Three Tail Hairs

by Georg

Rating: teen
Tags: Rarity, Adventure, Harry Potter, Sex, Alternate Universe, Human, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic
Length: 12347

The only thing the mage Raindolph needs to graduate from the University and make a wand is three tail hairs from an adult unicorn. There’s just one problem.

Sometimes desperate times call for desperate measures, and Finals Week at the University was about as desperate a time as Raindolph had ever experienced in his long and hard-fought battle to become a mage and master his erratic powers. With a long series of failing grades and broken lab equipment behind him, Raindolph is willing to risk it all to complete an impossible task and graduate, even if it is last in his class.

All he needs to complete his project is three tail hairs from an adult unicorn.

No problem.

Well…

Placed 24th in the Writeoff.me short with the prompt ‘The Morning After’. This is the expanded version before it was cut/chopped/mangled down to size for the competition, so it has a few more details than the entry.

And no, it’s not a Harry Potter crossover. Honest. Would I lie to you? More of an AugieDog Cluny the Squirrel Mage fanfic. Enjoy.

P.S. See, I told you I’d write a HiE fic someday, even if it is a short. Oh, the the picture is a TV remote control. Seriously, I've got to get one.

Published 2016-12-03 03:20:01 UTC
Last updated 2018-04-02 00:21:41 UTC

The Final Project

The Final Project

“We’re going to get expelled!” The skinny ferret looked up and down the corridor while thrashing his bottle-brush tail back and forth. “Well, you’ll get expelled. They’ll probably feed me to something. For sale, one mage familiar for wolf chow. Hardly used. Lightly singed. Former owner was an idiot! What’s taking you so long?”

“Enchanted keyring. Security. It’s always the last key on the ring,” muttered Raindolph just before the storeroom door lock gave out an almost inaudible click. He slipped inside and grabbed the ferret before he could escape. “Oh, no. You’re coming with me. I still need a lookout.”

“I’m innocent, I tell you, copper!” The ferret placed one paw on his hairy chest. “I was forced into this life of crime by a cruel and heartless owner. Maybe I should swear you put me under a mind control spell.”

“I don’t know any mind control spells. Besides, you helped steal the storeroom keys from Dean Mnemosyne’s office for me,” whispered Raindolph. “Look, there’s only three ways this can go. We give up, I flunk my final project, and we get kicked out of school. We do this and get caught, same result. That leaves…?”

The ferret hunched his skinny shoulders and glared at the floor of the storeroom. “We find three tail hairs from an adult unicorn so you can finish your final project, I know.”

Raindolph ran his fingers through his perpetually tangled mass of red curls and tried to pull his robe sleeves down to cover his bony wrists. The rest of his class had respectable if short beards which made them look the part of proper mages, as well as tailored robes which were not tattered and patched in all the wrong places. His own attempts at a beard had just made him look fuzzy and slightly pink, as well as lopsided from wherever a failed alchemy experiment or misfired spell would burn off one side or another. Still, if they had kicked him out of the school, somebody else would have inherited the bottom rung of the ladder, so his peers had tolerated his presence until tomorrow when he was going to at least get kicked out of school with a functional wand.

“Three virgin hairs. That is tail hairs from a virgin adult unicorn. And here’s the only place we can find them.” He pulled the dust cover off the magic mirror and started to adjust the control runes while his familiar watched the door behind his back.

“We could have built an astrolabe for your final project, that would have been fun, but no,” muttered the ferret. “We have to go wandering around some weird dimension where unicorns aren’t as ‘friendly’ as they are here. Seriously, a virgin unicorn? How’s a mirror going to find one of those? You might as well be looking for an honest king.”

“It’s a matter of tuning.” Raindolph touched two last spots on the mirror and the surface began to shimmer. “Now, the portal enchantments are restricted to dimensions with livable conditions and our desired parameters. All that’s left is—”

Raindolph made a frantic grab to catch his familiar's tail before he could slip away.

- ★ - -

The house on the other side of the mirror looked almost normal except for the low ceilings and distinct horsey smell which was somewhat masked by cedar and vanilla. It was just as dark as Raindolph had hoped, with only a few beams of moonlight coming through the curtained windows. Using the concealment of their shadows, he began his search on the ground floor through the rolls of cloth and clutter, eventually working his way up the stairs and to better results. To his pleasant surprise, there was a white unicorn in the first upstairs bedroom he checked, sleeping sprawled out over most of the ornate bed with her violet tail dragging over the edge.

“So is this the first bedroom you’ve ever snuck into?” whispered his familiar from where he was perched on the back of the young mage’s neck.

“Shut up.” Raindolph crept around to the back side of the bed and regarded the unicorn’s coiled tail. It was most certainly a beautiful and large tail with more than enough hair to make hundreds of wands, but a few quick magical gestures made his heart sink. That, and one other thing.

“Go ahead,” hissed his familiar. “Trim her tail and let’s get back to the university before somebody finds out.”

“Two things,” said Raindolph. “One. The spell says she’s not a virgin.”

“Nidricks,” cursed the ferret. “What’s the other thing?”

Raindolph lifted his chin to reveal the sharp scissors resting firmly against his carotid artery, held in a light blue glow of the unicorn’s magic. “She’s awake.”

- ★ - -

While planning how to obtain the last ingredient for his final graduation project, Raindolph had never really anticipated sitting at an undersized kitchen table while explaining said plans over tea and sugar biscuits to Rarity the Unicorn, who was taking the whole unusual circumstance far better than expected. She nodded and made little sympathetic noises while keeping his teacup filled, and once he had fully explained his graduation project to her satisfaction, she very politely removed the sharp sewing implement from against his neck.

“You could have just asked,” said Rarity. “I know there are certain… disqualifications for myself, but I understand your predicament. Thankfully, I keep sample hairs for color reference from all of my friends, and I think some of them will solve your problem. There’s just one tiny little thing I want in return.”

Raindolph paused with the teacup just barely at the edge of his lips. “My immortal soul?”

The unicorn had a most unnerving laugh.

- ★ - -

The University Testing Grounds were adjacent to the Dark Woods for a very good reason, because any wild spells or explosions from somewhat-less-than-successful students could be directed where they would not unduly disturb the citizenry. There was also a persistent rumor that disobedient students could be disposed of in the same fashion, but nobody lingered over that possibility, particularly the students.

The morning had been filled with explosions and fire of various intensities while the final examinations for the university continued, but most of the sound and fury had died down when noon (and lunch) approached. By the time Raindolph came running onto the Ranged Test Range (which was run by the Department of Magical Redundancy Department, of course), there was only one teacher left, but thankfully, it was the one he needed to see. Dean Plaigiosphere, who had just begun to pack his folders and test notes back into his pointed hat, looked up at the sound of Raindolph’s frantic approach and shook his head.

“Ah, young Rainsford,” he bellowed, due to an accident in his youth which had rendered the elderly teacher nearly deaf. “I thought you weren’t going to show today. Had your grading sheet all made out too.” He pulled a thick sheet of paper out and placed it on the nearby table, the crimson ‘F’ at the top a silent testament of his expected performance. “The worst student in our graduating class attempting the most difficult enchantment in the book.”

“I did it too, sir.” Raindolph presented his freshly finished wand, still warm from the final curing and attempted unsuccessfully to look marginally competent while the elderly teacher examined it.

“Not bad,” mused the dean at a volume that he probably considered under his breath. Plaigiosphere looked up to take in the trim black robe Raindolph was wearing, as well as the emerald green glints of gems along the seams mixed with hints of gold thread. “Finally decided to look like a mage, young lad?” he bellowed while handing back the wand. “Took you long enough. Now let’s see if your project functions. Start with a simple blasting spell.”

