around.

The platform, once she was off of it, sank into oblivion. She was then standing on a featureless white floor, looking around at a dense white fog that obstructed her view any more than about fifteen feet away in any direction. The fog seemed to stand still when she moved around, like it was a fifteen-foot radius half-sphere of clarity in the middle. She made her way to the edge, and tried peering into the fog, but it resisted her. She pushed at it, but couldn’t get through it.

She tilted her head. It was strange, and even though she knew that meant she was trapped, she didn’t feel trapped. Did that mean there was a different point in all this fog that would let her through?

She tried that, and started clambering along the edge of the fog.

She was at the point of trying to climb it- without much success- when she heard a distant voice drifting out of the fog. It sounded almost like it was the wind speaking, though there didn’t seem to be any wind.

“Ginnerva?”

She looked in the direction it came from, moved to the center of her space, and called out in response. “Hello?”

“Ginnerva?”

“That’s me,” she answered. “Who’s there?”

“I am an ancient goddess of old,” the voice spoke. “I am not here; this realm, that you see, is the inside of your mind.”

She looked around. “It’s so… white.”

“It’s so pure,” the voice corrected. “You are so pure. It’s very rare, any more, to find one so pure.”

“Okay?”

The voice almost seemed to chuckle. “And you’re also very much a Gryffindor at heart. Good.”

She nodded. “Well yeah. My family has always been in Gryffindor.”

This time, it truly did chuckle. “Dear girl, I have a very important mission for you, should you wish to take it.”

“Alright,” she nodded. “I’ll do it.”

It paused. “I have not told you what it is yet.” It was not a question.

She nodded. “I know.”

“Yet you are already agreeing to it?”

“Yes.”

“Alright then. I like your determination.” A pause. “Your mission… will be to reintroduce wizardkind to the muggle world- and vice versa. Don’t rush yourself; you’ve got an entire lifetime to do that in. Wizards need to realize that muggle society is ready for wizardkind to return to it- and the muggles deserve to be paid for what wizardkind is taking from them.”

She nodded. “... Okay. Um…”

It wasn’t done yet. “To help you in that mission, I give you the gift… of vision.”

Something seemed to touch the inside of her head, and the fog blasted out in all directions, vanishing without a trace. She looked around the now enormous plane of whiteness, all the way out to the brightly lit distance, and found herself feeling suddenly lonely. “Woah.” She spotted a spark of light some fifty feet behind her just moments before it spoke again.

“You will now remember anything and everything in perfect detail… and see into the souls of those around you. As a side effect, it should be distinctly easy for you to tell when you have found true love. You will also be able to come back here whenever you want.”

Then it sparkled… and disappeared, leaving a glowing white scar floating in the air.

She sat on the endless, featureless surface, and wrapped her arms around her legs, somehow understanding that the goddess would not be able to hear her anymore… nor she the goddess. “Why am I… alone?”

She closed her eyes… and opened them again, willing herself to wake up.

It worked. She sat up in her bed, looked around her room.

The lonely feeling was still there.

Author's Notes:

People get worried when you disappear for a couple weeks... usually...

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Since I've still got some 12 or more chapters in the queue, the daily update cycle will persist for another week. Look forward to it!

Chapter 21

“Well, Fred. Do you think it’s him?”

Fred Weasley nodded silently, in answer to his brother’s muttered question. “How do you suppose we go about it?”

George scowled. “Hmm… He has to know he’s famous.”

“But he hasn’t been drawing attention to himself.”

George nodded. “He’s clearly not a fan of it. Then it seems he’s already got himself one friend.”

Fred grinned, glancing over to where the boy they were fairly sure was Harry Potter was sitting next to the bushy brown-haired girl they were also fairly sure was Hermione Granger. “And a pretty close one at that.” The two first-years were sitting side by side in the same chair, made possible by their small frames, while they studied something. The girl had her wand out, with a hand on either end of it, and would occasionally lay it against the boy’s arm for a few seconds.

George tilted his head. “Come to think of it…”

“Is that something normal friends do?” Fred asked.

They looked into each other’s eyes, nodded once, and headed out to meet the duo.

“You know,” Fred began, drawing their attention, “you make a cute couple.”

They both blushed, the boy more than the girl.

“So we’ve heard,” the girl intoned.

The twins knew instantly that they need not explore that avenue any more.

“Anyways,” George smiled. “It’s nice to meet you!”

“I’m Fred,”

“And I’m George.”

“We’re pretty well known around here,” Fred mused.

“Well,” George scowled, “We were, until… that happened.” He gestured at the room at large, which was filled mostly by Equestrians.

“So you… may or may not have heard of us,” Fred finished.

“Ahh,” the girl mumbled, before nodding to herself. “You’re the Weasley twins, right?” She sounded unsure.

“That’s us!” Fred announced.

“Nice to meet you,” George bowed, extending a hand in greeting.

The girl smiled. “Nice to meet you too. I’m Hermione, and this is Harry.”

Fred gasped theatrically. “You’re Hermione?” he asked.

“Like, the Hermione, ahh, whateveryourlastnamewas?” George finished.

Hermione, who had been startled by Fred’s question, blinked twice, then laughed. “Yeah, no, I don’t think so.”

Harry chuckled. “You never know. Hang around the likes of me for very long, and you’ll be famous in your own right.” He grinned, winking at her.

She rolled her eyes. “Yeah, right. I don’t think fame is contagious. But anyways.” She looked up at the twins. “I’m curious what life is normally like here at Hogwarts, before all the Equestrians showed up?”

Draco Malfoy was… nervous, to say the least.

It had been two weeks since he disappeared into the Hospital Wing. He’d been there for almost two full days after all the pain had gone away- and, the way he heard it, he’d turned back into a boy.

Madam Pomfrey had explained it. Apparently, when the headache amplified itself, he’d been turned into some kind of pony… then, when the chest pain came, he’d become a human again- albeit female and with a vegetarian-only diet.

Now… She’d spent much of the last two days scanning him in as many ways as she could think of.

He was still not human, per se, but he seemed to have stopped changing. According to her, he didn’t lose anything- except that his magic hadn’t fully recovered yet, and so would be completely unusable for a few more days.

He knew that the only reason she’d let him leave the Hospital Wing now, rather than in another week- or more- when it all wore off, was because she knew as well as he did that people would already be talking about it.

And the problems that could arise from that.

He had appearances to maintain, and appearances that he could maintain once again. He’d have to keep his long, silvery hair tied up under his hat in the meantime; it had proven impractical to cut, as it regrew all the way to his waist in just a couple of hours. He’d also have to return to the Hospital Wing for a ‘check up’ every day, including covering each of the seventy two hour marks, until he was fully recovered.

And besides. Just because his magic hadn’t fully recovered yet didn’t mean he couldn’t still learn the theoretical parts of his classes. Madam Pomfrey had switched the excuses she sent to his teachers from a full medical excuse to a partial one, excusing him from any and all practical portions.

He took a deep breath, and paused just outside his Charms classroom.

It was a different Charms class than he’d had in his first week. In that class, both the instructors had seemed confused with what they were teaching, like they hadn’t learned it themselves yet.

In this class… He hadn’t had an opportunity to show up for it yet. He hoped that the instructors for his new class time actually knew what they were doing.

He remembered one from the Leaky Cauldron- Bonbon- but he only knew the name of the other instructor, Hermione Granger.

He took a deep breath, glancing up at the clock over the door. He was… seven minutes early, and had just come directly from the Hospital Wing. He could hear the sound of other students on approach.

He reached up one hand, and knocked, before pushing the door open.

There were two people already there, sitting on a couple of the desks up front, where they had evidently been chatting. One was an Equestrian- which he quickly recognized as Bonbon.

The other looked to be British, and had bushy brown hair.

It was this second one, with the brown hair, that spoke first. “Well hello,” she greeted, hopping off the desk to step forward and shake his hand. He noticed her eyes flicking down to the nametag on his robes for a half-second as she approached. “Nice to have you, Mr. Malfoy.”

He wrinkled his nose at the address.

She paused briefly. “... Would you prefer I not call you that?”

He nodded tersely. “Just ‘Malfoy’ is fine.”

She bowed her head. “Alright then. I’m aware that Madam Pomfrey excused you from the practical component today- I hope you’re doing alright, with whatever necessitated that?”

He winced. “Eh.”

She shrugged. “Well, then I hope it gets better soon.” She glanced up at Bonbon. “Oh, and we’ll be your instructors for this class; I’m Hermione Granger, and this is Bonbon.”

Time for a real-world test, Hermione thought. It had been three weeks since she gained access to the Hogwarts library, and three weeks since she first encountered the Cutie Mark Crusaders. This might be Draco Malfoy’s first class, after two weeks of medical absence, but he wasn’t able to do any of the practical parts yet.

Fortunately, that had been an easy fix- and one she’d been planning with Bonbon before he arrived. He was given the study materials from the last few classes, and expected to study them… and ask questions if he had them.

Bonbon had taken over, though- releasing her to tackle the Crusaders.

She already knew that Bonbon expected her new approach not to work, because of the differences between British and Equestrian magics.

She was a little worried herself, about that same difference; she’d so far only tested this technique with willing British students, primarily Harry and, at the end, the Weasley twins. Meaning, she had no idea what results to expect from an Equestrian.

And she was going to try it with Sweetie Belle.

She knew that Bonbon half expected her to blow herself up. She had described it as temporarily connecting herself to Sweetie on a magical level.

But Bonbon had never tried this either- and her handcrafted spell had safeties in it against that very eventuality.

As she approached, Sweetie Belle dropped her wand on her desk, as she had come to do whenever she approached. For some reason, her wand was liable to explode on a moment’s notice, and produce some very strange, localized effects. Bonbon had explained that, from past experience, those effects would be harmless to Equestrians- but they didn’t know how dangerous they might be to her, so it was best if she didn’t get caught in them.

She smiled. “Hey, Sweetie. I’ve got something that might help with that.”

The girl blinked, looking up. “You do?”

She nodded, stepping around behind her. “Yep. Hold still for a second, please.”

“Got it.”

She then held both ends of her own wand, muttered a few incantations… and touched the middle of the wand, very gently, against the back of Sweetie’s neck. She’d found that to be the best point to touch with everyone she’d tried it with; the wrist of the wand arm was a close second.

She got a sudden flow of information, and had to pause for a second to sort it all out. It was all unfamiliar…

Then, after another second, she recognized the critical component.

“Ahh,” she muttered. “You’ve certainly got a lot of magic.” She muttered another incantation. “Okay… Can you feel this?” She used the new spell to, ever so gently, prod the raging inferno inside the girl.

Sweetie shivered. “Y-Yeah. What is…?”

“That’s your magic. I want you to focus on it, concentrate on it. Become one with it.”

Sweetie closed her eyes, and shuddered. “It’s… It’s…”

“Yes, it’s like a raging bonfire. See if you can smooth it out- form it into a stream. Like…” One last incantation, that would let Sweetie see her own magic, however briefly. “Like mine. See that?”

Sweetie nodded, and mumbled. “Yeah… I think. Um…”

Hermione continued coaching Sweetie through it. It took close to half an hour of constant attention, and drained Hermione quite thoroughly; ambient magic wasn’t enough to power the spell completely, so she’d had to design it to draw on her innate reserves as well.

But Sweetie managed it. The raging inferno, under intense concentration, flattened into a smooth, cohesive stream.

