The Boy Who Disappeared

Chapters

Chapter 6: That Recieved
Chapter 22: Potions
Chapter 1: The Boy
Chapter 2: Who Disappeared
Chapter 3: Had a Vision
Chapter 4: And Became
Chapter 5: A Girl
Chapter 7: A Letter
Chapter 8: From Hogwarts
Chapter 9: Jumping the Shark
Chapter 10: Government
Chapter 11: Vaults
Chapter 12: Robes
Chapter 13: Discord
Chapter 14: Priceless
Chapter 15: Weasley
Chapter 16: Family
Chapter 17: Occlumency
Chapter 18: Estate
Chapter 19: Silence
Chapter 20: Ravenclaw
Chapter 21: Sorting
Chapter 23: Curbstomp
Chapter 24: Flying Lessons
Chapter 25: Battle
Chapter Closed
Chapter's End

Chapter 6: That Recieved

Petunia Dursley was a bit later coming down to breakfast than she’d wanted to be. Her curling iron had been stubborn today, after her morning shower- she rather suspected that it was reaching the end of its life. It’d started acting up on her last week, and was now so bad it was almost impossible to use anymore. Still, she’d heard pans on the stove downstairs on schedule, then the creaking of the floorboards as Dudley followed the smell of eggs and bacon, so she hadn’t had to go get things started on her own. She’d taken the time she needed to get that wave in her hair that Vernon loved so much.

It was a good thing the new curling iron Vernon had ordered should be arriving today. She wouldn’t have to worry about it tomorrow.

Vernon was still finishing up his morning shower, so she headed downstairs to check on things, make sure everything was on track. It was always dangerous to leave Dudley and Harry alone in the kitchen- that was often when things got burned, because Harry had to spend so much time avoiding Dudley’s punches- or taking them to his body, sometimes- that he couldn’t tend to the food.

When she walked downstairs, though, the hallway went past the living room- and as she passed, she noticed Dudley whimpering in fear in the corner. She paused briefly, before deciding to investigate what might have scared him before she asked him. As much as she cared, it often took him hours to tell her what he was scared of, so it was much faster for her to look on her own.

As she approached the kitchen, she noticed a peculiar sound. There was an odd humming coming from the kitchen- but it was impossible; she was the only girl in the house!

Then she stepped through the wide-open door into the kitchen. It was empty, except for Harry, who was humming a tune while she flipped the bacon.

While she flipped the bacon.

She looked a second time.

No, Harry was still very definitely a she. Her glossy black hair waved gently down her back, in exactly the way Vernon loved, almost far enough for her to sit on it.

Perhaps the largest tell for exactly who it was was that she was still wearing Dudley’s old clothes.

“What-?” she began, mind racing to try and figure out what had happened.

Harry looked. “Hmm?” When she had turned her head, she’d done so quickly enough that her now longer bangs flew away from her forehead just far enough to reveal the lightning scar for a mere moment. Then, she… she was a pretty little girl. And cute- and, she noticed, not wearing glasses. None of which had ever described Harry before.

“Oh, sorry about that,” Harry continued, once she saw Petunia. “I, uh,” she glanced down at herself, and back up, “woke up like this. If I knew how to reverse it, I’d have done it already.” She then gestured towards the door with a spatula. “And I think Dudley needs you- pretty sure he’s afraid of girls.” She turned back to the stove, and started scrambling eggs.

Petunia stood stone-still for another few seconds. She could see Dudley’s untouched platter of eggs, bacon, and toast already sitting on the table; she knew Harry knew that was the easiest way to ensure he still had time to cook breakfast for her and Vernon before Dudley started trying to hit him.

The girl Harry had become… She had seen the telltale bump on her chest. It seemed a bit early to her, at only eleven years of age, but the fact was that it was happening.

And with how pretty and elegant she was, it was a shame that the clothes were so nasty. She’d have to make sure she would have halfway decent-looking clothes to wear, if she was going to remain a girl for any kind of duration.

Then she suddenly jolted into motion, and headed for the living room. She had a son to console.

Emma Granger bolted awake at the sound of Hermione’s scream, even through two walls and a closed door.

Then there was the thump, and her husband, Dan, bolted awake next to her.

Then there was the clattering crash in the direction of the library.

Both man and woman moved as one.