Raindolph held out the newly created wand and squinted at the pitted stone disk at the other end of the range, which had more than a few smoldering spots still remaining from the other student’s morning testing. The three thin purple tail hairs had been devilishly difficult to get tied into the remaining wand enchantments, and there had not been any time for Raindolph to test the results. He let his breath out slowly and focused his magic into a simple blasting spell, hoping that the fresh wand would at least make sparks.

Other than the fire and exploding trees, it was the last thing he remembered for quite some time, although he did survive the experience with only a broken arm, and Dean Plaigiosphere eventually regained what little hearing he had left. In the aftermath, the grading committee could not decide if he had struck the target with the blasting spell because nobody was actually able to find any portion of the ancient stone other than a few pieces of sand, and any remaining fragments had most probably been knocked a few miles into the Dark Woods.

At least he passed.

There was just one problem…

Author's Note

Remember when I said I might continue this?

Extra Credit

Extra Credit

Mages preferred to encourage the generally held view that they were more resilient to injury than normal mortals in order to discourage the application of things like pitchforks, flaming torches, and overdue tax liens to their persons. While some of that favorable rumor was true, most of the credit should have gone to a small but dedicated collection of rather quiet specialized mages who preferred not to violently disassemble complicated subjects such as their fellow mages, but to put them back together again.

Sometimes, with a few improvements.

Raindolph was one of the lucky students to have spent considerable time in the university without leaving it in a small urn, mostly because the staff at the infirmary liked him, and had a mistaken idea that if they treated him with care on his frequent visits, he would give them permission to add a few extra body parts later. Or maybe donate a few that he was not using too much. It was difficult to tell with all the lisping.

Normally, the physicians would have been keeping fairly close to Raindolph in the infirmary, but ever since he had regained consciousness alive and in mostly one piece, the room full of nearly empty beds had been also empty of hunchbacked nurses and lurking surgeons. There was the traditional folder with organ donor forms on the stand by the bed, of course, and a bell to ring in case of dire emergency, but other than the snoring form of Dean Plaigiosphere several beds over and his complaining ferret next to him, Raindolph was alone.

And in remarkably good health for having been so close to an explosion he had caused.

His dark gem-decorated robe from the strange Unicorn seamstress had weathered the explosion and resulting flames well, although one of the sleeves was rolled all the way up to accommodate the cast on his broken arm. It made him a little relieved that he had turned down Rarity’s offer of a hat to go with the outfit, because it most certainly would have been lost somewhere from the buffeting he had received. And the ferret, of course, was fine due to his normal tendency of curling up in the bottom of a pocket whenever Raindolph was about to cast a spell while muttering something on the order of expecting complete and total doom from the experience.

Raindolph was never going to live this one down if he survived to the century mark. Even if the ferret died first, he would most certainly haunt his former master just to rub it in. It was difficult enough to convince him to do the things normal mage familiars did anyway, but the recent experience was not making the task any easier. For some reason, being in the general vicinity of the Ranged Test Range’s destruction by flames had made the ferret a little jumpy.

“All I want you to do is go upstairs and listen to the University Council,” said Raindolph in a normal tone of voice, since nothing short of an earthquake was going to wake up the only other patient in the infirmary. “You’re not hurt that bad, and I want to know where I’ll be assigned after graduation.”

“Can’t hear you,” murmured the ferret. “Everything’s going dark. I see a light…”

“You singed your tail,” said Raindolph.

“A mortal wound,” groaned the ferret.

“Okay.” Raindolph scratched under the edge of the cast on his arm and thought. “I’ll give you half of a chicken drumstick tonight to celebrate. But only if you go right now.”

“A whole one,” countered the ferret before the sound of the infirmary door being opened made him scurry for cover under the blanket. The cheerful dean who came into the infirmary did not look dangerous at first glance, but as usual with mages, looks could be deceiving.

“Hello, Student Raindolph,” said the somewhat pudgy dean, reading off one of the notecards he always carried everywhere. “Only have ten minutes. Make sure he listens. Don’t step on the ferret.” With a single motion of his fingers, the top notecard flicked up into the air and flared into ashes.

“Hello, Dean Mnemosyne.” Raindolph was very careful not to move quickly, even if he could, because the dean was a master of memory spells and their abrupt use, not to mention somewhat liberal with their application. Occasionally, a very powerful student might be tempted to challenge an instructor, but the slightly overweight and somewhat distracted dean had never been injured by a student even by accident. Or at least none that anybody could recall. “Did you come here to tell me where I’m being assigned after graduation?”

“I thought we were going to have tea,” muttered the dean’s doormouse, who popped his head up out of a vest pocket and blinked sleepy eyes in the bright lights of the infirmary.

“Actually…” Dean Mnemosyne looked down at his next card, then reached into his pocket and pulled out a very familiar wand, holding it by the middle as one might treat an aggressive snake. “I’ve been sent to put your wand in the Vault. The Council didn’t want it around during their discussions. Made them nervous.”

“Really?” The itching around Raindolph’s broken arm seemed to break out in a horde of invisible ants, crawling all over his body and biting. “I wonder why.”

"Do you mind?" asked Dean Mnemosyne, which would have been a greater comfort to Raindolph if the elderly teacher had actually paused to get a response before pointing the wand at the other end of the room. Both the ferret and the dean's dormouse launched themselves across the room in the opposite direction, diving behind one of the infirmary's unused beds before Menemosyne jabbed the wand forward with his lips moving to the mnemonics of a minor fire spell.

Raindolph looked on with fascinated horror, certain that the sight of the elderly dean holding his terrifying wand would be the last thing he would ever see before being turned into component atoms and distributed around the university as semi-energized plasma, if not turned into a ghost and made to haunt less-studious students for an eternity as an example of what not to do in the university.

The wand gave out a brief splutter and a thread of smoke much as a mis-struck match might do against some damp kindling.

"I thought so," said the teacher once he had placed the smoldering wand on the bedside table and checked the next card in his stack. With a flick of the elderly mage's wrist, the card labeled 'test wand' vanished into a puff of ashes and Dean Mnemosyne gave a brief nod. "There's almost no thaumatological resonance, which means the attunement you did, and quite foolishly I might add, was fully self-contained."

"And that means..." said Raindolph before noticing the wand had begun to roll in his direction. He made to reach for the wand before it could hit the floor, then recoiled to the back of his bed at the thought of touching it again. Dean Mnemosyne did not grab the wand, as Raindolph feared to, but placed his chubby hands against the metal bedstand table and tilted it away from Raindolph. It took a few moments for the absence of the sound a wand might make hitting the floor to soak in, and Raindolph raised himself up on the bed, being careful of his broken arm.

The wand was stuck quite firmly on the surface of the bedstand table despite the sharp angle Dean Mnemosyne was holding it.

“Twenty-four degrees,” mused the old mage. “Fully and exclusively attuned to you, just as I never would have guessed. I don't suppose—”

Setting the bedstand back upright, Dean Mnemosyne scooped up the wand before it could roll away and jammed it into the metal drawer. After several strong slams that almost made Raindolph recoil out of bed, the dean held the undamaged wand up to the infirmary's bright lights. "You even got the unbreakability charm correct. Quite astounding work for such a young lad."

"Are we done trying to get us all killed?" called out the ferret from the other side of the infirmary.

"Is it tea time?" called out the dormouse. "I distinctly remember we were going to have tea."

“I’m afraid I have some bad news, Mister—” Dean Mnemosyne checked his cards “—Raindolph. You see, with this particular wand fully attuned to you and unbreakable, the only way for another mage to use it is to disrupt your natural harmonic you have with it.”