“Alright,” Hermione muttered, trying not to pant from the exhaustion of her magical exertion. “Hold that… and take your wand.”

Sweetie lifted her wand gingerly- but nothing happened.

“Okay. Repeat after me: Lumos.”

“Lumos,” Sweetie muttered.

“Good. Now, keeping that stream smooth, open your eyes.”

Sweetie did. “Is… Did I do that?” She was staring at the tip of her wand, glowing brightly, as if a small lightbulb had been attached to the end of it.

Hermione noticed Bonbon, halfway across the room, staring at her, but ignored it. “Yep. Now: Nox.”

Sweetie repeated the incantation after her, and the light went out.

Sweetie dropped her wand, and looked at her hands, releasing her concentration on her magic. “I… I did magic.”

Hermione cancelled all her spells and straightened up, stowing her own wand. “Yep. And, so long as you form your magic into that stream every time, you can do it again.”

“Hermione,” Bonbon began, making her way towards them. “How… How in the world did you do that?”

She tilted her head. “Do what?”

“You managed to teach a Crusader magic. How did you do that?”

Hermione shrugged. “Carefully.”

Sweetie giggled.

Hermione smiled down at Sweetie. “I don’t know how your Raeth magic works, but I’d guess it’d benefit from that as well.”

Bonbon scowled. “Sure you did.”

At the end of class, Hermione stayed behind in the classroom, with Bonbon. She’d gotten the distinct feeling the girl wanted to talk to her alone.

Once the door landed closed behind the last student, she sighed, and turned to Bonbon. “Yes?”

Bonbon answered with only a single word. “How?”

“Carefully,” she smiled. “I built safeties into that spell to protect me from any kind of backlash- then I used it to help her find and calm her magic.”

Bonbon blinked. “Wait. You made that spell?”

“Yeah?”

“And you haven’t even known about magic for two months.”

“Yeah?”

Bonbon shook her head… then looked up sharply and grinned. “You know what? I need to introduce you to Twilight.”

“Twilight? Wasn’t she one of the ones that did the instructor thingy?”

Bonbon nodded. “Right, yes. But, I need to introduce you to her again. And to Moondancer, Lyra, Luna, Sunset, and Starlight. Because by Celestia did we underestimate you.”

She blinked. “What?”

She sighed. “Oh, you’ll see. And I have to ask… what did that spell do?”

“It… Well, the main spell had six sequential incantations, then-!”

Bonbon’s hand had hit her forehead. “So not only are you inventing new spells, but you’re already building compound spells, heretofore unknown to wizardkind?”

She blinked. “What?”

“Compound spells, up until now, have only existed in Equestria, because Equestrian magic doesn’t require an incantation. If it takes multiple incantations to launch it, that sounds like a compound spell. I bet you have to say them at the right times and stuff, or it’ll all fall apart?”

She nodded. “Yeah,” she muttered slowly. “Is… Whatever. But that main spell only really let me find their magic, and see it directly. The other two spells layered on top of it, and worked inside it- one to allow me to ‘prod’ their magic, to draw their attention to it, and the other to let them see my magic for a couple seconds. I only really helped Sweetie find her magic, and encouraged her as she got it to behave on her own.”

She nodded slowly. “So that spell allowed you to do in half an hour what dozens of skilled teachers failed to do in hundreds of hours… by finding her magic?”

“Uh… I guess?”

“Huh.” Bonbon tilted her head. “Out of… curiosity, can you try it on me?”

She shook her head. “Not right now, sorry. The ambient energies aren’t enough to power it, so I had to make it draw on me as well, and…” She winced, unsure of how to finish it.

“And it took so much to do it for Sweetie that you’re already suffering from thaumic exhaustion?” Bonbon asked.

“Uh… I think? I mean… I’m probably going to sleep like a log tonight, but…”

Bonbon sighed. “Yeah… one of the side effects of thaumic exhaustion. Don’t run yourself completely empty, or you’ll knock yourself out for a few hours.” She winced. “Well, an Equestrian doing that would just knock themselves out for a few hours, but we don’t know how you might differ.”

Author's Notes:

Well, Draco's finally out of the Hospital Wing, albeit provisionally... and Hermione seems to be doing the impossible, for no better reason than that she doesn't know it's impossible.

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Did I forget to publish this today?

... Well, obviously not, but I did for four hours after I planned to! Sorry about that!

Chapter 22

Fred and George Weasley were never nervous, worried, or anything like that.

If ever something interrupted them, or messed up their plans, they would improvise. They would find a way. And they had the full confidence that, no matter what happened to their plans, they could continue to do that, and accomplish whatever it was they were trying to do, no matter the opposition.

But George and Fred Weasley were nervous.

Voldemort was the one and only exception to that confidence. Plus, it wasn’t even their plan.

And now, that entire plan hinged on Ron making friendly contact with Harry.

They’d been able to learn enough, from chatting with Harry and his friend Hermione (who was most vehemently not his girlfriend, even though they looked so much like a girlfriend/boyfriend pair), that they were reasonably sure Harry was following close enough to Dumbledore’s plan that it could still be salvaged. They’d told Dumbledore that in a direct letter, and the response they’d gotten back had been nothing if not relieved. Though there had been a note of alarm, regarding Harry’s position as a student instructor- apparently, the Headmaster had not heard that.

But they could not guide the boy the way Ron could, without drawing attention to their doing so. They weren’t in his year.

Even so, Ron wouldn’t be able to guide him as well as the plan had called for; they didn’t share any classes.

They were worried that he would screw up the greeting, and permanently alienate himself from Harry. If he did that, it was more than likely that Harry would depart from the planned path… and never return to it.

They weren’t allowing any of that worry to show.

“Ahh,” George said, snagging a passing Ron’s hand, and pulling him in towards them. “This is Ron, our brother.”

“Leave me alone,” Ron grumbled. “I’m looking for Harry.”

Fred didn’t miss the way Hermione’s eyes narrowed, or how Harry’s eyes closed exasperatedly. Ron was clearly already on the wrong foot. He suppressed a sigh. “Ron, meet Hermione Granger, and Harry Potter.”

His statement got no response from the duo, but Ron froze completely for a second.

“Did-?” Ron began, before turning to face them. “H-Harry? Then-!” He took a deep breath, and looked towards Harry. “There you are, Harry! I’ve been looking for you everywhere!”

Both twins facepalmed in perfect unison.

“We’ve heard,” Hermione barked.

George’s hand fell with his jaw. Fred wasn’t much better- his jaw didn’t fall quite as far. How could they have known Ron was looking for Harry?

“Why?” Harry asked Ron.

“Why?” Ron repeated back, surprised. “Because… Because I…”

George glanced sideways, to where a blue-and-white haired Equestrian had just stepped out of the crowd, arms folded and an expression of guarded curiosity on her face.

“Because you were looking for Famous Harry Potter, and hoping he’d have gold and jewels?” Harry suggested sarcastically.

“Ah- No, I-!”

Harry gave him a level look. “Because you wanted to be my friend?”

Ron seemed to give up on words, and just nodded.

“Well get in line,” Harry instructed. “You’re the… what?” He looked at Hermione. “Four thousandth?”

Hermione checked her notebook. “Yeah. Forty eight seventy third.”

Harry nodded. “You’re the four thousand eight hundred and seventy third person to say hi with the express purpose of making friends. Get in line, and don’t bother talking to me again.” He leaned back in the seat, letting out a sigh.

Hermione leaned back as well, as Ron- looking confused- was shoved away by Fred. “You know, I kinda wonder how it took him so long to do that. I mean, he sleeps in the same room as you, doesn’t he?”

Harry nodded. “As a matter of fact, he sleeps in the bed right next to mine.” He wrinkled his nose. “I wonder if the Equestrians have an empty room somewhere?”

Fred winced. “I’m… sorry about that.”

“We,” George corrected. “We are sorry about that. He’s usually not so…” He trailed off, shaking his head.

Fred shook his head as well. “But that’s what happens when you give him an important task. After all, he’s not, ahh…”

“The brightest crayon in the box?” Hermione suggested.

“Y-yeah,” Fred said slowly. “I… I hate to admit it, but yes, that fits. Doesn’t it, Fred?”

George nodded- and didn’t miss Harry’s- or that blue-and-white-haired Equestrian’s- amused smiles. “Wish it didn’t, but it does, George.”

“So,” Hermione began, leaning forward. “What important task?”

The twins blinked in unison. “Ahh…”

Harry raised his eyebrows questioningly at them.

“Err…” They averted their gazes… and met the blue-and-white-haired Equestrian’s gaze.

“What important task?” the girl repeated- wait, no, that wasn’t just any Equestrian, it was that girl from the Leaky Cauldron- what was her name… Lyra? She folded her arms, tilting her head inquisitively. The rest of her body language informed them that she would not give up.

They looked the other way.

“Um…”

Hermione sighed. “It’s secret, isn’t it?”

“Y-Yeah,” George muttered, looking at the floor in front of him. “Though… if…”

Lyra tilted her head the other way. “How about if we find an empty classroom to talk in? Could you tell us there?”

They looked at each other, sighed, and looked back forward. “Might as well.”

Harry and Hermione snapped their books shut in perfect unison. “Right then, let’s go,” Hermione stated, as they both stood.

Lyra blinked. “Okay. Um… Classroom E-17 should be empty right now.”

“Lead the way,” Harry instructed her.

The twins nodded mutely, and followed.

They could hope that Harry would understand… and follow the path.

Or that Lyra knew the right people in the Equestrian circles to make that path unnecessary.

Nothing else they could think of would work.

“So,” Lyra began. “You’re telling us that Dumbledore has this elaborate plan to defeat this world’s local Big Bad, and in order to do so, he has to manipulate hundreds of people, including controlling every aspect of Harry’s life, so Harry can become a martyr?”

Fred nodded. They’d just explained the plan, and Dumbledore’s planned path for Harry.

“Even though he has to have known that the unpredictable nature of the new-DADA-instructor-every-year thing is going to screw with any plans he makes?”

George nodded.

“And he decided to push those plans anyways, even after enough Equestrians entered Hogwarts to outnumber Wizarding Britain?”

Fred nodded. “That did seem a bit strange to us, but…”

Lyra folded her arms. “Huh. I wonder…” She turned to Harry and Hermione, who both had hands on their foreheads- from facepalming. “Something tells me they didn’t find you right away.”

George shook his head. “No.”

“Actually,” Hermione said, the corner of her mouth bending in a grin as she lowered her hand. “You did, on the train. You just didn’t know you did, because we said no.”

“... Oh.”

“I wonder how you found them here?” Lyra asked.

“Ahh… Dumbledore took forever to look up his class schedule, and sent it to us. I think it was, what, three weeks?” Fred looked at his brother. “Four?”

George shrugged. “Thereabouts, yes.”

Lyra snorted. “Shoulda asked Professor McGonagall. We gave her six copies of each student’s schedule, all nice and sorted, from the moment we built them. But that does suggest he hasn’t been thinking very straight, doesn’t it?” She looked at Harry. “Perhaps he’s still at the point of trying to cobble together the remains of a plan that has already been blown to smithereens, and hasn’t yet realized he needs to accept that new variables have entered play?” She folded her arms. “Because if anything else, we are not going to surrender anyone. We’ve faced a couple Big Bads over in Equestria, and beat every one of them without losing anyone. Any less is unacceptable.”

Lyra looked between Harry, Hermione, Fred, and George, who were all looking at her.