“Hermione!”

Their bedding ended up strewn across the first thirty feet of hallway on the way to the library.

When they burst in through the library doors, though, it was to find Hermione sitting, completely unharmed, on the floor next to the fallen ladder, and holding a book in her arms.

She looked up at them. “Hi.”

Dan let out a sigh of relief, and Emma spoke. “Are you okay? That sounded like it hurt.”

Hermione shrugged, then looked up. “... Yeah, I guess it did, didn’t it? Not nearly as much as I expected it to, though. Even when the ladder fell on me.”

“It fell on you?” Dan asked, freshly alarmed.

Hermione fairly hopped onto her feet again, still holding that heavy encyclopedia. “Yup. Some kind of vision, I think, made me go limp for a second.” She looked down at her arms. “And gave me muscles.” She took a deep breath. “I hope I’m not dreaming.”

Dan was rendered speechless. Emma stepped closer, to touch Hermione’s muscled arm. “How…” She took a deep breath, and then hugged Hermione, encyclopedia and all.

To her surprise, it was she who moved when she pulled Hermione closer, not Hermione.

“You know what this means?” she muttered.

“I don’t have to worry about falling on my face and not being able to get up again? I really hope it isn’t temporary.”

“This means you can come off of that wretched diet!”

“Really?” Hermione sounded excited. She hadn’t only been carrying books around all the time, in her effort to get her strength to keep up with her growth, but she’d also been dieting hard, to the point where she was dangerously underweight, to keep her mass down to where she could lift it. As such, even immediately after a meal, she’d been constantly starving for years.

“Yep!” She drew back from her hug. “Just don’t let me catch you packing on too many pounds, you hear me?”

Hermione grinned, placing the heavy encyclopedia on a nearby table with one hand. “Oh, I expect the challenge will be to pack on enough pounds,” she answered, before stepping forward for her own hug.

Emma let out a squeak of surprise when her daughter’s casual hug involved more squeeze than Dan’s toughest bearhug.

Hermione drew back immediately. “I- I didn’t hurt you, did I?”

“N-No,” she answered. “Your strength just surprised me.”

Hermione flinched, and looked down at her arms. “I… All the vision gave me was muscles. I don’t know how much strength they come with, yet.”

“Did the vision give you any clues?” Dan asked, kneeling next to his wife, putting himself on Hermione’s level.

Hermione shrugged. “Technically, yeah, I guess. I mean…” She looked back up at the bookshelf. “In that vision, I threw lead weights as heavy as our car through the roof.” She looked at him, then raised one specific finger. “With my pinkie.” She took a deep breath. “I… rather suspect they don’t fully represent reality. Though it did present itself as if it did, so…”

“With magic, who knows,” Emma muttered.

Hermione only nodded.

Ariel was worried her family might refuse her, so Ginny held her hand on their way down to breakfast. They looked exactly identical, just like Fred and George.

When they reached the kitchen, though, only their mother was there, working with her pots and pans to make breakfast. They both sat down.

“Good morning,” Ginny greeted.

Molly glanced over at her. “Good morn- Wait a minute.” She turned to look more fully, then counted. “There’s two of you?”

“Ahh,” Ginny looked at Ariel, then back at her mother. “I guess. I mean, Ariel isn’t me, but…”

Ariel took a deep breath. “I did kinda… pop out of thin air, didn’t I?”

Ginny nodded. “Yeah. From imaginary friend to twin sister in an instant.”

Ariel scowled. “And landing on the floor is not the first thing you want to remember.”

“We seem to have an infestation of Ginnys,” someone said, from behind Ginny and Ariel.

They looked. It was Fred, entering the room with his twin.

George nodded. “Yes, they seem to be popping out of the woodwork,” he mused.

“Or out of thin air,” Ginny amended.

“Thin air?” Fred asked.

Ariel smiled, and nodded. “Thin air.”

“Hangon,” George said, leaning in towards Ariel. “Hmm. Not exactly the same- your eyes are blue.” He stood up again.

“So what’s your name, oh sister of ours?” Fred asked Ariel.

Ariel giggled softly. “I’m Ariel.”

Ron entered the room next. “What the-? Why are there two Ginnys?”

“She’s not a Ginny,” Fred told Ron immediately.

“She’s an Ariel,” George continued.