“That doesn’t sound too bad,” hazarded Raindolph. “Do I need to do that before you store the wand in the Vault?”

“Normally a full disruption of harmonic resonance entails gross dismemberment and complete exsanguination with immersion of the device in the blood of the attuned,” chirped Dean Mnemosyne as if he were describing the ingredients of a particularly tasty pudding. “It’s a fascinating process.”

It certainly had Raindolph’s attention, although fascinating was not the word he would have preferred to use. Particularly after his mind traced through the rather short list of options remaining. “The True Ownership spell?” he hazarded.

“Excellent idea!” The middle-aged mage fairly beamed with joy while stuffing the wand under a pillow of a nearby bed. “If you made even the slightest mistake on that enchantment, the wand will not be able to seek its owner through whatever transdimensional barrier or cosmic distance separates you, much like an ex-wife looking for alimony. And…” Mnemosyne lifted the pillow, and to Raindolph’s intense disappointment, did not reveal a wand.

There was one under his own pillow, and the smiling dean pulled it out and inspected it carefully much as if it were a key to a vault full of gold sovereigns. “Amazing work,” he murmured. “You should get top marks for this. Well, before one of your fellow students or the faculty take it.”

“Not you?” asked Raindolph hesitantly.

“Heavens forbid!” exclaimed the pudgy teacher. “Why, a mage with a wand like this would be hunted like a dog, with other mages lined up beside every bush and tree to fight over it. I would estimate you have until about twenty minutes after the Council meeting adjourns.” He placed the wand down on the bedstand with a faint click audible through the whole room, despite Dean Plaigiosphere’s snoring.

Raindolph considered the wand, which kept trying to roll toward him on the hospital table. "How long do you think will the Vault hold it?”

“Against the True Ownership spell?” Dean Mnemosyne checked his cards. “Five minutes, tops.”

“And I can't destroy it,” said Randolph.

"Not without killing yourself," said Dean Mnemosyne.

“And I can't give it away,” continued Raindolph, “because it won't work for anybody but me.”

“Unless they bathe it in the blood of your defeated corpse,” added Dean Mnemosyne in a cheerful tone which he certainly would not have used if it had been his corpse they were talking about.

“So what am I supposed to do with it?” asked Raindolph.

“My boy, that's not my problem at all,” said Mnemosyne with a chuckle as he got up to leave. “This is a University. What kind of teachers would we be if we provided answers to all of your questions?”

For one brief moment, Raindolph considered un-making the wand, but discarded the idea almost immediately. It was a minor miracle he had managed to follow the exhaustive and complicated directions for the wand’s creation without miswriting a rune or making some subtle error that would have unwound the entire process in an explosive fashion. There had been no instructions at all for reversing the process, so to un-do it he would have to make a long string of guesses.

Prospective dismemberment would be a much more humane death.

“Well, I must be going. Excuse self, put wand in pocket, pick up familiar, and head for the door,” read Dean Mnemosyne from the top card on his stack. Once he pocketed the wand, it took only a few steps for him to pick up the sleeping dormouse and turn to leave, but before he walked out of the doorway, he looked down at the top card on his stack with a frown.

“Stop at doorway and say something compassionate. After all, Student Raindolph is going to be facing certain death, with nowhere in this world he can possibly hide before one of the faculty tracks him down. Use memory spell on self after leaving room to avoid being called as a witness.”

The pudgy dean flicked the card into the air where it vanished in a puff of smoke, made a quick pass of a memory spell, then still standing in the open doorway, he read from the next card on the stack.

“Head to Vault, but unlock third floor storeroom on way. Stand in Vault for five minutes, then use memory spell on self and familiar to eliminate recollection of reason for trip and all steps after leaving the Council Chambers. Ah, very well.”

The sounds of the dean’s footsteps had not died out by the time Raindolph was out of bed and heading for the door.

- ★ - -

“Why am I involved in this?” hissed the ferret. “You’re the one your fellow students will want to dismember.”

“Hush,” hissed Raindolph back, peering around the corner of the corridor and thanking his lucky stars that the rest of the students were out in town, most likely swilling away as fast as they could raise a tankard. The pudgy form of Dean Mnemosyne vanished around a distant corridor corner and Raindolph scurried over to the hopefully unlocked door and the key to his surviving the next hour. He didn’t say anything else until they both were inside and the door closed behind them.

“You’re in this just as deep as I am,” said Raindolph, still with a firm grip on his slippery familiar. “If I vanish, they’ll use you to get to me.”

“You mean bribes?” asked the ferret while his eyes lit up.

“No.” Raindolph drew a finger across his throat. “Probably sacrifice you to draw out that little fraction of our shared essences. Either that or chop off a body part like a limb or an eye and use it as a transdimensional compass. They’ll be a lot of them needing little ferret parts, if Dean Mnemosyne is right. Little ferret toes and—”

“All right!” The ferret shuddered and looked at the magic mirror, which had been covered back up after their last trip. “So, where are you planning on taking us? You do have a plan, right? You did get the mirror coordinates of some ferret-friendly dimension where they don’t sacrifice little harmless fuzzy—”

“The same place I got the hairs from,” said Raindolph. “It makes perfect sense. If the world with Rarity in it was a normally traveled world, there’s not a mage out there who would not have brought back a whole fistful of tail hairs, particularly with how powerful they are. All I need to do is remember which runes I used…”

The ferret fidgeted and cast nervous glances around the room, even though he was still being held rather firmly. “It’s going to be pretty obvious where we went once they start searching this room,” he whispered. “This is going to be the only mirror without a dust cover.”

“I think…” Raindolph touched the last rune on the mirror and watched as the surface became milky and luminescent. “The dust covers have a damping spell on them, so none of the transit devices under them fire off unexpectedly. If I hold the cover up while going through, it will fall over the mirror after we pass through and turn off the spell.”

“That… might work,” admitted the ferret. “If it wasn’t you holding the dust cover with one arm in a cast, and you being you.”

“It’s either that or ferret chunks.” Raindolph picked up the dust cover and tried to balance the floppy thing over the mirror so it would fall down once they had left, and nearly jumped out of his robe when the ferret climbed up on his shoulder to add two paws to the effort. In several short motions, it untucked several places where the wrinkled cover would bind instead of falling into place behind them, then looked the project over with a faint whine of protest.

“You so owe me,” muttered the ferret. “Two chickens, minimum. Stewed, with garlic. Got the death-stick?”

Raindolph checked a pocket and patted the slim stick of wood inside it. “True Ownership. It’s a wonderful thing.”

“Quick prayer before we go?” asked the ferret.

“Oh, God. Let us not screw up.” Raindolph braced himself to jump.

“Amen,” said the ferret. “On three. One. Two. Thr—”

- Ω - -

It was daytime in the pony world when Raindolph came tumbling through the glass mirror into the cluttered room from before. Once he had staggered upright, it took very little effort to recognize the changes which had occurred in the few hours since their last trip across the dimensional portal.

For starters, Rarity the Unicorn had been entertaining company, because the room had six ponies in it, all staring in shocked amazement at their unexpected guest.

Secondly, the mirror they had just emerged from shattered behind them, spraying little bits of reflective glass across the whole room, thus demonstrating just what happened to the far end of a mirror portal when the magic was turned off abruptly.

Thirdly, his familiar had not even touched the ground and started rolling before one of the watching ponies swooped in and scooped him up, fluttering up to the ceiling with her wings.

And fourthly…

He stared at the rigid hoof which had replaced his hand. And his other hand. And his feet. And the tail sticking out from behind his robe.