She shrugged. “Well, it’s unacceptable in Equestria. I see no reason why it should be acceptable here either. In any case, dooming someone to be surrendered is unacceptable.”

By the time they left that classroom as empty as they had found it fully three hours prior, both Fred and George had stopped worrying.

Lyra knew the right people in the Equestrian circles.

Author's Notes:

"Where we're going, we don't need Ron Weasley."

Credit to Shadowfalcon76 for pointing out the source for that quote to me.

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Chapter 23

Draco wasn’t sure what had caught his attention at the Gryffindor table as he walked past, but something did. It was Tuesday evening, just the day after he’d been “discharged” from Madam Pomfrey’s care. That day had included another seventy two hour mark, so Madam Pomfrey had excused him entirely from his afternoon classes, and kept him in the Hospital Wing for a few hours. After spending those hours scanning him, she’d told him his Animagus magic had fully returned, but that was about it.

Which, considering he wasn’t an animagus, didn’t mean much.

He approached the Gryffindor table, scanning the part of it that had caught his eye. It looked to him like a good number of the Gryffindors were coming for dinner, as he was.

At least Crabbe and Goyle were waiting for him at the Slytherin table- he didn’t have to worry about them.

Then… he spotted it.

Exactly what he did not want to spot.

In order to appease his father’s worries, he’d sent a letter on Monday, telling what had happened. Well… some of what had happened; he hadn’t been entirely truthful. His father didn’t need to know that it wasn’t a genuine magical accident.

The response he’d gotten this morning had been… displeased. He’d been instructed to save face, by meeting- and beating- the famous Potter boy, preferably in a duel.

He’d hoped to avoid encountering Harry Potter until his father gave up on that, and told him to do something different.

But there was no mistaking that lightning-bolt-shaped scar.

He’d spotted it when Harry had thrown his head back in laughter, at something the bushy brown-haired girl next to him had said- wait, no, that was Hermione Granger, one of the instructors in his Charms class.

He took a deep breath, and approached.

He still didn’t know what had caught his eye.

How was he going to do it, without looking like he had done it intentionally? He’d have to incite an argument, probably, to invite an insult he could respond to. But how could he do that?

And in front of one of his instructors, to boot?

He was almost there.

This action his father wanted to take would be his undoing.

Then Hermione looked up.

“Oh hey, good timing, Draco! I’m doing a bit of a research project, comparing Equestrian and British magics, but I need participants. We’ll be in classroom, uh,” she glanced down at her notebook again, “D-3 after dinner tonight- think you could spread the word at the Slytherin table, so anyone interested can come? I don’t expect it to take very long at all, but I do expect to be able to learn quite a bit.”

He raised an eyebrow. “With Gryffindors?”

“Oh, no, I’m hoping for as many British students as I can get from each of the four houses, and around twenty Equestrians from each as well. I’ve already told the Hufflepuffs, and Professor Flitwick will be telling the Ravenclaws for me.”

“Ahh.” Quick, he told himself, pretend you never saw the scar. “Yeah, I’ll be there.” Praying Potter isn’t on the same side of the room as me.

He nodded his head slightly, turned, and walked away from the table. He could claim he’d meant to ask her a question, since she was one of his instructors, and been sidetracked by her request.

“So…”

Hermione jumped, turning sharply, and relaxed herself. “Please don’t sneak up on me like that, Lyra.”

Lyra, who had been close enough she’d been whipped in the face by Hermione’s hair, scowled. “Sorry.” She sat down next to Hermione, on the side Harry wasn’t on. “What’s this I heard about a research project?”

Hermione looked at her. “I assume Bonbon told you what I did in class yesterday?”

She nodded. “I heard you taught Sweetie Belle to use magic.”

“Yeah. But I did it in a rather unique way. I experimented with it a bit more last night, and started noticing some differences. I want to say I can tell which tribe an Equestrian belongs to by looking at their magic. Don’t know for sure, since I knew the tribe of everyone I looked at ahead of time, but…” She shrugged. “I also noticed a few differences in the British people I looked at- so my hypothesis is that British students can also be divided into tribes.” She shrugged. “If so, I want to see how much I can learn about the British tribes, and how similar- or dissimilar- they are to the Equestrian tribes.”

Lyra tilted her head. “How might that be useful…?”

“Well, if the correlation is strong enough, you and your people could potentially use information like it to help evaluate if a given first-year student is eligible for the extended teaching program… and what they’ll likely be good at. I heard you basically guessed with me and Harry, and even then weren’t sure until after we were at the heads of our own classes, soo…”

Lyra tilted her head. “... True.” She put a hand to her chin. “This next year, I’m hoping to get a list of all the British first-years as soon as the Hogwarts staff can get it, meet as many of them in the Leaky Cauldron as possible, and possibly even start making housecalls to meet the rest. Depending on what information you’re able to procure…” She grinned. “Could make the search that much easier. Mind if I watch?”

Hermione nodded. “Go ahead, but please don’t tell me anything I don’t ask for. Until I ask for anything I might be missing.” She shrugged. “I don’t want to miss something by reason of expectation.”

“Got it. Though… with a large number of students, how are you going to remember enough to compare your discoveries?”

She tapped her wand, resting next to her plate, with one finger. “Memory charm.” She blinked. “Er, not the one normally called a ‘memory charm’, that makes you forget- this one will enhance my memory of what happens in there. And I’ll be writing a lot down, too.”

“I wish I could say we were here with good news,” the Prime Minister of England grumbled, as the rest of his cabinet gathered in the secret conference room that didn’t have a picture in it that set off motion detectors.

The Secretary of Defense sighed. “How bad is it?”

“Not very,” he answered. “I think.”

“... You think,” the press secretary repeated.

He nodded. “I think. As for what happened… You probably heard about the mass rolling stock acquisition and return in America?”

Nods went around the room.

“I heard the wizards covered their tracks pretty well on that one,” the Secretary of Foreign Relations mused. “Lotsa memory charms, and they even thought to ask which ones were planned to go unused for a few days, too. I heard some of them even got paid, though they couldn’t remember what they were paid for.” He shrugged. “Security cameras did.”

“Exactly,” the Prime Minister continued. “I just received communication from the Minister for Magic.”

“Oh boy,” the Secretary of the Interior sighed, leaning back in her chair.

He nodded. “Turns out it wasn’t an American operation at all, even though they acquired all American stock.” He looked up, down the full length of the table. “Hogwarts experienced a sudden explosion in attendance- and the wizards found themselves needing the rolling stock to carry some thirteen thousand students to the school this year. Where those students came from… He was hoping I knew where ‘Equestria’ was.”

“Equestria?” the Secretary of Defense asked, tilting her head. “Sounds almost like it was made up- but with thirteen thousand students… Do you think it’s possible they are a confirmation of the Multiverse Theory?”

“Possible. In any case, if they’ve got that many new students at Hogwarts, wherever they came from, the wizarding population is going to be exploding in the coming years. We’re going to have to step up our game with the Wizarding Investigations, and look into the possibility of introducing the general population to them before long.” He sighed. “And… Minister Fudge wanted to know how hard it would be, and how much it would cost, to acquire a large amount of rolling stock to be permanently assigned to the Hogwarts Express. Said the locomotives they acquired, however temporarily, from America did a wonderful job, even if they were a bit unsightly- and that any components that might overload could be magically reinforced, post-delivery, without issue.”

The Press Secretary snorted. “Yeah, those freight locomotives would be a bit unsightly on a passenger train.”

The Secretary of the Interior scowled. “They don’t have the space to store any more rolling stock. Their shed’s full as-is.” She tilted her head. “Hmm… How plausible might it be to connect the Wizarding Line to the National Rail Network, and locate a shed- and/or storage yard- for them somewhere else?”

Author's Notes:

Suddenly, more pieces than ever before enter the puzzle... Dumbledore's plan is so totally screwed. Frankly, so is Voldemort's.

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Interlude: On the Implications of Tribal Magic in British Wizards

Many a person at Hogwarts this year, from students to instructors to even ghosts, are well aware of the number of Equestrian students attending- and equally aware that the Equestrian students are invisibly, magically divided into three tribes- Raeth, Aethr, and Etrah. The Equestrian tribal magic allows members of the Raeth tribe to use wandless magic at an almost instinctual level, while also making it very difficult for them to use a wand at all. The Etrah tribe is the most powerful, in terms of wand magic, and is also physically the strongest. The Aethr tribe gets a mix of both worlds: Some difficulty using wand magic, some physical strength, and, in a few notable cases, extreme physical speed.

But British wizards express none of these Equestrian magic effects; we do not have Equestrian magic.

Thus, when I discovered on Sept. 27, 2021 that the magical flow within the form of an Equestrian is comparable to that within a British wizard, I asked the question.

Can British wizards be divided into tribes of their own? What effects does it have?

As it turns out, from a preliminary study conducted on Sept. 28, the answer to the first question is yes.

For this study, we gathered a large group of volunteers and compared their thaumic flow patterns. British participants numbered 169 witches and wizards: G-23F, 22M; R-27F, 21M; H-15F, 12M; S-21F, 22M, plus all four Heads of House, the Headmaster, and the Gamekeeper. Equestrian participants numbered 533 witches and wizards: G-92F, 6M; R-273F, 19M; H-57F, 3M; S-79F, 4M. As lopsided as it appeared, the male/female distribution of Equestrian participants was approximately representative of all Equestrian students.

The magical flow patterns inside each participant were evaluated together and individually. It was found that not all Equestrians fall into the three tribes; a few lesser tribes were discovered, but could not be named. Some of these lesser tribes were merely highly specialized versions of the main three.

The British participants present were found to demonstrate flow patterns bearing extremely high similarity to Equestrian participants, and were also found to be divided into what appeared to be the same three tribes.

Naturally, there were a few exceptions. Two staff members, who were known to be possessed with recent, nonhuman ancestry, were found to not belong to any known tribe. All the other British participants could be classified into one of the three tribes; however, I found that nearly fifteen percent of British participants belonged to the specialized tribal variants, which are reportedly extremely rare in Equestria.

In an effort to identify any personality or lifestyle differences between tribes, we gave all participants a survey, containing questions relating to tribe, personal tastes, preferred lifestyle, and skills.

Members of the Aethr Tribe tended to have significantly more energy than the other tribes. Aethrs are prone to run around freely and lawlessly, and poke at what they want to; a vast majority of Gryffindors were found to be Aethrs. Of those that had experience on a broom, well over ninety percent of Aethrs were found to be naturals. Upper-year Aethr participants tended to be best at Care of Magical Creatures and Charms. It is worth note that very few Aethrs ever got lost more than twice on the way to class, even on the first day of their first year. Not one of the members of the specialized tribal variant remembered getting lost even once, suggesting a gift for navigation.

Members of the Etrah Tribe tended to be the calmest, the most receptive to rules, and had the best work ethics. Etrahs generally have no qualms with spending long hours doing manual labor, and tend to be stronger than the other tribes; a vast majority of Hufflepuffs were found to be Etrahs. Of those that had experience on a broom, not one was a natural- and well over ninety percent were found to have had severe difficulties learning to fly. Upper-year Etrah participants tended to be best at Herbology and Potions; to the point where only one non-Etrah participant had achieved an ‘Outstanding’ OWL in Potions, while about three quarters of all upper-year Etrahs had achieved such. Not one of the members of the specialized tribal variant had scored less than an ‘Outstanding’ on their Potions OWL. It is worth note that a vast majority of muggleborn Etrah participants enjoyed working on the family farm prior to coming to Hogwarts; those of wizarding descent were often found to enjoy helping their parents produce products for a family business, such as robes or cauldrons.