“And a Weasley as well, I bet,” Fred mused.

Ariel shook her head. “Just Ariel. I think.”

An owl suddenly swooped in the open window, and dropped a small pile of letters on the table, before heading out again.

Fred got to it first, and took one glance at the wax seals. “Oh, looks like our Hogwarts mail just arrived,” he said, flipping them over to start reading addresses.

Three seconds later, George handed Ariel a letter.

“Uh… I guess I’m Ariel Weasley,” Ariel said, reading the address on the letter. She looked up. “Okay then.”

“The Hogwarts shopping is going to be quite expensive this year,” Molly mused.

“Hangon,” Ginny began, noticing that the twins had finished doling out letters and she hadn’t gotten one. “If we’re twins, why’d you get a hogwarts letter and not me?”

Ariel blinked, flipped it over, and popped open the wax seal. “Good question.”

There was only one piece of parchment inside, and she read it aloud. “Dear Ms. Weasley, we are pleased to inform you that your name is now down for Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. However, you are not currently of school age, so if you are still in Britain next summer, you can expect an invitation to Hogwarts. Sincerely, Professor McGonagall, deputy headmistress.”

She looked up. “I think I’ve figured it out.”

“Us too,” Fred said.

Molly let out a sigh of relief. “Okay. At least we’ve got a year to prepare, hmm? I don’t think we could afford to send you this year anyways- we just don’t have the money.” She took a deep breath. “And even then, it’ll be a squeeze to get all your stuff next year, as well.”

Ron rubbed his chin contemplatively with one finger, gazing in the direction of his sister’s new twin.

Author's Note

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Chapter 22: Potions

“You’ve got mail,” Silversong observed rather cheerfully.

Hailey looked up as her Hedwig- the snowy owl she’d gotten at Ginny's recommendation- fluttered importantly down in front of her, next to Silver’s eagle owl. “Interesting,” she smiled. “The Dursleys promised not to ask me how the first week went until the weekend.” She gently accepted the letter from Hedwig’s beak. “Have a good night?”

Hedwig blinked slowly at her.

She shrugged. “Well, it’s only polite to ask.” She ripped open the envelope- just in time for a large barn owl to land right next to Hedwig, crowding her aside.

Hedwig snapped her beak at the larger owl.

Hailey looked up. “Oy,” she barked. “Don’t be pushy.” She gave the barn owl a little push, so Hedwig was no longer struggling to avoid toppling Hermione’s glass, then took its letter as well.

“Are you talking to the owls?” Hermione asked Hailey, retrieving her glass.

The barn owl snapped its beak angrily at Hailey, then took flight, leaving without another backward glance.

Hailey glanced at her. “Well of course. Just because they can’t speak our language doesn’t mean they aren’t intelligent, or can’t understand our language.” She unfolded the letter Hedwig had delivered. “Now, I wonder…” She read down it for a second, then chuckled softly.

“What is it?” Silver asked.

“It’s Hagrid,” Hailey answered. “The Gamekeeper, who led us across the Lake. He’s asking if I’m interested in ‘chatting’ with him this afternoon, since we’re off.”

“Oh, I’ve heard about him,” Silver mused. “He’s- Well…” She glanced past Hailey at Hermione, who raised her eyebrows. “The way they tell it, he’s some sort of savage living on the school grounds, who gets drunk, tries to do magic, and ends up setting fire to his bed.”

“Well, they’re not wrong about the school grounds thing,” Hailey informed her. “He even gave me instructions on how to find his hut. Not that ‘walk out the front doors and look to your right’ is very difficult, but…” She giggled softly.

“So why is he asking?” Hermione asked, taking the letter and scanning it.

“No idea,” Hailey answered. “Looks too genuine to be a ploy, though- and considering what we… well, can do, I don’t see the harm in having a chat. Besides, he’s technically a staff member, just trying to familiarize himself with the student that is most likely to run into problems with other students trying to bug her about the Boy who Lived, so he can better help if he happens to see them bugging her about that?”

“And now you’re talking about yourself in the third person,” Ron observed, seated to Hermione’s left.

“Well yes,” Hailey nodded, “of course I was. In any case, why don’t we all go chat with him after lunch today?”

Silver shrugged. “I don’t see why not. I mean…” She looked between Hailey and Hermione. “I’d ask what could go wrong, but then something probably would.”