“Uh, oh.”

Ω Ω Ω Ω

Foreign Service

Foreign Service

Grand Vizier. It was a nice title.

It had been awarded to him by the nicest young princess.

It came with a nice room in a beautiful crystal castle.

It was most certainly nice.

The ferret certainly thought he had gone to ferret-heaven. He had his own personal pegasus trainer who just adored the little weasel.

Raindolph, however…

It was not that his work was too strenuous. Raindolph was used to getting up early to avoid his fellow students and their tendencies to practice curses and hexes on him. He was used to studying late at night to force tiny bits of knowledge into his dense mind. He no longer had to check under his sheets for exploding runes, or examine his pillow for brain-eating leeches.

In fact, he missed it. Just a little. A mage who was not on their toes was soon to be a toad, or so they said. Or croaked.

Even finding himself transformed into a unicorn when he emerged from the mirror portal was not too bad. A tail was a remarkably effective flyswatter, since he certainly was not going to try any flyswatting spells with his wand. Unicorn magic was even more natural than his own somewhat erratic spellcasting, so he could both hold a book and illuminate it for reading at the same time. And with effort, a lot of effort, he could temporarily transform back into his knobby-kneed and scrawny human body, just in case he needed to scratch.

“Just a little higher, Raindolph.” Lyra, a light green unicorn who seemed unusually friendly to him, rested her head in his lap and sighed at the continuing ear-scritches. “Yeah, that’s the ticket. Those human fingers are like magic.”

“Well, I am a mage,” said Raindolph a little defensively. He shifted positions on the park bench and looked around at the colorful pony town, who had been treating him with considerable respect and a lot less anxiety than if some unicorn wizard had suddenly shown up in the middle of his school. Such an odd student might not have lasted a week before being rendered down for parts, but Raindolph had been here several days before his arm… or foreleg had been fully healed, and the worst thing so far he had to endure was a stomachache from his ‘Welcome to Ponyville’ party.

No more cherry chimichangas with hot sauce. Ever.

“I thought you were supposed to be teaching me about unicorn magic,” said Raindolph, following Lyra’s unspoken command to scratch a little further down her neck.

“Later,” she said with a grunt. “Oooo, yeah. Right there.”

“Hi, Lyra.” A young unicorn mare with a coat tinted a shade of pinkish-magenta that could never exist in reality came trotting up to their park bench and regarded Raindolph with a sparkle of excitement in her eyes. “Hi, Raindolph. Is this a private bench, or can anypony join in?”

She leaned forward over Raindolph’s lap and permitted a long, slow scratching at the base of one ear, which made Lyra nudge her.

“Hey, I saw him first. I’m supposed to be teaching him about unicorn magic.”

“Not much teaching going on that I can see,” said Sparkler, nudging back. “Tell you what, big guy. You scratch my ears and I’ll teach you all about Equestrian unicorn magic and how it relates to enchanting gemstones.”

“I’ll play you a solo,” said Lyra with a grunt as she pushed her competition off Raindolph’s lap.

“All the gems you can eat,” purred Sparkler as she head-butted Lyra to one side and coincidently jabbed her thankfully blunt horn into Raindolph’s ribs.

“Girls!” Both Twilight Sparkle and Rarity appeared to have been out for a walk, and strolled over, side by side to give Sparkler and Lyra matching disapproving looks.

“Humans do not eat gems,” scolded the young alicorn in a stern voice. “And if you both were teaching my vizier unicorn magic like you were supposed to, tell me why he’s not in his unicorn form.”

“Darling!” Rarity moved to place herself between her friend and the two unicorns trying to occupy Raindolph’s inadequate lap. “The day is warm and beautiful, and you want your handsome young human to stay inside, studying?”

“Well, yes, actually,” said Twilight Sparkle.

“Honestly, Twilight!” Rarity moved a little closer and rested her head on the little bit of lap that Raindolph had left. “There is a time for ear scratching and a time for studying.” She flicked one ear up against his hand. “Any time you want.”

By stretching the thumb and little fingers of one hand, Raindolph managed somehow to scratch both sets of ears while still having one hand free for a third, but he cast a despairing look at Twilight Sparkle anyway.

“Well…” Twilight looked over her shoulder, then moved closer to lay her head down next to Rarity’s. “It has been a long day, and that looks so comforting.”

“That’s not exactly what I was trying to say,” protested Raindolph, but he did add a few ear-scratches for Her Highness of Friendship and Granter of Titles to Dimensionally-Disconnected Dimwits. “Besides, it’s not even noon yet.”

“Less talking, more scratching,” said Twilight with a sigh.

* Ω *

Quite some time later when Raindolph had been all scratched out and had ‘accidentally’ turned back into his unicorn form (because with hooves, he would not be begged for ear scratches until sunset), he found himself strolling casually back to Princess Twilight’s colorful crystal castle with the princess in question walking alongside. If nothing else, being stranded in this dimension was improving his finger strength. Ear scratching had quickly become one of the major responsibilities of Ponyville’s first Vizier, and he could not go out for a human stroll without one unicorn or a dozen giving him one of those big-eye, mournful looks.

“So, Princess Twilight,” started Raindolph, uncomfortably aware of how close the purple princess was getting during their walk, and the way her wings kept ‘accidentally’ brushing up against the parts of his creamy golden coat that the tidy black robe did not cover. To be honest, his coat was the one part of him that Raindolph was fairly proud of, since his mane and tail had maintained the sparse pinkish-red of his human form. “I was wondering if you had made any progress in finding a way to un-make my wand.”

“I still don’t know why you’d want to do that!” Twilight fixed him with what she obviously considered to be a fierce, intense expression, but only made her look a little like an irritated chipmunk. “There are so few working wand-type devices in Equestria that destroying one would be practically a crime! Besides, your wand seems to be much easier for you to control in our world.”

Raindolph considered the statement and tried to come up with an adequate argument that ‘only’ blowing out one of the back walls of Twilight’s crystal castle with a minor fireworks cantrip was somehow not ‘easier to control’ and fit more into the category of ‘pre-emptive catastrophe prevention.’ It was a far cry from demolishing the entire testing range at college with a simple blasting charm, but he would feel much safer as a lowly Ponyville ear-scratcher than a powerful vizier who would attract powerful enemies, or worse, mages from his home dimension who would want the unique wand for their own.

It did bring up a different question, though.

“Well, putting the wand to one side for now, maybe you could investigate why I’m so popular with itchy-eared ponies.”

“Oh, that’s easy,” said Twilight with a twitch of her own ears. “You’re just so comfortable to be around. Why, a girl can lay her head down in your lap and be perfectly safe. It’s a very— Nice. It’s very nice,” added Twilight with a flick of her tail that brushed up against Raindolph’s side.

“I thought it could be from when I first made the wand,” mused Raindolph. “Creation of an attuned item requires the mage to share their essense with the item. It’s much like when I got my familiar. He has some of my essence, so he can talk, and I have some of his, so… Well, I’ve never quite figured out what I got from him, but since his essence was so much smaller than mine, it might not be detectable.”

“So in a way, the wand became a part of you. Hm…” Twilight even managed to frown cutely. “Rarity didn’t say anything about you turning into a unicorn when you first visited. All she said was that you were looking for some ‘special’ spell components, and after she found out what you wanted, she got it for you, and saw you leave. What exactly was it you were looking for, Rain? I mean Mister Raindolph,” she hastily added.