Members of the Raeth tribe tend to be calm and collected most of the time, but possessing of a short temper. Raeths were found to be almost universally possessed by a sense of curiosity, though a vast majority were willing to sate that curiosity through books, rather than experimentation; a vast majority of Ravenclaws were found to be Raeths. Of those that had experience on a broom, Raeths appeared to have no particular difficulty- or lack thereof- in flight. Some Raeths were as bad as the Etrahs; some were as good as the Aethrs. Upper-year Raeths turned out to be fairly well-rounded; they tended to have a high overall grade, and be particularly good at Transfiguration and Runes, though their Herbology scores tended to suffer. Equestrian Raeths have had extreme difficulty getting their wands to function, but a majority of British Raeths were found to have successfully taught themselves at least one spell prior to their first year at Hogwarts- and the rest experienced little or no difficulty learning their first spells after arriving. It is worth note that a majority of upper-year Raeth participants hoped for future jobs as instructors, designers, or magical engineers.

Participants from Slytherin House were found to have an approximately equal distribution between the tribes, and a majority of British Slytherins, especially those belonging to the Raeth or Aethr tribes, expressed either dissatisfaction or active dislike with their lot in life. It is worth note that these dissatisfied Slytherins were almost exclusively from pureblooded families of high birth, and that such dissatisfaction was found to taper off in later years, suggesting indoctrination.

It is worth note that muggleborn, half-blood, and pure-blood participants were each approximately evenly distributed across the tribes, suggesting that tribal identity is either random, or persistent in muggles as well.

We also had a few magical and physical tests, the results of which were analyzed on a by-tribe basis, with separation between Equestrian and British tribes. Physical exercises showed the same differences mentioned on the survey; differences between British tribes were far smaller than between the comparable Equestrian tribes, due to Equestrian tribal magic, but remained distinct and recognizable.

Magical results varied widely.

Equestrian Raeths were found to have direct, instinctive, and conscious control of their innate magic; many were able to demonstrate minor magical effects such as object levitation.

British Raeths were found to be natural silent spellcasters- requiring little or no training to use silent incantations, possibly thanks to a broader magical bond with their wand. While lacking in instinctive, conscious control of innate magic, some British Raeths were able to demonstrate limited control of their innate magic for wandless capabilities, commonly referred to as ‘wandless magic’; all such Raeths remained fully capable of wandless magic when separated from their wands. None demonstrated sufficient control for effects on the scale of the Equestrians, though the basic capability was demonstrated.

Equestrian Aethrs were found to have instinctive control of their innate magic. The only effect produced during our study was a mild electric current arcing through the hair, which was described by the students in question as ‘weather magic’.

British Aethrs were found to suffer only slightly in wandless capabilities when separated from their wands. Additionally, Aethrs were found to be capable of casting wand magic through their wands without issue when separated from the wand in question by as much as three feet, with no regard for obstructions. This included when another was holding their wand. Aethrs were found to be uniquely capable of summoning their wand mentally, not unlike how they might summon a broomstick, when separated by up to six feet. A quick trial showed the plausibility of this effect being used to retain control of their wand when struck by the disarming charm, though any such capability in an uncontrolled environment, such as a duel or legitimate combat, would require training and practice.

Equestrian Etrahs did not demonstrate any magic during our indoor study; however, common Equestrian wisdom indicated that Etrah magic took form mostly in their massive physical strength, and also made them natural farmers, giving them the gift to tell exactly what any given plant did or didn’t need, at a glance.

British Etrahs, however, demonstrated an ability to use their wand as if holding it from as far as fifty feet away, provided they were linked by stone or other earthen materials; when paired with a summoning charm, this was shown to give them the ability to retrieve their wand from such distances. Wandless magic was found to be significantly weaker than Raeth or Aethr wandless magic. A wandless power boost could be acquired, bringing them just above Raeth or Aethr levels, by either direct contact with their wand, or direct contact with stone or other earthen materials. Interestingly enough, a wandless defensive barrier was found to be far stronger when cast by an Etrah than by a Raeth or Aethr, even when without the power boost of stone or wand. Some upper-year Etrahs showed a low-level ability to see through stone or other earthen materials, or to see from it.

It is worth note that none of these wand-related tribal abilities (remote use, wandless magic boost, etc.) functioned with another wizard’s wand, only their own.

This concludes the material findings of our study.

Yes, we British witches and wizards are divided into tribes, and are possessed with tribal magic.

Thus raises the questions: Why? Where did it come from? Why is our British tribal magic so similar to, yet so different from, the Equestrian tribal magic?

Author's Notes:

Yes, I wrote Hermione's research paper.

She probably published it to the general student population, so we can assume that, from this point forwards, everyone has read it... Well, except Ron Weasley. And Vincent Crabbe, and Gregory Goyle. And other students either too stupid to understand or too lazy to study without being pushed.

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Chapter 24

Draco was no stranger to nervousness by the time he headed for his first Charms class in October.

It was Monday. And, at the seventy two hour mark on the preceding Friday, Madam Pomfrey had informed him that it seemed like his magic was returning… rapidly. Ever since, as Granger had informed him during her study that he was a Raeth, he’d tried to do magic without his wand, when nobody was present to see- but been unsuccessful every time.

And that day, mere minutes before she sent him down to Charms, she informed him his magic seemed to have finished recovering in full, though it was a lot stronger and felt different than it used to. She’d advised him to be careful with his wand, but told him to go ahead and use it.

She’d also returned it to him- she’d been holding onto it in the Hospital Wing for him while he recovered.

He’d taken it… and, before he could pocket it, it had gone off, for lack of a better word. He’d have said it exploded, except it hadn’t been harmed. Both he and Madam Pomfrey had been thrown away from the blast- and, by some miracle, the wand had stayed in his hand. He’d folded briefly against the hard end of an empty bed, then fallen to the floor, landing on his face. He’d pocketed his wand and risen to help Madam Pomfrey… only to find out that Madam Pomfrey was already getting up herself.

She… hadn’t looked like she normally did. Her clothes were a bit singed. The skin around her right eye, and her entire right arm, had been turned to metal. He could see the numerous small metal pieces that comprised the skin in those locations shifting as she moved.

She’d been amused more than anything else, as she examined her arm, then she’d used a quick spell to turn it back to normal- and, once he’d mentioned the eye, the same spell plus a mirror to fix that.

He’d been immensely apologetic, but she’d waved it off, saying she’d have to experiment a little bit- apparently, she’d only disguised the metal, not truly changed it back. She’d smiled as she sent him down- and when he left, she was looking at various objects around the room, including her wand, as if they were new to her.

She hadn’t excused him from the practical component of Charms today. His hair was still long and silvery, and still done up under his hat.

He took a deep breath, glancing up at the clock over the door. He was almost ten minutes early this time.

He raised one hand, and knocked, before pushing the door open.

As he entered, Granger looked up. “Oh, Hi Draco! I noticed Madam Pomfrey didn’t send an excuse for you- that mean you’re fully recovered?”

He winced. “In… In theory. She said it felt different… then, when I picked up my wand, it… exploded all over her.”

Bonbon raised an eyebrow. “Exploded…? Sounds almost like a Crusader reaction.” She looked at Hermione.

Hermione shrugged, drawing her wand. “Mind if I take a peek?”

He walked closer. “Sure. It won’t… hurt anything, after all.”

Hermione grinned, putting the tip of her wand in her other hand as he got close and turned around for him to reach the back of his neck. That was where she liked doing her scan from during her study- the study he participated in, even if she silently excluded him from the magical experimentation portion.

He shuddered as he felt her spells activating. Funny, he couldn’t feel them before.

There was a pause.

“... Huh,” Hermione eventually muttered. “Something’s amplified your power to the extreme- and stirred it up, much like an Equestrian Raeth… Hmm… Yeah, looks almost like a cross between an Equestrian and a British Raeth. And yeah, if you try using your wand when it’s like this, you’ll get some… wild effects, probably none of them being what was intended.”

He winced. “Oh.”

“Yeah…” She muttered an incantation, and he felt something poke at… something inside him? “Feel that?”

He nodded. “Yeah?”

“That’s your magic- and what I’m looking at. See if you can calm it down- and don’t bother with your wand until you manage it, because it’ll only explode in your face.” She smiled. “And don’t be afraid to ask for help when you need it, either.”

Draco didn’t see it coming… until he did. About two weeks after his magic had fully recovered, and one week after his visits to Madam Pomfrey were readjusted into a weekly affair because nothing was changing, he saw an argument quickly building next to him in the Slytherin common room. He’d gotten up early today, in an effort to get some Crabbe- and Goyle-free time to practice calming his magic the way Granger had shown him.

This was, of course, an argument between Equestrians. Apparently, during a game of Truth or Dare, one had dared another to steal his hat, and a third was trying to stop the girl that had taken the dare. Probably a good thing, since Crabbe and Goyle had just found him, and were lumbering over. Judging by their behavior, they were all Aethrs.

Overall, he had perhaps three seconds’ warning. The dare-taker evaded the other girl fairly easy, and dashed in to steal his hat. He snapped a hand up to hold onto his hat, praying that they would see blonde hair when it inevitably came off, but was a touch too late- he missed, and she made off with his hat.

Crabbe and Goyle both adjusted their trajectories to reclaim his hat- and, before he could get in a word edgewise, they’d tried to take it back… and the hat had been shredded in the process. Crabbe and Goyle then went wholesale on the stealer, while the other two girls moved in to try and stop them from killing her. He, still praying they saw blonde hair on top of his head instead of silver, exaggerated a sigh, stuck his nose in the air, and headed off towards the dormitories. As he went, he saw the last Equestrian in the room standing up on the other side of the room, the turquoise glow around her quill vanishing as she dropped it on the page, and heading in their direction.

He didn’t lower his nose, navigating by the estimated direction to the dormitories and the ceiling, until he reached the stairs. Fortunately, there weren’t any tables or chairs to get in his way- the previous night, a bunch of Equestrians had wanted to practice sparring, and had cleared a large area of the common room… which had remained clear in the morning.

… Funny, he could have sworn the spiral staircase wound the other way.

Once he got far enough up he was out of sight of the brawlers, he allowed his prayers to fall off, let out a huff of breath, and continued climbing. Something seemed to shift inside him when he did that, but he ignored it.

When he reached the landing, he made a quick glance around the room- yes, it was empty. He quickly located the first-year room, and walked briskly towards it. It was still too early in the day for either of the last two British Slytherin boys to be awake; even Crabbe and Goyle were early risers, but neither of those were. He’d have plenty of time to grab one of his spare hats, and perch it on his head, before they ever realized he was there.

He pushed the door open… and froze.

There were two girls in the room… and it didn’t look familiar.

He immediately withdrew, closing the door again, and took a deep breath. One had been in what he assumed was her pajamas, and the other her robes. The three other beds had the curtains drawn about them.

He took a deep breath.

Why were their girls in his dorm…?

Unless, of course, he’d walked up the wrong staircase.

Suddenly, the door into the seventh-year dorm opened, and a girl walked out of it. “Mornin’,” she greeted with a slight nod, before glancing at him again. “You might want to change into your robes before you head downstairs, by the way.” She walked past, towards the stairs. Right as she reached the top, a sound like a gong came from somewhere above him, and her hand flashed out in response to catch herself. She pulled herself back up onto the landing. “Huh, they’re early today.”