Hailey let out a snort of laughter, while Hermione giggled. Hailey then scribbled a quick ‘will do’ on the back of Hagrid’s note, and gave it back to Hedwig.

“What about that other letter?” Ron asked suddenly, pointing at it. “That looked like one of the school owls.”

Hailey glanced down at it, and slit it open. “True. I wonder who…? Oh.” She scanned down it, and rolled her eyes. “Looks like the Headmaster wants me to meet him in his office, this afternoon, so he can ask about The Boy Who Lived.”

“Funny, we were just talking about that,” Silver mused.

“Better not keep him waiting,” Hermione muttered.

Hailey shrugged. “Nah, we already agreed to see Hagrid. Professor Dumbledore can wait.” She gestured at the table. “Besides, his owl already left, so he’s obviously not all that worried about knowing whether or not I’m actually going to show up.”

Silver blinked. “That’s… one way to look at it, I suppose.”

“You’d think he’d be really worried about that,” Hermione mused.

“Yeah, with how much you’ve had to yell that you are not his sister,” Ron agreed.

Hailey rolled her eyes; she’d already had to yell to the entire Gryffindor common room, three times, that she was not Harry’s sister. “I guess he hasn’t heard yet. Well, if he’s going to be so ignorant, I think I’m going to ignore his letters, make him send someone to come get me. And when he does, outright refuse to talk about… Him. See how he likes that.”

“He is not going to be happy,” Silver scowled. “And you are aware of how dangerous an unhappy Dumbledore can be, right?”

Hailey shrugged. “That’s the point.” She leaned in close, and whispered. “And it’s not like he can hurt me, is it?”

“Are you sure about that?”

Hailey raised an eyebrow. “You mean you haven’t noticed Discord’s touch?”

“Dis-?” Silver facepalmed. “Of course.” Then she lowered her hand. “I wonder why…?”

“Protecting his interests, I think,” Hailey mused. Then she straightened up. “And even then, I’m just a student here anyways- if I choose not to obey every single letter that comes in, when I have no idea if it’s fraudulent or not, what is he going to do? Dock points?”

Silver let out a snort of laughter.

Hermione giggled softly as well. “Just don’t lose us the House Cup,” she told Hailey.

“Oh, no worries, we’re already in last place,” Hailey informed her. “I wonder how long that will last, though? I mean, we’ve already seen how imperfect the teachers are- who is to say Dumbledore is any different?” As she spoke, she mimed wrapping a turban around her head.

Silver snickered; she had been supremely unimpressed by Professor Quirrell’s first class as well. “I mean,” she muttered. “He is the one that hired ‘em all.”

“And it’s like Percy said at the welcoming feast,” Hermione grinned, leaning against Hailey. “ ‘He’s a genius!’ ”

“But yes, he is a bit mad,” Ron finished her quote, grinning like a loon.

Hailey snickered. “Anyways, we should probably finish eating before class starts, eh?”

“Yup,” Silver agreed, snatching a piece of bacon from Hailey’s plate and promptly attempting to stick it in Hailey’s mouth, with varied success.

Hailey cheerfully chomped on the offered bacon, before reaching over to fork Silver some of her own scrambled eggs.

Silver, whose owl had long since departed, delivered candy lying forgotten, accepted the offering and promptly reached past Hailey to feed Hermione some sausage.

Once again, Dumbledore found himself watching the Gryffindor table out of the corner of his eye. He couldn’t hear a word of what they were saying from where he was, but that Hailey Potter was certainly a strange one. She’d seemed to have had two friends already, when she first came to the school- a muggleborn named Hermione Granger… and one Silversong Malfoy. It didn’t exactly help that, when he asked the Ministry who Silversong was, all he got was shrugs and a healthy dose of ‘no clue’. He’d eventually found out that the girl’s file with the Ministry was stored in the so-called ‘Secure Drawer’, meaning that even he didn’t have access without Amelia Bones’ explicit permission.

And Amelia Bones did not like giving him permission. She’d outright refused when he’d asked- and when questioned, she’d refused because “The contents of those files are none of your business, Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore.”

He’d known, right then and there, that he wasn’t going to get any further on her; whenever she used his full name, that was her way of telling him to clear out, or else. He had yet to find out what that ‘or else’ was, but he was very sure that he didn’t want to find out.