With a short glance at his own tail, and the tail of the alicorn princess who just happened to have the same color tail hairs as he had imbued into the wand, Raindolph turned his head back in the direction he was going before he ran into something. “Just a few minor this and thats,” he managed. “Nothing special, but I couldn’t find them in my dimension, and you have them all over the place here.”

Behind just about every pony.

“I know, I know,” huffed Twilight Sparkle. “It’s some sort of secret that you can’t tell even me. After all, it’s what your cutie mark represents.” She took a not-so-brief look at the slim wooden wand symbol on his rump, nearly identical to the deadly wooden wand he was carrying inside his robe pocket.

“It’s the only major working that I’ve ever accomplished,” admitted Raindolph. “Back when I bribed my way into the school, my best hope was to become some third assistant to the waste disposal branch sorcerer of some small kingdom in the south, preferably one with running water and a vague notion of hygiene. By the time graduation was looming, even that position was starting to look like a fever dream.”

“You can’t be that bad of a student,” insisted Twilight once they reached the castle. “You just need incentive to study. You really focused on making your wand.”

“True.” Raindolph nodded.

“And with effort and concentration, you could master its use,” continued Twilight Sparkle. “You could even discover a whole new field of magic and ascend to become an alicorn! Wouldn’t that be great?”

Raindolph stopped in the castle corridor and looked behind the two of them, where their tails were intertwined.

“Oh! So sorry!” Twilight blushed darker beneath the purple of her coat, looking so cute and adorable that Raindolph almost could not breathe.

* Ω *

The Grand Vizier was invited to dinner with the Royal Family, which consisted of one Princess and one Dragon who fell into that odd category between adopted son and little brother. It felt more comfortable to keep his human form, despite a constant feeling as if his fingers were turning into hooves, or at least getting stiff from his second job. The ferret was back from his trip to Fluttershy’s animal-filled home and chattered incessantly about his visit, through the main course to the dessert, a light strawberry sorbet that the dragon had prepared.

It was a pleasant atmosphere to talk about school experiences, both his own uncomfortable ones and her strange ones, and once dinner was over, he retired to his comfortable room with a few books on Equestrian magic for company.

“So, still no luck?” The ferret cocked his head to one side and watched Raindolph switch back to his unicorn form in one swift, natural motion. “Maybe you should just stay that way. Unless you can’t pick your nose with hooves, that is.”

“Oh, hush.” Raindolph used his unicorn magic to spread the books out across the desk and concentrated on a translation spell. “The wand is just too powerful. The sooner I can find a reliable way to destroy it safely, the better off I’ll be.”

“Uh-huh.” The ferret darted over to the door and peeked out into the crystal hallway before running back to Raindolph. “You still haven’t told Princess Powerbutt that you used her—”

“No!” hissed Raindolph. “I’d die of embarrassment. And Twilight would be mad at Rarity. That might disrupt their friendship magic artifact thing, so the next monster that attacked Equestria—”

“You’d have to fight it,” said the ferret with a weasely grin.

“We’d have to fight it.”

The ferret’s grin vanished, then returned in force. “Oh, don’t worry about Rarity being angry. A couple scratches and she’ll be putty. Fluttershy said all the unicorn mares in town are lining up to get their ears scratched by our handsome hero.”

“Really? Who’s that? I didn’t see anybody else scratching ears today.” Raindolph cast a curious glance at the ferret, who promptly face-pawed.

“Just study your books until bedtime,” said the ferret, curling up on a nearby shelf. “I’ll just be right here, doing familiar stuff. Very complicated.”

* Ω *

In the middle of the night, Raindolph suddenly awoke with the feeling that there was somebody else under the blankets on his bed, most probably due to the quiet wrapping of a pair of warm forelegs around his neck and the gentle nudge of another unicorn horn against his.

“Raindolph?” whispered the soft voice of Twilight Sparkle right at the end of his nose. “Are you awake?”

“Yes?” he whispered back, trying not to to wake up the ferret who would take this so much out of context.

“I was trying to sleep after studying tonight, and I just couldn’t.” Princess Twilight Sparkle nudged him on the side of his cheek with her warm, velvety nose, so much like a horse, while she nuzzled her way up his face. “I need it.”

“Did you try a glass of warm milk?” asked Raindolph in the futile hopes that his expertise in that particular field was desired.

“No, milk just won’t do it. I need you.” Her hot breath filled one of his ears as she continued, “I just itch something terrible, and the more I tried to sleep, the worse it got. I’ve never felt like this before, not with another stallion… or human, that is. It just kept building until it overwhelmed me until I had to sneak into your room. Please, you have to help me get relief from this terrible desire! I’ll do anything!”

Several minutes later, after Raindolph had shifted back into his human form and began to scratch Her Highness’ ears, he was just starting to get his wits back. It did not help that the ferret was watching from the other pillow and quietly snickering, or that Twilight was giving off passionate groans that sounded entirely too human.

“Oh, that’s the spot,” she moaned, flopping down until she nearly covered his entire lap. “Yes! More! Oh, harder! Uhhhh. Closer to my horn! Don’t stop! I never want you to stop! Give it to me! Both hands!”

The nearby lamplight, which he had lit with a unicorn spell before switching to a more effective ear-scratching form, highlighted the bed in golden light. It gave the purple coat of Equestria’s youngest alicorn a glossy sheen and kept the rest of the room in shadows, except for a few glitters of light from the ceiling. It was as if Raindolph were in some inverted unicorn-catching expedition at home, where intrepid collectors would hire some virgin village maiden to go sit in a moonlit forest glade and complain about her sexual inexperience until a male unicorn—

Technically, an alicorn was just a winged unicorn.

Raindolph looked down at his occupied lap.

Twilight most certainly was laying her head there.

To go along with tradition, this would be the point where the group of burly men with silver shears would sneak out of the woods and shave the unicorn nearly bald in order to sell the mane, tail, and other hairs to enterprising mages to make into potions and overly powerful wands. Raindolph had managed to get the steps backwards, much like most of his magic practice.

He did, however, keep scratching until Princess Twilight gave out a deep sigh and rested her sharp chin on his thigh.

“I can’t believe you want to give this up and go back to your home,” she murmured.

She had a point. Well, other than the one on her chin.

“I really don’t belong in a world without humans,” he started. “Normally, I can’t change into a unicorn at all. I just barely squeaked through Transformation at school. I managed a bunny once, and it was just luck that the teacher walked by then because I never was able to do it again.”

“Are you sure I can’t talk you out of it?” Twilight turned to give him a languorous look from beneath lowered lashes, her eyes looking dark and dangerous in the shadows. “I found a spell that I’m fairly certain can take apart that wand without hurting you.”

“No, I’m positive,” said Raindolph, feeling anything but. “If you can take apart my wand so it’s not dangerous any more, I’ll see about traveling back to my own dimension. I may not be able to find much of a job there, but at least I’ll be sure to wake up in my own body every morning.”

“Oh.” Twilight brushed her head against him. “I’m sorry.”

“I’m… sorry too,” admitted Raindolph. “This is a very nice world, very accepting, and my ferret is going to get so fat he’ll explode if he gets spoiled any more by your friends. But I really need to be among my own kind. Even if they are mostly jerks.”

The ferret gave a subtle fuzzy thumbs-up from his resting spot on the shelf.

“I don’t want you to go.” Twilight straightened up with a sniff and got out the bed. “You’ll be much better off here.”

“That sounds—” Raindolph shifted position, only to hear the clinking of heavy chains from the manacle attached to his leg with the chain snakeing over to a glowing blue ring on the wall.

Princess Twilight’s horn flashed twice, and the wand floated in front of her. For one terrifying second, Raindolph thought she was going to take it over by the gruesome ritual of dismembering the present owner and bathing it in his blood. Then she said something worse.