“Huh?” he asked, utterly confused. He was a boy, in the girl’s dormitory… and she didn’t even bat an eye at him. He froze again, as soon as the sound made it past his lips, keeping the words he’d been formulating from coming out.

It wasn’t his voice that came out.

“Mm? You don’t know? Huh, I thought everyone did. Well, since the crazy first-year schedules separate Crabbe and Goyle from Malfoy for most of the day, they keep searching for him whenever he’s not there- and they try coming up here at least twice a day. The stairs morph into a slide for a minute every time they try, though, so they never actually make it up here.” She shrugged. “I hope nothing too bad befell him- the last time they tried this early in the morning was when he was still bedridden in the Hospital Wing.”

“... Oh.” Again, it most definitely was not his voice.

She tilted her head. “Did… Did you get lost, or something?”

He made a quick evaluation of his choices… and resolved to nod meekly. At least that didn’t feel wrong.

“Ahh,” she muttered, coming closer, to guide him with one arm. Not unlike the way his father would ‘guide’ him, sometimes. “Well, the Equestrian dormitories are through this door. Anywhere beyond that, and you’ll have to either remember or find another Equestrian; I’m afraid I don’t know how it works in there.”

“Th-Thanks,” he managed, moving through the door she showed him to.

“Whelp, have a good day,” she smiled, and headed for the staircase again- which, he noticed, seemed to be becoming stairs again. He could hear the grinding of the stone sliding back into place.

He turned away, as if to head to one of the other doors out of this also empty room, and let the door close behind him.

As soon as it landed shut, he checked that the room was empty again, and whirled around to face it, and stare.

He was sure that girl thought he was a girl too!

Something flew over his shoulder, and fell against his chest. It was silver, with blue stripes- his hair. Funny, he had that tied up on the top of his head. He looked down.

And froze.

Just as the girl had suggested, he wasn’t wearing his robes.

Instead, he was a girl.

And he was wearing a deep, royal blue shirt, and a gleaming silver skirt.

He looked exactly like all the Equestrian girls did when they were doing their shopping in Diagon Alley.

He heard a doorknob rattle behind him, and whirled to face. If he looked like this, they certainly wouldn’t realize who he was- but he still had no idea what to do. He’d have to bluff hard enough to be able to stay up here somewhere until the common room downstairs emptied out, and he could sneak down and make his way to Madam Pomfrey without drawing attention.

It was the door with a 3 on it that started opening. His breath caught as his mind went on overdrive, trying to figure out what to do, hoping whoever was coming out of it would be friendly enough to help him even just a little bit.

Then the door swung open.

It was Diamond.

She walked out calmly, and headed for the door he was standing next to.

“Good morning,” she nodded to him, as she approached. She smiled. “Did you forget your robes, or something?” She didn’t stop to wait for him to answer, though, passing him towards the door.

“W-Wait!” he burst out, hope welling up in his chest like a balloon. “Diamond!”

She paused, turning to him. “Mm?”

“What… What happened to me?”

She blinked. “Come again?”

Author's Notes:

Let the fun... begin.

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Chapter 25

Diamond blinked. “Come again?”

“What happened to me?” Draco asked again, the not-his-voice coinciding with the not-his-body it was coming out of.

Diamond blinked again. “Um… Okay. What’s your name?”

The hopeful balloon in his chest seemed to pop. He averted his gaze- he couldn’t bear to lie to her, with how nice she had been to him before… yet in order to not lie, he’d have to reveal himself.

“D- Draco.”

“Really? Pretty sure Draco was a boy.”

“It’s really me,” he practically begged. “I… I climbed the wrong stairs by accident, and then…” He glanced down at himself again.

She stepped forwards, putting her hands on his shoulders. This was the first time she’d ever laid a hand on him- and he could feel her massive strength, expertly restrained. “Okay then, missy. Look into my eyes, and say that again.”

He did. Her eyes had an almost impossible depth to them, that he found mesmerising. He felt suddenly intimidated. “I-!” He gulped. “I… I am Draco.”

Diamond accepted it, her unwavering gaze breaking away from his first with a nod as she released him. “Alright, I believe you. Sorry about that. So, um… Do you want to talk about it, or…?”

“Ahh, sure,” he muttered. “In…” He glanced around briefly.

She nodded, grinning, and took his hand in hers. “C’mon, this way.” She pulled him- gently- back the way she’d come.

He followed.

She led him through a sequence of doors, like she knew exactly where she was going, and waved to a couple of other girls that happened to be in the other door-rooms… until she led him through the fourth door, into a normal dormitory. He winced as he entered, and she closed the door behind them… then he realized that four of the beds in the room weren’t just empty, they were completely unused. “What the-?”

Diamond shrugged. “What? They gave us so many of these rooms there’s twelve thousand beds up here. I’m just one of the many that chose to have an entire dormitory to herself.”

He blinked. “Meaning…”

She nodded, grinning. “Meaning, for all intents and purposes, this is my bedroom. But that’s irrelevant. Now then.” She stepped forward, sitting on the foot of the bed in the middle. Only the one on the far left, on the opposite side of the room as the door to the bathroom, had the curtains drawn around it, a trunk at its foot, and other personal effects set about.

“Ahh,” he muttered, looking up and down the room.

She raised an eyebrow. “What? Would you rather we use my bed?”

He was sure he blushed at that, and moved quickly to sit next to her. “S-Sorry, I…”

“Never been inside a girl’s bedroom?” she asked.

He nodded meekly.

She shrugged. “As you can see, it’s really no different from a boy’s room. Anyways, when do you think you… changed?” She gestured towards him.

He blinked. “I… On the way up, I think. Why?”

“Because that’s a clue for what the trigger was. You feel anything strange?”

He scowled, thinking back. “I… I was approaching the top when I thought I felt something shift inside of me, but didn’t think anything of it.”

She raised an eyebrow. “So, it clearly wasn’t the anti-boy wards… suggesting that you’re legitimately female now. Well, um…” She tilted her head. “Anything you were thinking about when that happened?”

“I…” He paused for a few seconds. “Down in the Common Room, some Aethrs stole my hat, and it got destroyed when Crabbe and Goyle-” he took a certain personal satisfaction from how she wrinkled her nose at their names- “tried to reclaim it, so I headed upstairs to get a fresh one.” He looked at the door out of her… room. “And, apparently, got the wrong stairs. When I did…” He tapped his hair, still hanging over his shoulder and down his front. “I was praying they’d see blonde hair, rather than this. That… That shift happened about when I stopped.”

“Rather than that?”

He nodded. “Yeah. My hair has looked like this- and been impossible to cut- since before I first left the Hospital Wing.”

“Hmm,” she mumbled, rubbing her chin. “Try… Try concentrating on having blonde hair.”

He blinked. “Why…?”

“Lyra’s been talking about some kind of ‘animagus magic’ that British wizards have. She thinks it’s a major reason your reaction to her spellwork was so strong- apparently, it gives you a self-transfiguration ability. Which, if you’re legitimately female now, as the stairs letting you up suggests, then your male form must have been provided by that ‘animagus magic’... and somehow, concentrating on your old blonde hair- or something related to it- must have triggered it.”

He blinked. “... Okay.” He closed his eyes, and concentrated. Blonde hair…

He could tell when he succeeded- something shifted within him. He couldn’t tell what it was.

“Well, that worked,” Diamond muttered.

He opened his eyes, letting his concentration fall, and looked down… in time for his black robes to be replaced by the flashy clothes. “What-!?” He took a deep breath. “It… It came back as soon as I stopped.”

“Really? Interesting… Try concentrating on being your old self, but with this hair.”

“Oh… Okay.” He shuddered, but did that- and was rewarded with the third shift in a row. Nothing reverted when he relaxed his concentration.

“Huh,” Diamond mused. “All stable?”

He nodded.

“Well, you seem to have blond hair, and your hat.”

“Huh?” He raised one hand to feel it, then sighed. “Oh. It’s… It’s a modified wig, under the hat.”

“Ahh,” she nodded. “Alright. So, we now know that you can change yourself at will. There’s still the problem of getting you out of the girl’s dormitories without being seen coming out as a boy.”

He winced. “How… How would we do that?”

“Easy: You turn back into a girl. You can do that, right? Then, I have a ‘friend’ that can furnish you with new robes for said girl form.” The way she said ‘friend’ sounded off to him. “You put those on, then we head down together, disappear into the castle, and find someplace secluded for you to take your normal form in.” She shrugged. “Might not be a bad idea for you to get yourself an invisibility cloak or something, and store it on your person- say, in your girl form’s pockets, since Twilight said your clothes would come and go with each form- for in case this ever happens again.”

“Twilight-?” he began.

She nodded. “Yep. And no, she doesn’t know- I asked her a week ago what would happen if a wizard were to have an animagus form that happened to be another wizard.” She shrugged. “Just seems like you have two.”

“Okay,” he muttered.

Silence held for about a minute.

“Sooo,” she began. “Are you going to girl up, or…?”

He winced. “Do- Do I have to do that now?”

She shrugged. “Flexible Fabric can’t give you new robes if you’re not present, you know.”

“Oh. Then…” He took a deep breath, and concentrated. Moments later, he felt that shift again. He glanced down at himself- he was a girl again, as well. Then he blinked. “Wai-- er, Wait.” He stuttered over his female voice, but forced himself to work through it. “Her name is ‘Flexible Fabric’?”

Diamond nodded, standing. “Yeah. She hates it too. C’mon- fortunately, with the way they built these dormitories, she isn’t far.” She glanced at the clock. “And she won’t have gone downstairs yet, either. Oh- and don’t mind the lingo going around in here. A lot of the Equestrians are pretty… loose-lipped when they think they’re among their own kind.”

The walk to ‘Flexible Fabric’ was fairly short; they went out through three doors, then in two more, before Diamond knocked on a door with a 4 on it.

There was a thump inside, and an “Ow!”, before someone ran up to and answered the door.

It was another Equestrian girl, exactly as expected… however, she was only partially clothed. She was wearing a black skirt and matching bra… but no shirt. He determinedly kept his eyes up, on the girl’s hair.

“Geeze, Flex, get a shirt on,” Diamond retorted instantly.

The girl rolled her eyes. “Sorry, miss, but you knocked while I was getting dressed- and it’s not like we aren’t all mares in here anyways.”

Diamond rolled her eyes. “We aren’t,” she stated plainly. “I’m a filly.”

“... Oh, sorry. What’d you need?”

“Well, someone stole, ah, Silversong here’s clothes overnight, or something- she’s been running around in her initial outfit for the last hour or so trying to find it.”

Draco pretended the name wasn’t new.

“Or something?”

She shrugged. “All we know is that they weren’t where she put them last night when she got up this morning. And for some reason, they left her initial outfit, so…”

“Ahh,” the girl muttered. “Then…” She looked at Draco. “Full set?”

“Ahh,” Draco began, his mind occupied by not looking down.

Thankfully, Diamond saw his struggle, and stuck her head in front of him, blocking the girl’s gaze. “She’s a younger filly than me, Flex, you’re driving her crazy. And yes, a full set.”

“Hey, no need to be bossy.”

Diamond lowered her tone dangerously. “If you want me to be bossy, that’s my Cutie Mark talent.”

Draco took a worried step back, away from her.