But even her refusal had told him something: He was not Hailey’s magical guardian… even though she had required a standard muggleborn introduction, which always meant that the Hogwarts Headmaster- meaning, himself- had been assigned as the magical guardian.

He watched as the three girls started their rapidly-becoming-normal display of feeding each other, and let out a sigh. Ronald Weasley had, it seemed, managed to forge a friendship with them since they arrived- but he evidently had nothing on the bond between the girls.

He was pretty sure that the feeding display had started as a food fight during the welcoming feast. There was always at least one of those each time the school had a feast, after all.

Professor Snape paused in the middle of his roll call, looking at the next name on his list.

He was internally conflicted about how to handle the Potter girl. He was still indebted to the Potter boy’s father- but, with the news of Harry’s death, he had spent several sleepless nights trying to figure out how he would pay James back, without waiting for the man’s ghost to come calling.

He had wondered, ever since the Sorting earlier that week, if Hailey was in any way related- if he could pay James off by protecting her. From the sound of it, he wouldn’t- there was a rumor going around that she wasn’t his sister.

But then she entered his classroom- and whenever he looked at her, he could see young Lily Evans looking back at him. Hailey didn’t look exactly the same; her hair was different, and she had a number of subtle differences that made her just so much cuter than Lily ever was- but the resemblance was uncanny.

Perhaps the Potters had a daughter as well, that the world wasn’t told about? That would also explain Hailey’s last name!

He made a quick decision and, recalling what had happened when McGonagall had called Harry’s name at the Sorting, smiled as nastily as he could. It helped that he was in a nasty mood.

“Ahh, yes. Hailey Potter. Our new…” He paused for a fraction of a second, hunting for something to call her. “Heir of Gryffindor,” he decided.

“Heir of Gryffindor?” Hailey answered amusedly, eyebrows raised. “I think you’ve got the wrong girl.”

He snarled at her, and postponed his normal welcoming spiel. “Potter! What would I get if I added powdered root of asphodel to an infusion of wormwood?”

Hermione Granger, next to Hailey, raised her hand.

Hailey, however, scowled at her empty cauldron. “Um… I’m not sure.” She looked up at him. “What are the other ingredients in that infusion?”

So, she was going to be specific, huh? Time for something specific, then. He ignored her question. “What is the difference between monkshood and wolfsbane?”

Hermione’s hand stretched even higher, but he still ignored it.

Hailey rubbed her chin this time. “Monkshood and wolfsbane…” She scowled. “I know I’ve read Monkshood somewhere, and that wolfsbane is more commonly referred to as Acolnite, but beyond that…” She shrugged.

His scowl deepened. The girl had obviously read the book. He cast about for something a little more obscure, but that would still have appeared. “Where would you look if I asked you to find me a bezoar?”

Hermione raised her hand so high that she stood up.

Hailey, however, blinked. “Oh. A bezoar is a stone taken from the stomach of a goat. Works as an antidote to most poisons, so there’s probably at least one in the store cupboard, and I know there’s one in my Potions kit- I got it specifically. Bizarre, aren’t they?” She smiled sweetly up at him.

Hermione sat down again, lowering her hand.

He sighed internally. He couldn’t even make fun of how little she knew, because she knew more than most second-years he’d subjected to that same questioning!

He wanted to take points off of her, but in the seconds he had to think about it, he couldn’t think of any justifiable reason- so he swept wordlessly back up to the front of the class to continue his normal spiel.

Snape had developed a habit of enumerating the ways potions could go wrong, in his head, at any given point in the brewing process. As a result, when his display of Silversong Malfoy’s excellently-stewed horned slugs was interrupted by a loud hissing from right behind him, he knew immediately that one of two things had happened. The first, and more likely, was that someone had added the porcupine quills before they took the cauldron off the fire. It had, after all, been a common mistake in his early years as a teacher, before he added specific warnings against it to his lesson plan.

The other possibility was that someone had done their potion properly, but was using a cheap pewter look-alike cauldron, usually made of iron, brass, or ‘aluminium’, rather than a true pewter cauldron.