“I put an exclusion spell on you and your wand, so it can’t get all the way to you. When I get back from downstairs, I’m going to destroy this wand, and you’re going to stay in Ponyville. Obviously, it’s affecting your mind, and once it is destroyed, you’ll see how correct I am.”

He tugged at the chain around his ankle with little effect. “And if I still want to go home?” he asked despite a small voice inside screaming for him to shut up.

“You won’t.” The Equestrian princess turned on one hoof and strode for the door. “Wait here. I’ll be right back, and we’ll see about getting that wand destroyed.”

The wand remained hovering in place just out of reach after the alicorn left and closed the door, but the ferret was off the shelf like a shot. “Time to bail,” he said, darting to the window and struggling with the latch. “Come on you stupid hunk of—”

“Wait for me.” Raindolph shifted forms into a unicorn, only to find the manacle changed with his body. “Nidwicks,” he snapped. “Maybe if I changed into a rabbit.”

The ferret stopped trying to open the window and shot him a look of limited amusement.

“True,” grumbled Raindolph. “If the chains changed once, they’ll match anything I can change into. Let me see if I can use a rust spell…” He trailed off as his pinkish magical aura formed around the hovering wand and slid off, like water off a duck.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” muttered the ferret. “I can’t believe I’m doing this.” He scrambled out along a crystal shelf, gaining speed as he scurried until launching himself to land on the floating wand. It wobbled under his weight, but with a little flailing, he managed to get it pointed in the rough vicinity of Raindolph’s chains.

“Watch it!” admonished the occasional target of the wobbling wand. “Do you even know how to use that thing? Can you even cast a spell on your own? How do you know you won’t take my leg off?”

“Questions, questions,” muttered the ferret, who shifted his weight and gauged the wand’s generalized direction by a nearsighted squint. “There’s only one way to find out. Brace yourself.”

Raindolph threw himself to the end of the chain, which silently parted under the rust spell.

As well as most of the end of the bed.

Much of the castle wall.

And if one were to squint in the moonlight, the clock tower near the city center was noticeably off-center, much like it had suddenly gotten shorter.

“Hey, it worked.” The ferret bounded over to the hole and scurried down the wall. “Come on, boss. I can see a train over at the station.”

“Are we dead yet?” whined Raindolph from under the blanket at the other end of the bed.

* Ω *

The midnight train ride up the Canterlot mountain went far smoother than Raindolph expected, with no crazy alicorns ripping open the top of the train car to kidnap him back to a cell in Ponyville and no questions from the rest of the snoozing or drowsy passengers. Thankful for the moment that he could be an ordinary well-dressed unicorn in the middle of so many other ponies, he kept silent until the train pulled into the station.

Once he started to stride down one of the darkened streets with his horn providing a wan illumination to prevent injuries from potholes or inconveniently placed buildings, he could no long stay quiet.

“Why this way?” he hissed at the ferret, who had taken lodging in a robe pocket which thankfully was not the pocket that the wand had just ‘turned up’ inside during the trip.

“Didn’t you pay any attention to the girls?” The ferret popped out of the pocket and pointed up at the silhouette of the castle towers. “Princess Twilight Sparkle isn’t the only alicorn around here. They’ve got some sort of day/night deal with Princess Luna watching over the night—”

“While Princess Celestia, the greatest alicorn in all of Equestria, all perfect and wonderful and smart and wise, reigns over the day,” finished Raindolph. “Of course I listened. I couldn’t help but listen. I haven’t heard that kind of hero worship since Instructor Valentine lectured about Hyssop the Disemboweler⁽*⁾. You’d think Celestia raised the sun⁽¹⁾ or something.”
(*) Not all graduates of the school turned out to be good mages.
(1) Thus you see one reason why Raindolph had such poor scores in school. Selective hearing.

“Yeah, yeah,” said the ferret. “This place is weird.”

To be honest, Raindolph expected some sort of difficulty getting into a castle where the rulers of an entire kingdom lived, perhaps ranks of guards and a officious appointment secretary who would arrange for an appointment five weeks from never. In actuality, there was a single bat-winged pegasus on guard at the front gate, who simply nodded and allowed him through once Raindolph managed to choke out, “I’m here to see Princess Luna about—”

In hindsight, he should have asked for directions. The castle was huge, with most of that space going up or down stairs and dark shadows lurking around his path that even his unicorn hornlight could not banish, and he certainly was not going to use the wand to make a light. He was just passing the same shadowed stained-glass window about for the third time when one of those shadows moved to stand in front of him.

“Urk!” Raindolph stumbled backwards, and with twice as many feet to trip over, the inevitable happened. “Ooof!”

The shadow loomed closer, and even though Raindolph thought he was about to die, he kept his hand out of the pocket containing the wand. The looming figure resolved into a concerned-looking alicorn, much larger and darker than Twilight Sparkle, with a flowing mane encompassing the starry night and extremely large eyes.

“Oh!” she exclaimed, extending a hoof down to help Raindolph to his multitudinous feet. “Beg pardon, kind sir. We were occupied, and not watching where we walked.”

“We were a little distracted too,” said Raindolph, shaking his head to clear away the stars from where he had bonked it against the cold tiles. “We were looking for Princess Luna.”

Realization swept across Raindolph like a cold wave of ice, much like the cold expression that appeared on the royal alicorn. “Art thou making fun of our speech?” she asked, taking a step forward until her cool nose was almost against his.

“Naa, he’s just an idiot,” said the ferret, who popped up out of Raindolph’s pocket. “Hello, Princess Luna. Sorry for not writing ahead for a reservation, but we had a psycho princess try to lock us up for eternal ear-scritches.”

The dark princess was set back a step and looked down on the ferret, then up at Raindolph’s perplexed face. “Oh, thou art the ‘human’ which Twilight Sparkle hath written about. Strange, though. You seem much more akin to our little ponies.”

“Oh. That. Um. Just a second.” The sensation of hooves turning back into fingers and toes was getting to be far too common for Raindolph’s good sense, and he was looking forward to getting that blasted wand destroyed so he could stay in his human form and safely go home. That, and not having to worry about blowing himself to bloody fragments with even the smallest spells from it. “Ah, that’s better,” he said, shaking the sleeves of the robe out and digging into one of the pockets for his shoes.

The princess watched while Raindolph slipped back into his shoes and nimbly tied his laces. All of the older students had proper curly toed velvet slippers for the school hallways, but he had always preferred something that would not slip off at high speed while frantically attempting to get to a class or run away from a lab experiment gone wild. The princess seemed impressed by the simple task, and bent close to watch him tie his second shoe.

“How in the stars do you keep track of which finger is doing what?” She lit up her horn and lifted one of Raindolph’s hands for a more in-depth inspection. “Does this have anything to do with these ‘scritches’ which your creature didst speak of?”

She moved closer and used her magic to gently move Raindolph’s hand to the top of her head.

* Ω *

It took a while to explain Twilight Sparkle’s obsession with human ear scritches, describe Raindolph’s determination to return to a world where toes outnumbered hooves, detail the frightening capacity of his wand, and say just what was the exact relationship of the ferret to Raindolph’s magic. During their discussion, Princess Luna guided their path through the dark castle, along the corridors and stairs, until they wound up in a shadowed alcove with lighting so dim that Raindolph could only see vague outlines of his surroundings.

Although what he was sitting on felt suspiciously like a bed, and Luna was resting her heavy head on his lap.