“Ahh,” Flexible muttered, looking worried. “No need for that, sorry. I’ll get her clothes.” She looked at Draco.

Draco shivered as something caressed his form. It didn’t feel like a physical touch, but it touched parts he knew he didn’t normally have, and it made him cringe.

“Tribe?” Flexible asked.

Diamond looked at Draco, and looked to be about to answer for him when he spoke.

“Raeth.”

“Got it, be back in a minute,” Flexible muttered, and closed the door.

He didn’t miss how Diamond raised her eyebrow at him, but she stayed thankfully silent.

When the door opened again, Flexible Fabric had found herself a shirt, but hadn’t donned her full robes yet. “Here you go, Silversong,” she muttered, offering a stack of folded black fabric to him. “Sorry about the shirt. Don’t lose these, okay?”

Draco accepted the fabric; he could tell the item on top, at least, was a set of robes. “Th-Thank you.”

“Just doing a service to a fellow Equestrian in need,” Flexible smiled, bowing, before turning to Diamond. “Okay then. Do you need…?”

Diamond shook her head. “Nope, that’s all, thank you.”

“Alright then, have a good day.” Flexible closed the door.

Draco let out a sigh.

“Alright then,” Diamond smiled at him. “C’mon.” She led him right back to her room. “This should work- you can change into those robes in here.”

“Ahh…” He looked at the robes in his hands.

“Here,” she smiled, taking the stack from him and putting it on the bed. “I’ll go wait behind my bed, so you don’t have to be self-conscious.”

“Why?” he asked, lifting up one set of robes. “Don’t I just put it over my head?”

Diamond shook her head. “Nah. You’ll want to change your shirt and skirt as well- if you don’t, it’ll be visible. And as for the other two articles…” She gestured to the pile; when he looked, he saw what she was talking about, and looked away, blushing. It was the kind of thing no boy his age had any business laying eyes on, worn or not. “If that really is your initial outfit, the ones you’re wearing are not very comfortable, and will start to hurt the moment you start moving around very much. So, since there’s no telling how long it’ll be before we’re able to get you someplace suitable for transformation…” She shrugged. Then she looked at the articles still sitting on the bed. “You… do know how to put them on, right?”

“Ahh,” he muttered, looking back down at the foreign pieces of clothing.

He didn’t know.

Author's Notes:

One thing I've noticed that many TG/TFs seem to skip over: A lot of men won't have the dexterity and/or know-how to wear a bra- and when you're not used to it, it's impressively difficult to tell which way is forward on a pair of panties... assuming you're able to figure out which way is in and which is out in the first place. Good thing he's got an instructor... who may or may not have had those same issues very recently, by virtue of not normally being a human.

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Chapter 26

“So, ahh,” Draco mumbled, still in female form but now fully robed, once his blush had faded at least a little. Diamond had had to help him with not just both of the obscene articles- there was the one he didn’t know how to put on or take off, and the one he couldn’t figure out which end went forward- but the skirt as well. She’d done it cheerfully, but it didn’t stop him from feeling like an invalid.

He hoped, almost prayed, that that was both the first and the last time he’d have to worry about any of that.

Though there was a part of him, however small, that wanted to… for the sole reason that he could choose it.

“So,” Diamond answered him. She was sitting on the bed next to him, and had been since he finished. At least he’d been able to get the shirt and robe by himself.

He took a deep breath. “So… you’re older than me?”

She blinked, then nodded. “Yeah. Had Lyra opened her portal before I turned eleven, I’d be a second year right now.”

He looked at her. “What?”

She nodded. “I turn thirteen next month.”

“Then… Silversong?”

She winced. “Sorry… I didn’t realize until it was too late that she’d be suspicious if you didn’t have an Equestrian name we could give her, so I just… gave you one, I guess.” She looked up at him. “I hope it’s not too bad. The first one that crossed my mind was Bluebell, but…” She chuckled when he wrinkled his nose. “I saw that coming.” She tilted her head. “And you’re a Raeth?”

He nodded.

“How…?”

He shrugged. “I participated in Granger’s study.”

She blinked. “Oh. That would do it.”

“So… Mares? Filly?”

She nodded. “Yeah… About that. First, you should know that’s still an Equestrian national secret.”

He blinked, and looked at her. “What?”

She nodded. “The Princesses are worried about what the British government- both the magical and nonmagical alike- would do if they realized that all the Equestrians are ponies, not humans, on the other side of our Gate. Which, actually…” She rubbed her chin. “Lyra’s Papa Tango- that’s the spell she tested on you before she remembered to ask for permission- was designed to make you into an Equestrian. Compounding that with how your natural form is clearly female, else you wouldn’t have made it up the stairs, and you’re probably actually a filly as well. I was just saying it, for Flexible Fabric’s benefit, without going through the full chain of logic, but it’s probably actually true.”

“So I’m-!” he began. “I’m… not human? How…?”

She shrugged. “Normally, I’d say the only way to tell would be to travel to Equestria. But we already know you have a self-transfiguration ability from your British magic that Lyra’s spell didn’t take away, so… Try it.”

He blinked. “Uh…”

“Think small, four legs that end in hooves, kinda horse-like but also kinda not, fur coat that’s probably either silver or blue, like your initial outfit, a mane and tail to match your hair, a horn sticking out of your forehead if you’re a Raeth…”

He closed his eyes, and concentrated. Her description was drawing a very rough image; it was hard to figure out what to concentrate on.

Very suddenly, he managed it. He felt something in him shift- rather larger than when he was going from boy to girl or vice versa.

He also fell on his front.

“Yeah, just like that,” Diamond said.

He opened his eyes, and lifted his head up, looking… around at himself. “Oh.”

He was some kind of… horse creature.

He closed his eyes, concentrated- and moments later, he was a human girl again… and falling face-first off the bed. He ended flat on his back, on the floor.

Diamond giggled. “Forgot to account for the growth back to human size, eh?”

“Ow,” he complained.

“Yeah, that did look like it hurt,” Diamond agreed. “But you’re a filly, so you’re virtually indestructible as well.”

He raised an eyebrow. “What?”

She nodded. “Yeah. Nopony knows why, but fillies in particular are virtually indestructible.”

He shook his head. “Whatever.”

She nodded. “My thought exactly. So, ready to tackle the world, or no?” She rose from the bed, and offered her hand to help him up.

“As Silversong?” he asked, taking the offered hand.

She nodded. “As Silversong, yeah. At least until we find someplace private enough for you to transform covertly.”

“Alright then,” he muttered. “As Silversong it is.” He took a deep breath. “I’m- I’m ready. I think.”

Diamond grinned. “Just remember, Silversong is not Draco, and no one will realize you are Draco. So, act as you want to.” She glanced at the pile of robes still on the bed. “And… Here, I’ll hold onto the rest of your new clothes in here, for until and unless you want or need them again.”

He winced. “Here’s hoping.”

She sighed. “Alright, c’mon. You don’t want to wait for class like this, do you?”

He squeaked, and followed her out of the room.

They made it as far as the common room before they stopped.

“What in the world-?” Diamond asked.

There were desks, chairs, and various debris that used to be the same strewn all over the place. There were a few students lying in the corners, including that seventh year that Draco had first encountered, sitting behind an upturned desk and clutching what looked like an injured arm. Goyle was lying, unconscious, at their feet.

“Take cover,” the seventh-year muttered. “They’re…”

There was an echoing crash, as another table was snapped in half about halfway across the room, where there were a few people fighting. One looked to be using a few pieces of some tables, wrapped in the turquoise glow of their Raeth levitation, as weapons and shields. One, was Crabbe, smashing anything and anyone that got too close. Then, there were three more Equestrian girls, fighting against the other two. They looked like they had been brawling, as three distinct parties, for a while- and none of them showed signs of wearing out… or surrendering.

The seventh year winced- then Diamond effortlessly lifted the table she was hiding behind into the air. “Oy,” she yelled, and hurled it across the room.

Her aim was true. The levitation-using girl turned just in time for it to slam straight into her forehead so hard it shattered. She went straight to the ground like a load of bricks.

“Stop fighting,” Diamond ordered, marching forwards.

The seventh year squeaked, seeming torn between pulling Diamond back and scrambling behind some other piece of debris, but the remaining combatants stopped fighting.

Well… The remaining Equestrian combatants. Draco was certain he heard at least one of them cursing under their breath. Crabbe, however, simply roared, and charged Diamond.

“Look out!” the seventh year called almost desperately- then Crabbe reached her… and she flicked him to the side with the flick of her wrist, dropping him to the floor, whereafter he didn’t move.

“What was that for?” Diamond demanded, still marching towards the last three girls.

Draco shook himself out, then crouched down by the seventh year girl. “You okay?”

“What-!” she began. “What about her?”

Draco glanced up at Diamond. “Oh, her? She’s an Etrah. Those other three are Aethrs- she’s already got them cornered.”

“But-!”

“This isn’t Equestria, they can’t fly. And fast isn’t going to help them against someone like Diamond.” He looked up as the three began to spill.

“I-It was my fault,” the one to Draco’s left began, raising a hand shakily into the air. “W-We were playing Truth or Dare…” She gestured towards the middle one. “I dared Feather Cap to steal Draco Malfoy’s hat off his head… I meant it as a harmless prank, but I didn’t see Crabbe and Goyle on their way. Neither did she… but Keen Eyes-” she gestured to the one on the right- “did, so she tried to stop her… ineffectively.”

“Then, lemme guess, those two attacked Feather?” She gestured towards Crabbe.

The girl nodded. “Yes. The hat got shredded- I still don’t know how that happened- before me or Keen were able to help her fight them off. They… We would probably have all been crushed by them, had Draco not gone off somewhere- I think he was going to get a new hat or something, because Goyle went to follow him… and climbed the wrong staircase, for some reason.”

He could almost hear Diamond rolling her eyes. “They do that all the time. Too stupid to find the right staircase without a neon sign, I think.”

The girl blinked. “Ahh… then she joined in…” She pointed at the girl Diamond’s throw had taken out. “I… I think she was trying to break up the fight, but when we tried to retreat, she didn’t let us.”

Diamond sighed, and looked back at Draco. “Silver, can you get Bonbon?”

He looked at her. “Huh?”

Diamond winked. “Two four, three seven. Knock five times.”

He blinked. “Uhh…” Then it clicked. “Oh! Okay!” He jumped up- the seventh-year girl seemed to be at least okay- and jogged back up the spiral staircase, determinedly suppressing his shudders at once again ascending the stairs into the girl’s dorms.

Once at the top, he went through the Equestrians’ door first… then found the numbered doors in sequence- two, four, three… and finally seven. He didn’t go through that one, though, and instead knocked five times.

He barely had time to lower his hand before the door flew open, and Bonbon stepped out, her robes undone and billowing behind her, still putting her hat on her head. He caught a glimpse of what looked like a very startled Equestrian peeking out from behind the curtains around her bed before the door landed closed.

“What is it?” Bonbon asked, already heading for the exit.

“Ahh-!” he began, jogging to keep up. “Diamond asked me to get you… there was a brawl in the common room, but she stopped it.”

Bonbon sighed, and marched onwards. “Of course they would.”

She continued her blistering pace until she reached the bottom of the stairs, where she stopped to survey the room. He stumbled slightly on the stairs behind her, but managed to avoid falling- or running into her.

She sighed, and looked back at him. “Miss…?”

He blinked. “Ahh, Silversong.”