Since the former issue was the more sedate of the two and still often caused a bit of a splash, he bolted directly away from the hissing even before he looked. The resultant potion was rather harmful basically no matter which it was, and he did not want to be splashed. He did feel a little sorry for Malfoy, who would have been left in the splash radius. For as much as he hated Gryffindors, the Malfoy family were very good friends of his- to the point where he was actually Draco’s godfather, once the boy resurfaced. He saw no reason he shouldn’t extend the same courtesy to his sister, adopted or not.

Before he had made the two full steps that would put him out of the danger zone of either disaster, he was overtaken by a cloud of acid green smoke.

That was a good thing; that meant it was the porcupine quills. The wrong cauldron would have made sky blue smoke that would infect other cauldrons of potion, causing the problem to cascade throughout the room if he didn’t vanish everyone’s potions.

He reached the safe distance for the porcupine quill mistake and turned around to investigate.

As expected, it was a Gryffindor. This was the Gryffindor side of the room, after all. Neville Longbottom was sitting alone at the ruined cauldron, drenched in the harmful potion. His partner, Saemus Finnegan, had frozen several strides away, carrying some ingredients from the student store cupboard; as Snape recalled, the boy had instructed Longbottom not to do anything until he got back.

The two students at the cauldron on the far side of Longbottom’s were just outside the splash radius- but their cauldron was not. Some contaminated potion had made it inside- so those two students, still unharmed, were leaping away from and fleeing their own contaminated potion. A shame, they had made a far less noticeable mistake almost ten minutes earlier that would’ve merely rendered their potion inert, so long as they didn’t make the quill mistake. He’d planned on using their mistake to show the class what a best-case scenario for a potion gone wrong looked like, and explain why something so simple as stirring it with the wrong hand could cause such a massive difference in the ending potion.

Malfoy and her partner, Hermione Granger, were in the splash zone themselves- but seemed amazingly unharmed. As a matter of fact, in a display of quick thinking, Granger had dumped the contents of her cutting board on the table in front of her- doing significant damage to the ingredients- in order to turn the cutting board into a makeshift lid for their cauldron, protecting it from splashes.

He gave his wand a little wave, using a quick charm to vanish the offensive potion. That was one of the main reasons he chose this potion as his opener, rather than something whose failure states were somewhat less harmful; with this one, no matter how one messed it up, the cleanup- and so, disaster containment- was as easy as a single charm. It was also a fairly easy potion to brew, and about seventy five percent of his students- on average- got it on their first try, even in their first class.

“Idiot boy!” He had, after all, ignored two separate explicit instructions- one in the class materials, and one from his partner not two minutes prior- in order to make that mistake. He couldn’t even blame it on Potter.

The apparent imperviousness of Granger and Malfoy against the harmful potion, though, bore investigation.

Author's Note

The look-alike cauldrons were originally made of 'copper, brass, or aluminum'... until I looked up pewter, which is a mixture of copper, tin, antimony, bismuth, and sometimes silver. It didn't make much sense for one of the main hardening components of pewter (copper) to cause such a strange reaction with the potion- but brass (copper & zinc) might, since zinc is not present in pewter and so might have an aversive reaction with the potion. Aluminum and Iron are common working metals (in the modern age, at least), and neither are present in pewter, so I thought I'd put them on the list.

Also, pewter is a fairly dangerous metal to use on an open flame, yet also safe in the same way you can boil water in a plastic bottle: It has a very low melting point of, depending on the exact mixture, only 170-230C (338-518F). You could melt it down on your stovetop! This certainly explains how Neville melted Seamus' cauldron into a twisted blob... The porcupine quill addition must be a reaction with a high activation energy (only happens when still on the fire), and also highly exothermic, while also (vastly) raising the boiling point of the potion... This explains why it is cited in the books as burning holes in people's shoes, though not why Neville wasn't scalded when he was drenched in it. Magic, I guess.

Either that or Neville was, in fact, scalded, but the potion acted as a painkiller of sorts at the same time, meaning that Neville didn't really feel the burn, and giving him enough peace of mind to merely whimper when boils started popping up on his nose. This would certainly explain why Snape had him sent to the Hospital Wing rather than just treating him with a simple potion to cure boils... This does not excuse Snape's (very canon) first response of calling Neville (presumably badly injured) an "idiot boy"... At least he made the prompt Hospital Wing order in canon, and here, the assumption is that he did so immediately after the chapter ended. I didn't see the need to repeat it.