He kept scratching her ears. He really did not want to know what would happen if he quit, only that he would not like it. He did slow down after a while, once it seemed the heavy princess had passed into slumber, and tried to ignore the silver threaded cable that had seemingly formed out of moonlight and wrapped around his hind leg.

Well, one of his legs. And since he had not changed out of human form, it was by default a hind leg.

Raindolph really was wanting to get out of this dimension and go home, even if he had to dodge power-mad mages trying to kill him for his wand there. At least they would not have him scratch them behind the ears and snuggle down in his lap…

Wait a minute. There’s something wrong with that.

Well, getting the wand un-made would allow Raindolph to travel through his world without being in constant deadly peril, while staying in Equestria — with or without the wand — would leave him shackled to an alicorn’s bed in order to sate her unnatural desires. For scratches, that is.

Freedom and poverty would be far better than imprisonment in a gilded cage, no matter how well the caged bird was fed. There should be at least some way for an enterprising mage who survived school to eke out a living at home, even if Raindolph had to put on a silly hat and perform tricks at birthday parties.

Which still left him shackled to a bed with a night princess curled up on his lap and a ferret curled up on a nearby shelf when the sun nudged up against the horizon outside.

Then after a certain amount of time, it nudged up at the horizon again, much like a glowing cat bumping up against something sitting on the edge of a table.

“Luuuuuna…” There was a voice from outside the room, growing louder. It was a nice voice. A pleasant voice. A voice that perhaps had the authority to order Princess Luna to untie his leg from the bed and allow him to escape. Which, after very little thought, became obvious just exactly who that would be.

“Luna,” scolded the tall white alicorn who strode into the bedroom with all the authority of a parent. “You left the moon up this morning, and— Oh!”

By the light of Celestia’s horn, Raindolph could tell the room he was in was most certainly a bedroom, and from the glittering starfield spread across the ceiling in precious gemstones and the rich, dark woods of the bedroom set, it could only be Luna’s bedroom.

That would be Princess Luna.
The one in fact who had her head stretched out across Raindolph’s lap, taking up all the space.

The one who was half of the ruling family of this kingdom.

And the other half had just walked in the door.

The sense of power radiating down on Raindolph was palatable, which meant that he could not only feel it, but taste it in the back of his tongue, like licking a red-hot knife. He had missed Luna’s sense of power at first because it had surrounded him like the darkness. Celestia’s power was like the rising sun, a blast of warmth and heat that should have burned him to ashes and left Luna’s head unsupported, which was probably the only reason she had not roasted him.

“Oh, you must be the Mister Raindolph that my student… I mean my fellow princess has written to me about. Don’t worry, sir. We’ll have all this resolved shortly.” Celestia smiled, and all of Raindolph’s worries went away.

Well, other than being tracked down and murdered for his wand.

* Ω *

Raindolph managed to scurry along next to Princess Celestia without actually breaking into a run. His considerably shorter pony legs would never have been able to keep up, but human’s had a brisk stride, particularly this human when striding away from potentially being imprisoned as Her Royal Highness’ Personal Ear Scratcher for the rest of his life. Still, he had to look over his shoulder every once in a while to make sure they were not being followed.

“Thank you for undoing your sister’s magical chain spell,” managed Raindolph.

“Think nothing of it.” Celestia gave out a brief giggle and rolled her eyes. “I remember being young and having some handsome lad scratch behind my ears. Still, I never tied the poor thing to my bed. I must have words with the two of them later, but for now, I think we should see about your safety.”

Raindolph slowed slightly and started to subtly look for side doors in the castle corridors to sprint out of. “You’re not going to chain me up for ear scratches too, are you?”

“Oh, no.” Another door in front of them opened, and once Celestia had urged him inside, the door closed behind them with a very solid sound. The only other item in the room — besides a nervous mage and his familiar — was a silver mirror which burst into brilliant light as Celestia strode toward it. “Come along, young one. I think we shall find the answer to your problem by consulting an expert.”

By slowing his pace slightly more than Celestia, Raindolph remained on the Equestrian side of the portal for a brief moment after she had passed through.

“So, do we trust her?” asked Raindolph. “Every other alicorn I’ve met so far has tried to tie me to the bed and have their itchy way with me.”

“Can’t hurt,” managed the ferret through Raindolph’s tight grip. “You could just leave me here, though. Or just not quite hold onto me so hard.”

“Not a chance.” Raindolph got a tighter grip on the slippery little weasel before bracing himself to lunge forward, through the portal and to an uncertain future. “Twilight Sparkle and Luna both would use you to track me down, and you’d help them.”

* Ω *

The first thing Raindolph noticed in the room on the other side of the portal was that there was no other side of the portal, just an emptiness where a return surface should have been.

The second thing was the tall, radiantly beautiful woman dressed in a gauzy white gown which allowed her waist-long pastel hair to hang free.

It took a few moments for him to tie ‘Celestia’ to ‘Oh, God! She’s beautiful. I wonder who she is?’

It took a little longer for him to realize where he was.

They were standing in a shop, only much like a shoe shop would have a few dozen pairs of various fashioned footwear displayed on little stands, this shop had wands. Boxes of wands, crates of wands, loose wands tossed onto shelves, stuck into the tops of coffee cups, and laying around on tables in various states of assembly. Guarding this collection of arcane woodwork was an elderly man with frizzy white hair and thick sideburns, who was paying Raindolph about as much attention as a bit of dragon dung on a shoe.

Although with the human form of Celestia in the room, Raindolph really did not expect much attention.

“Your Highness!” The elderly man bowed deeply and straightened up with a pleased expression, taking in Celestia’s statuesque form with a growing smile. “Oh, it does my old eyes good to see you again, M’lady.”

“It is good to see you again too, Mister Ollivander.” Celestia took his old wrinkled hands in her own and touched her lips to the back of his fingers. “I fear my time here is limited to business matters, however. Raindolph, please show us your wand.”

He had to release his two-handed grip on the ferret to bring out his wand, which inevitably resulted in the little weasel making a mad dash for freedom among the dusty boxes in the small shop. Raindolph handed his wand over to the shop owner with more than a little trepidation, but buttressed by the idea that if the man wanted a wand like his, he would have made one of his own by now.

“Interesting. Very interesting,” murmured the old man. He turned the wand over in his hands, then gave it a flick of motion that made the ferret bounce up from behind the dusty boxes it was hiding behind. “I’ve never seen such an elegant three-way linkage on a wand before. Where did you purchase it?”

“Actually… I made it myself,” admitted Raindolph.

“Hey!” objected the ferret from somewhere behind the dusty boxes and crates of wands. “I helped.”

“You held the pages down,” said Raindolph. “And you splattered one of them with mouse guts.” There was a brisk chasing sound among the shadows of the shop, punctuated by a small but frantic squeak, indicating that the ferret was not intending on defending his creative role, but had decided on lunch instead.

“Have you made any other wands?” asked Ollivander, still turning the simple stick in his thin hands. “Any artefacts, perhaps?” he added at Raindolph’s shaken head. “Potions, maybe?”

“None that you’d want to drink,” admitted Raindolph. “My spellcraft has always been weak in school. Until I made the wand last week, I don’t think I ever successfully cast more than a handful of spells correctly.”

“Last week?” Ollivander looked up, his blue eyes wide and both greying eyebrows almost vanishing up into his flyaway hair. “Child, are you telling me you went all the way through school without a wand?”

“Yes?” Raindolph looked between the subtly smiling Celestia and the stunned older man. “It’s normal where I come from. Wands and staffs… or staves, I always get that term confused, are for focusing magical power. Any good mage can cast whatever they want without the crutch.”