She nodded. “Silversong, then. Can you get Madam Pomfrey? There’s at least seven badly injured.”

“Got it,” he answered, and ran for the exit. He glanced back as he waited for the wall to open, and saw Bonbon talking to Diamond.

As soon as the wall was open far enough, he resumed running, heading straight for the Hospital Wing. Fortunately, he knew a few shortcuts that most other Slytherins would not.

But he had only climbed two floors up when there was a hiccup in his plans.

He nearly crashed into Professor Snape, a mug of something in his hand.

Snape looked down at him. “What are you doing up at this hour, miss…?” he asked.

He almost blinked- he’d forgotten to shift to male form. He decided to roll with it. “Silversong, Sir,” he answered. “There was a brawl in the common room, and a lot of people got hurt, so Bonbon told me to get Madam Pomfrey.”

He sighed. “You know where you’re going?”

Draco nodded. “Yes sir.”

“Then carry on.” Snape sent him on his way, and guzzled the contents of his mug. Draco glanced back as he reached the corner, and saw Snape turning away from what was presumably his office door to head towards the Slytherin common room.

He continued on his way.

It wasn’t long before he reached the infirmary, and knocked.

There was a distinct clunk on the other side, like metal on stone, then the door opened, and Madam Pomfrey looked out. “What is it?” Then she blinked. “Wait.”

Draco didn’t wait for her to finish. “Hi, it’s me, Draco… slash Silversong, right now. Um, there was a brawl in the Slytherin common room, so Bonbon sent me to get you. Said there were at least…” He paused to remember. “Seven badly injured, I think.”

Madam Pomfrey sighed. “What about you?”

“Turns out I can shift at will.”

She nodded. “Animagus, then. You shifting before we go, or…?”

He shook his head. “They’ll be expecting to see Silversong return, not Draco.”

“Alright then,” Madam Pomfrey sighed, stepping out of the Hospital Wing and closing the door. “Let me start by thanking you for blasting me like that when you got your wand back.”

“... What?” he asked.

She nodded. “Thanks to those changes, I can now do things like… this.” She touched his shoulder, then blue energy whirled about them. He felt a small jolt, then the energy vanished just as quickly as it came… and they were standing outside the Slytherin common room.

He blinked. “Oh. Um, Purebloods.”

The wall responded to the password, and he allowed Madam Pomfrey to lead the way in.

Author's Notes:

It would have been a mug of coffee, but as I was writing this, it struck me that Snape is the Potions Master... so why in the world would he be drinking mere coffee, when he could concoct something that was no doubt both more effective and better tasting?

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Chapter 27

Professor Snape was already there; it looked like Bonbon was explaining what had happened to him, with Diamond by her side. She saw Bonbon look up between sentences almost as soon as Madam Pomfrey entered. “Madam Pomfrey,” she greeted. “Worst one’s over there, then there’s…” She pointed out the locations, and named priorities, of injured students.

Madam Pomfrey nodded, and hurried off towards the ‘worst one’.

Bonbon hardly drew breath. “Silversong, can you get Luna? Seven one, five three, tell her Sweetie Drops asked for the Princess in the common room.”

“Yes ma’am,” Draco answered, and ran for the girl’s dormitories again. It almost felt normal that time, but he still had to suppress a shudder as he ascended the steps. He navigated the Equestrian dormitories again, found the destined door, and knocked.

It was answered by the girl he recognized as Princess Luna, from the Leaky Cauldron. “What?” she asked.

He bowed lightly, remembering what she’d said at the Leaky Cauldron about on vacation. “Uh, Sweetie Drops asked for the Princess in the common room,” he muttered.

Luna rolled her eyes. “And it’s not even two months in. Whatever.” She stepped out, pieces of dark blue metal- no, regalia- following her. “At least we made it through a whole month before something happened.” She marched off towards the exit; Draco followed.

By the time they made it down to the common room, Draco noticed the entry wall was opening again… to admit Professor Dumbledore.

He resisted sighing. The higher-ups had clearly been called, on both sides… and all because of his hat.

It took nearly two hours for everything to get processed. Draco had to stay for the whole thing; they kept asking him questions, which he answered as truthfully as he could.

It rather helped that nobody realized he was Draco, and so he never got asked about that. They also assumed he hadn’t seen how it started, because of course Silversong wasn’t present when it started.

When asked why he hadn’t helped Diamond subdue the combatants without hurting them (it turned out that the Raeth Diamond had hit with the table had a concussion), he’d answered that she knew what she was doing more than he did, so he’d let her lead. When asked why he hadn’t tried to help, he’d answered that he didn’t have nearly enough skill with his Raeth magic to do anything of value to her, and he wasn’t sure where his wand was. Which was true enough- when he had shifted to his male form in the dormitory, it had been in his pocket… but it had disappeared with the pocket when he took his female form, and he wasn’t sure where that pocket was. It certainly wasn’t the same pockets as were in his female form’s robes.

In the end, much of the time had been spent explaining what had happened to Dumbledore. Apparently, Bonbon had figured out so many details, to an alarming level of precision and accuracy, just by looking around the room. Dumbledore- and Snape- had then asked questions… then Silversong had received five points for keeping a cool head in a tense situation.

When he’d asked what Dumbledore was talking about, he’d mentioned how Silversong had been able to determine that Diamond had the combatants handled from the very beginning, and had moved on- of her own volition- to making sure the other students that had gotten caught in the fight were okay, even before she had further instructions. Then of course, Dumbledore had blinked, smiled, and given Silversong five more points, for her willingness to follow those instructions, and general helpfulness.

Of course, because Snape had seen him heaving heavy furniture fragments off one of the British students that had been caught in the fight, before Madam Pomfrey got to them, he’d asked why he didn’t use his Raeth magic when he did that. He’d answered that he was unskilled enough with his magic that there’d be too much risk of hurting the trapped student even more.

Then Diamond had stepped in and said something about ‘magic kindergarten’ that seemed to confuse both Snape and Dumbledore, but they accepted it and stopped asking. Whatever it was, he’d apparently been halfway through it when he got his Hogwarts letter. He’d tried to look like the news wasn’t new to him.

Finally, towards the end, the Raeth Diamond had knocked out had woken up… and attacked Princess Luna. Her attack only managed to knock the unprepared Princess down before Dumbledore’s and Snape’s stunners both hit her, knocking her straight back out again. Luna had risen slowly, dramatically, and overruled Dumbledore’s decision to give the girl detention.

“She just attacked her diarch,” Luna had stated dangerously. “Thus ends her tenure at Hogwarts. I will be taking her back to my sister in Equestria, to determine the length of her stay in prison.”

Dumbledore had then mentioned the Wizarding Prison, Azkaban.

Bonbon had shaken her head. “It won’t be effective against Equestrians. Our magic comes from inside- and mere bars will only work for an Aethr… and even then, only for a limited time.”

Then Luna had disappeared into thin air, the girl in tow.

Upon return, some five minutes later, she said she’d discovered the girl had a long criminal history in Equestria, including a previous discharge from prison… so she was now a lifer, and could be permanently removed from Hogwarts’ attendance lists, as she would never be returning.

Dumbledore had accepted the explanation.

When the two professors finally left, Draco was then hounded by at least a few students that wanted to hear his side of it. He wasn’t able to get rid of them until after breakfast, when they had classes.

Finally, he managed to ditch his followers while meandering randomly through the passages… with a nearly-overflowing bladder. He had not been looking forward to finding out how girls used the bathroom, and he did happen to be in a passage with bathrooms- so he glanced both ways to make sure he was alone, shifted to male form, and stepped into the boys’ bathroom. For as much as his clothes came and went with the form, his bladder did not.

Harry smiled, wrapping an arm around Hermione as she curled up against his side in their armchair, in the Gryffindor common room. Ever since they’d met on the train, they’d both served as anchors of familiarity to each other- and so, since they were both skinny, they often ended up sitting in the same chair while they studied, and helped each other out whenever they had issues.

He was fairly sure he benefited more than she did from that part- but then, the other part came in. She often finished her schoolwork long before he did, and moved on to whatever project she was working at the time. Sometimes it was lesson plans for her class, sometimes it was plans on how to help a particular student (usually Applebloom, he’d noticed).

And more recently, she was experimenting with herself. During some of his free time, she’d done for him what she’d done for Sweetie Belle- and helped him find the magic inside him, to calm it down. He’d found that his wand magic came easier when his magic was calmer, but he hadn’t been able to get it to calm down very much.

He knew she was trying to get hers as calm as she could. He’d mentioned Rarity’s annoying levitation shortly after she’d finished her little research project, and she’d dove into it with vigor.

The only problem with this latest focus of hers was that it tired her out like crazy. And, since she could never get her dorm-mates to quiet down before nine or ten at night, she’d taken to curling up against his side for a quick nap in the noise of the common room. She never slept very well when she did that, because of the noise, but at least she could sleep.

Until, in theory, he’d discovered, practiced, and perfected a spell from the library last night. He flattened his magic as much as he could, then gave his wand a little flick, and barely whispered the incantation.

Success. Exactly as he had intended, the noise of the common room deadened right out to a low murmur inside of a cylinder of space around their seat.

Hermione blinked, not having fallen asleep yet, and looked up at him. “What-? Did you-?”

He smiled back down at her. “I thought you might like some quiet during your nap.”

“Oh,” she muttered, and smiled. “Thanks. What’s it called?”

“It’s Serena Tranqui’s Transient Silence- I got it from her autobiography. I can show you when you’re done napping, if you’d like.”

She snuggled into his side, closing her eyes again. “I would like.”

Within minutes, she was sound asleep.

He knew they would be teased about looking like a couple again; that happened every time she napped like that. But, if he was honest with himself, he didn’t care. They were just friends- and just like all… He glanced at Hermione’s notebook, lying open on the table. Just like all six thousand two hundred thirty-seven people that had said hi to him with the express purpose of making friends with the Boy who Lived during the first month and a half of his time at Hogwarts, the ones dead-set on matchmaking could also take a hike. They were simply friends. The fact that they were also each other’s first friends was unimportant.

He smiled, thinking back to Serena Tranqui’s autobiography. He hadn’t been the one to find that book in the library; no, that had actually been one of the Ravenclaw Defense Against the Dark Arts instructors. Serena Tranqui was an ex-auror, who often had the element of surprise on independent assignments. The Ravenclaw had been looking in the index to find the spells she thought would be most useful in combat, but Harry had read through the main text- and not only found the Transient Silence, but also pointed out Serena’s combat uses for it. As it turned out, the silence charm also functioned as a low-level shield, had a selective silence function that could be controlled subconsciously by the caster so as not to block incantations, and could emit a high, staticky noise, suitable for raising the level of silence- all aside from how it would last for as long as he wanted it to.

The Ravenclaw had classed the spell as “too complicated” for their first-year students, but agreed that it would likely be a good candidate in their second or third years. He, however, had mastered it in five minutes… and was using it in place of a simple Cone of Silence, a lesser charm that not only didn’t last very long, but that he had trouble with as well.

Perhaps he was too gifted with Defense Against the Dark Arts?

Author's Notes:

Any fight has aftermath. This one just had major, long-reaching aftermath.

And that's a rather suspicious specialization there, Harry...

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Sorry about the sudden schedule change... I ran out of backlog.

And sorry about the delay as well, been dealing with my financial wellfare.

Chapter 28

“Lemon drop.”

Professor McGonagall sighed internally as she stepped onto the rotating staircase to Dumbledore’s office. She’d gotten up this morning to find that ten points had been awarded, in two different awards of five each, to a student named ‘Silversong’ during the night... and while the Castle was able to figure out who that was, the awards had bounced- and come to her- because it couldn’t figure out which house it was supposed to award them to.

When she then asked the magic of the castle which house Silversong was sorted into, it claimed the student- it sounded to her like a female name, but it also sounded Equestrian, and she could never tell with those- was unsorted.

So she’d spent much of her day- when not teaching classes of fourth or seventh years, of course- running down the full class roster, searching for the name.

She hadn’t found it. Silversong had never been sorted, never officially admitted to the school.

Yet, when she queried the Castle spellwork, Silversong had been attending classes since term started, had a class schedule… and, perhaps most importantly, grades. Good grades, at that- she seemed to be suffering on the practical side, suggesting she was a Raeth… but she was performing well with everything else, almost as if she was a Ravenclaw. That the girl was able to do that well without having a regular place to sleep- it seemed she was sleeping on the floor or something- was a promise of such talent that Hogwarts could not afford to squabble it away. The girl was too good to be allowed to fail by virtue of not being sorted.

Unfortunately, there was only one way to fix that. And, this time around, she wasn’t the Headmaster.

So, she needed to talk to Professor Dumbledore… in person, because the Ward network was too far removed from reality. It was too easy to miss things like importance.

She did tap into the Ward network anyways, as she approached Dumbledore’s office door. The Castle’s Marauder’s Map function- which she had named after the student-made item that used it the most- informed her he was in his office. “Dumbledore,” she sent him. “We need to talk.”

Dumbledore sighed. “Come in.” It wasn’t the first time she’d done that, by a long shot.

She pushed the door open, and let herself in.

“So,” Dumbledore began. “What is it this time?”

“Silversong,” she answered simply.

“Silversong?” Dumbledore asked, surprised. “She was mighty helpful this morning. Did something happen?”

“She received points,” she nodded.

“And…?” Dumbledore began, confused. “She’s in Slytherin, is she not?”

“She’s unsorted.”

Dumbledore froze. “... Unsorted? She was mighty helpful in the aftermath of the brawl in the Slytherin common room this morning. That’s why I… gave her… points.” He took a deep breath. “You mean we missed her?”

She nodded. “That’s what it looks like… but according to the Castle, she hasn’t just been floating. She’s got grades- and good grades, at that. Even though she doesn’t have a bed, or anywhere to store her trunk.” She sighed. “If she even has one. The Castle wasn’t able to find it.”

Dumbledore winced. “And everything else checks out?”

She nodded again. “She’s in the Book, and is recorded as having accepted her position. It would seem she missed a few classes a few weeks back, but that was all covered by a medical excuse.”

Dumbledore put his head in his hands. “Could it be that she got lost on the first day, and ended up sitting with the Slytherins?”

She shook her head. “She wouldn’t have had a schedule if she did that. When they made the schedules, Princess Twilight’s teams worked off of the lists of students sorted to each house. It shouldn’t have been possible for her to have been missed in the sorting and still gotten a schedule, but…” She shrugged. “I looked at her schedule- and it looks like it was designed as if she were a Slytherin.”

“But she’s unsorted,” Dumbledore muttered.

She nodded.

He sighed. “How… How is she performing?”

“At this rate?” Professor McGonagall shrugged. “She’s showing difficulty with her wand- suggests she might be a Raeth- but she’s just shy of the Honor Roll.”

Dumbledore blinked. “We’re going to have to hold a Late Sorting Ceremony, won’t we?” He sighed, putting his head in his hands. “I can’t even remember when we last had one of those.”

“Not surprised,” one of the pictures hanging on the wall stated simply. “It was three hundred and sixty-two years ago.”

Dumbledore looked up. “... Right. Well. At least it’s not completely unprecedented, is it?” He grinned at the picture. “So, first off… I’m going to need to summon her in here, aren’t I? To explain what’s going on, and get her temporary bedding overnight?”

“Yep, that’s what I recall,” the picture nodded.

“Alright then,” Dumbledore sighed, reaching for a fresh piece of parchment.

“D-Silversong?” Diamond asked, sounding surprised, as she entered the common room.

Draco, sprawled out across one of the couches in his female form, looked up at her. “Hi.”

“I- I thought-?”

He shrugged. “Does Draco ever do something like this?”

Diamond blinked. “Now that I think of it… No, I don’t think he does. Is that why…?”

He nodded. “Well, that and Crabbe and Goyle won’t follow me around, since they can’t find Draco.”

Diamond wrinkled her nose at the names. “Yeah, that’d be a huge plus, wouldn’t it?”

“Yep,” he stated. “Only way I could think of to lose them for more than five minutes on a weekend.”

“Even though you’re then going to be…?” Diamond gestured towards him. “For basically all day?”

He nodded. “Yeah… I’ll make do.”

“And you’re going to need to change your clothes at some point, too.”

He blushed, and looked away from her for a few seconds. Then he looked back at her. “Gee, thanks for reminding me,” he complained. “But yeah. Small price.” He shrugged. “I’ve even got my wand this time- not that I’ve been able to ‘stabilize’ my magic enough to use it, but who’s counting?”

“... Okay.” Diamond picked a chair that faced his couch. “That actually makes me wonder: Do you know what your unique talent is?”

He raised an eyebrow. “My…?”

“Unique talent,” Diamond repeated. “That’s what we call it here. You might remember me telling Flexible what mine is?”

He blinked. “Something about being bossy?”

Diamond snorted. “Right, yeah, I guess. Technically, my talent is simply leadership- but it comes out in that I have a very easy time getting people to do what I want them to. Any ideas what yours might be?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. I mean… During the first week, my classes were all fairly easy, then…” He gestured down at himself. “Lyra did her thing. Ever since then, I haven’t been able to use my wand… but everything else has become a cake walk.”

Diamond’s eyebrows shot up. “A cake walk? Like…” She scowled. “Have you, perchance, had any difficulty with anything you tried to do after Lyra’s Papa Tango finished?”

“Uh, yeah? My wand doesn’t work.”

She winced. “Aside from that.”

He rolled his eyes… then paused to think. “...No,” he eventually muttered. “I don’t think I have.” He scowled. “Well, unless you count ditching Crabbe and Goyle.” A sound like a gong echoed suddenly from upstairs. “Speaking of which, it would seem they’re awake.” He looked up in time to see Crabbe slide back down the girl’s staircase, now a slide. He’d gotten up extra early explicitly so he could have the common room to himself, even if for just a few minutes… and had taken that chance to transform.

After, of course, making sure he had it to himself.

Diamond rolled her eyes. “Yeah, of course they are. But anyways, doesn’t that kinda suggest something with the magic?”

He blinked. “You mean, you think my… ‘talent’ might be to be good at everything?”

Diamond shrugged. “I mean, it could be. If so, that’s a very powerful talent to have.”

“Then why would I still have trouble doing the magic thing…?”

“Just because you’re automatically good at it doesn’t mean you know how to do it,” Diamond smiled.

He blinked. “Yeah, I suppose. I’ll just have to ask Hermione for more instruction sometime…” He scowled. “Which Draco would never do.”

She wrinkled her nose. “Yeah, unless he doesn’t mind losing a little face, he never would do that, would he?” Then she shrugged. “But you would do that no problemo, right?”

He winced. “Yeah… but then she’d know.”

She grinned. “She’s a student instructor,” she said. “She’s already sworn to keep her students’ secrets, except in as much as they endanger the castle.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Really?”

She nodded. “Yep! I’m a student instructor myself- Potions. And that oath is one of the first things they required us to do in the Student Instructor Crash Course at the beginning of the year. So don’t worry, she won’t be telling anyone.” She shrugged. “And if you ask her to, I’m sure she’ll even keep it from her co-instructor, Bonbon.”

“You haven’t told-?” he asked, blinking.

“Nope,” she answered. “It’s our secret right now. I mean, I can tell her if you want me to, but…”

“No, no, I’m good,” he said hurriedly. “I just… thought you would have.”

Diamond gasped theatrically. “And betrayed your trust? How could I?”

Later, at breakfast, something happened.

Draco had been expecting to spend the day as Silversong, then find some empty room or passage in which to retake his form as Draco shortly before bed time.

Until, of course, he got the letter. An owl floated down to him at breakfast… and hooted at him.

“What-?” he began.

Diamond leaned in to whisper in his ear. “Yes, we can understand them. Roll with it.”

He took a deep breath, and let it out again. The owl had only called his name- his female name, Silversong. It hooted again.

“Hoo.” There you are, Silversong. Where have you been?

“Ahh,” he muttered, rubbing one hand on his hair.

“Hoo.” No matter. It took two weeks, but I found you. Got a message from the Headmaster… I think it’s important. The owl offered the letter in its beak to him.

“Ahh… Thank you.” He accepted the letter, and started unfolding it.

“Hoo.” You’re welcome. It might be a good idea to send him an answer?

“Just a sec…” Draco muttered, scanning the missive.

Dear Silversong,

Please come to my office at your earliest opportunity. Any of the school professors will be able to guide you.

Sincerely,

Albus Dumbledore

Hogwarts Headmaster

He let out a sigh. “Well… Yeah, I’d say. And if this was two weeks ago…” He scowled, then turned. “Diamond, do you have a quill I could borrow?” Then he blinked. “Unless…” He looked at the owl.

“Hoo.” No, he cannot understand me.

“Dang,” he muttered.

Diamond slipped a small quill out of her pocket… No, it wasn’t a quill. It was a strange, plastic cylinder, and it had a button on one end. “What’s it say?” she asked.

“Dumbledore wants me to visit him in his office… two weeks ago.” He shrugged. “After the match today ought to be a decent time. Unless…?” He looked at the owl.

It shook its head. “Hoo.” Unlike you, he’s easy to find. Sixty seconds, tops. It then gestured towards the staff table, where Professor Dumbledore was eating his morning meal.

Draco chuckled, turning back to Diamond. “So…”

She held up the plastic thing. “It’s called a ‘pen’,” she informed him. “Muggle alternative to a quill. It doesn’t need to be dipped in ink- instead, when you want to use it, you click the button to make the tip appear… and when you’re done, click it again to protect the tip.” She demonstrated, showing the tip while she clicked the button a couple times.

“Oh… kay,” he muttered, accepting it, and clicked the button slowly. “That’s… strange.”

“Just beware when you write with it- it’s a specific type of pen called a ‘ballpoint pen’, meaning there won’t be any of the scratch you’d get from a quill. It’ll slide much more smoothly over the page.”

“Alright,” he muttered, and put the ‘pen’ to the page. Diamond was right, it did write a lot easier than a quill did.

Understood. I’ll be up shortly after the match today.

He clicked the pen, and gave it back to Diamond, who pocketed it. “That is… strange. But I like it.” He grinned, glancing at the neat lines it had made on the parchment, before he refolded the letter and offered it back to the owl. “Alright, thank you. Want a snack while you’re here?”

The owl almost seemed to grin. “Hoo.” No, but thank you. Dumbledore isn’t a very patient man, these days. It took the letter, and took to the air again, heading straight for the staff table.

“Uh-oh,” Diamond muttered.

He nodded. “Uh-oh indeed.”

Author's Notes:

And Silversong... is no longer just an appearance, she's got duties of her own. Perhaps the Sorting Hat will have something to say?

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And yes, that owl said a lot with a single hoot.