Mister Ollivander sat down rather abruptly, although a nearby chair scooted itself under him to prevent a nasty fall. “Son,” he managed in a raspy voice, “if you had a door made of stone that you could barely open with all of your strength, and one day somebody replaced that door with a piece of painted paper…”

“What does this have to do with my wand?” asked Raindolph cautiously. This was the point in school where instructors had a habit of presenting an example, and most often the example was him.

No reply was immediately forthcoming, because Ollivander had picked up the wand from where he had dropped it and returned to examining the tiny lines of runes around the middle that Raindolph had painstakingly copied out of his book. Finally, he gave a grunt and stood up, rummaging around in several of the drawers until he found a pair of small golden rings.

“That should do it,” he murmured, sliding them onto Raindolph’s wand and giving them a small tap with a fingernail, which fixed them in place. “Here you go, lad. Let’s see something simple, like a light. You never can go wrong with a simple light spell.”

Raindolph gave the altered wand a long, studious look, as if he had any kind of a clue what the old man had done to it, then extended it carefully and tried the smallest illumination charm he could work.

A small spark floated off the end of the wand and hovered in place.

Nothing exploded, or caught on fire, or caught on fire and exploded.

He cautiously opened one eye, then fed a little more power into the spell, which blazed up to about a candle or two before he lost his nerve and let the spell lapse.

“Much better!” The old man rubbed his hands together and smiled. “The restrictor rings should let you cast more powerful spells than simple cantrips. Without them, the wand’s core would overload and rip out all of your magic in one blast. It would be an impressive sight, but one that I’d rather not see any closer than a few miles away.”

“Rip out all of my magic?” Raindolph held the wand out at arm’s length. “Fatally?”

“Oh, yes. Quite messy indeed. Bits and pieces flying all over the place.” Ollivander turned to Celestia, who was still standing in the sunbeam coming through the shop’s window. “Very astute of you to bring him to me before the explosion, Your Highness. Of course, there still remains the matter of my payment.”

“I seem to have forgotten my purse.” Celestia inclined her head to the shop windows, which promptly shuttered, shaded, and curtained, with the sign at the front door flipping over to ‘closed’ with one wink. “I presume the usual will suffice?”

* Ω *

There were many jobs that Raindolph had considered attempting after the inevitable happened and he was kicked out of school.

Farrier was not one of them. However, he did seem to have a knack for it.

“A little more off that hoof and we’re done, Raindolph,” said Ollivander. “Make sure to keep all the shavings in the bowl and put them into storage with the tail hairs.”

“Oooo,” moaned Celestia. “Take as much as you want, just as long as I can still walk.” She shifted her head in Ollivander’s lap and stretched to allow his fingers easier access to a particularly itchy spot behind one ear. “Garrick, you still have it for this old mare. Are you sure you don’t want to retire to my world?”

Ollivander did not reply at once, but simply devoted his attention to finalizing the Royal Ear Scratching until he gave Her Highness a slight nudge. “No, I don’t think so. The last few years have been quite an ordeal, what with the Dark Lord and his ilk causing such trouble, but he’s dead now, quite dead, and I think the new generation of wizards will need my services for many years to come. Now if you will please get up, Princess. My knees aren’t what they used to be, and I believe it is time for you to take your guest back home.”

“Grandpa!” came a voice from the back of the shop. “I brought the Montenegrin Muleberry branches you wanted. Is this your ferret?”

A shortish young woman with mousy brown hair that frizzed into a full set of split ends and tangles walked into the shop’s main room from the back, holding onto the ferret and rubbing his tummy. She looked up and started, nearly dropping the ferret and tripping over her own feet as she started backing up. “Oh, sorry. I didn’t know you had customers.”

“We were just leaving,” said Celestia, who straightened up in her human form and stretched with a happy smile as the window shades rolled back up and the ‘Open’ sign flipped over. “Come on, Raindolph.”

“Just a moment, Princess.” Raindolph put the bowl of hoof shavings where Ollivander directed and wiped his hands off on the nearby towel. “If I go home, some other mage can still—” he cast a quick glance at Ollivander and the young woman “—do what we discussed to get control of my wand, correct?”

“Certainly.” Celestia sat down for a moment and struggled with getting shoes onto her human feet. “They would have to be total fools, though.”

Since ‘total fools’ did define the vast majority of magekind, Raindolph plowed ahead. “Mister Ollivander, would you be needing an assistant? You know, to collect materials and help out around the shop. As long as that ‘Dark Lord’ you mentioned is really dead and gone, that is.”

“Quite dead, lad.” The old man scrutinized Raindolph’s face, his scraggly beard, and the look of desperation before giving a brief nod. “I believe we can find a position for your talent, if Her Highness will vouch for you.”

“Just keep him away from unicorns, and I think he will work out fine for you, Garrick. Until we meet again.” Celestia smiled, and the sunbeam coming through the window wrapped her in an infinite light that blinded all of them. When they had blinked away the dazzlement, she was gone.

“The old gal can sure make an exit,” mused Ollivander, or more correctly, Mister Ollivander, Raindolph’s new employer. “You begin today, at a hundred galleons a month, plus room and board. You can start by helping my granddaughter bring in those muleberry branches, and put down that ferret, Oleander!”

“Sorry, sir.” The ferret took a long leap to one of the nearby roof supports and scurried up to a dusty shelf. “Did you want me to dust while I’m up here? And keep the place clear of mice?”

“Ah… Yes,” said Mister Ollivander, casting a sideways look at Raindolph that gave him the impression that ferrets in this world did not generally talk. “Now go on, you two. Hogwarts will be open soon, and I want to be ready for the students. They’ll need fresh wands, and we’ll be busy as bees.”

The young lady had a brisk stride which Raindolph struggled to match while they walked to the back of the shop where several bundles of thick brown branches were securely tied up, only twitching and struggling a little under the heavy straps. He held his arms out while Oleander loaded and followed her back into the building to a small room where a number of baulks of timber were curing. Since he had been getting into so much trouble by opening his mouth lately, Raindolph was trying his best to be the strong, silent type.

Oleander had no such hesitation.

“So why did Miss Celestia say we should keep you away from unicorns?” she asked while tying down some of the thicker branches and avoiding their jabs and pokes. “Grandfather takes me with him every time we need unicorn hairs. They’re really quite noble creatures, if you treat them right.”

“I can turn into a unicorn,” said Raindolph’s mouth before he could stop it. What was worse, when Oleander turned her dark blue eyes on him, he had an irresistible… well, he could have resisted the urge, but with the alterations that Mister Ollivander had made to his wand, Raindolph really wanted to see if the only spell he had been able to reliably do still worked.

And it did.

“Oh, you’re adorable!” gushed Oleander. She sat right down on a bundle of sticks and pulled Raindolph’s head into her lap for a gentle ear scratching, which paralyzed his vocal cords as well as any ability to resist. “I wonder if I can braid your mane,” she murmured into his ear. “Grandfather won’t mind. He had an assistant with a bone through his nose for a few months, but he eventually went off to harvest some dragon heartstring from a Ukrainian Ironbelly and never came back.”

“Oleander!” came Mister Ollivander’s voice drifting through the shop. “I need your help sorting Kneedles whenever the two of you are done with putting that wood away.”

The lap under Raindolph’s head vanished as Mister Ollivander’s granddaughter abruptly stood up, and the contents of said lap fell onto the floor, changing back into a gangly pink-haired mage in the process.

“We better hurry,” said Oleander while shoving the last struggling branches into the curing bin. She slammed the bin door and helped Raindolph to his feet, giving him a smile and nudging him along the path to the waiting Kneedles, whatever they were.

Things were looking up for Raindolph.