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Once again, this is the last that I have currently available for publication. I have another chapter written, but it's a transition chapter- and I'm not certain, just yet, exactly what it is transitioning to, so it won't be going up- even to patrons- until I am sure. Which may be fast enough for it to go up here on schedule, but probably won't be.

Chapter 1: The Boy

Harry Potter.

He stared at the door of his cupboard, hidden in darkness as it was.

Was that his name?

Or was it Boy, which was how both Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia addressed him?

He scowled at the door. He was six… and a half. It was January, and his birthday was in July. But he was about halfway through first grade at school- at school, where he was supposed to respond to the name Harry Potter. And call himself that.

Then he’d asked his teacher. The teacher had been confused by his question, but answered that yes, Harry Potter was his name.

But was it really?

He wasn’t sure. He’d have to think about it a bit more. Learn a bit more. He just hoped that Dudley and his buddies- his new buddies, that followed him around like… he didn’t know what the word was. They did what he did.

Which included Dudley’s favorite activity, hitting him.

Even though he knew Dudley hit other boys when he wasn’t around- he’d seen it a couple times.

He had to admit, he’d known Dudley was going to beat him from the moment the teacher complimented him specifically for getting a perfect score on the pop quiz.

Hardly ten minutes had passed since break started before Dudley had shown up, with both of his friends, and started beating him in the playground. This was as hard as Dudley had ever beaten him with his fists, he was sure of it. Dudley even managed to land a particularly painful blow on his shoulder, that just wouldn’t stop hurting- and had an additional twinge of pain every time Dudley hit him, no matter where, because he was being held up by that arm.

But he’d had worse, the various times Dudley had pushed him down the stairs, or off the couch, or even out the upstairs window into Aunt Petunia’s rose bushes, once. That was about the only time he could remember that Dudley had been punished. Sure, he had been punished as well, and quite a bit more- but Aunt Petunia had told Dudley off.

He was beginning to wonder when Dudley would tire himself out- he was sure he could outlast Dudley- when something happened.

There was a voice. It came from behind Dudley, and sounded like a girl, but he couldn’t see anyone- Dudley was too big and too close.

“What are you doing?” it asked.

All three of them froze. Dudley, Piers, and Gordon. And he only barely stopped himself from laughing at the look of fear on Dudley’s face. Who was this girl? Why was Dudley afraid of her?

Piers and Gordon dumped him on the ground, as they turned, with Dudley, to face her.

“Nothing,” Dudley told her.

There was a moment of silence. “That wasn’t nothing.”

“Uhh… Playing?”

Another moment of silence. “Playing what, punching bag? When’s your turn to get punched like that?”

“Uh, none of your business!” Dudley sounded absolutely terrified.

He couldn’t see anything, from his position on the ground behind Dudley, except part of the girl’s blue pants; Dudley’s size hid the rest of her from view.

“I think that was very much my business,” the girl stated.

Dudley and his friends didn’t give her any time to finish what it sounded like she was going to say, though. Instead, they threw their hands into the air, screamed in terror, and fled to the four corners of the Earth.

When they did, he finally had a clear view of the girl. She was about his age, and had bushy brown hair. She was holding a pair of textbooks in her arms- and he noticed that her arms seemed to be a lot skinnier than his own. Actually, her arms were a lot skinnier than any other arms he knew.

But he hadn’t really seen any girl’s arms until then, so perhaps that was just normal?

She closed her eyes, and took a deep breath. Then, she carefully adjusted her grip on her books- her grip was slipping, however slowly- and took another deep breath. “Whew,” she muttered. “I was so sure they were just going to beat me for that.” She took a third breath, and looked at him. “You’re… Harry, right?”

“Uh,” he muttered. Come to think of it, whenever there was a line on his homework intended for his name, he was supposed to put Harry Potter on it, so he figured that was his name. “Um, yes. I think.”

“You think…? Whatever. Are you okay?”

He looked at her, then scrambled to his feet. After his left arm- the one whose shoulder still hurt from that one blow Dudley had given it- collapsed under him twice, he used the other arm to stand, and managed to stand successfully. She was staring at him, her mouth forming a circle, when he finished. “Yeah, I’m fine,” he answered. He was supposed to, and had no reason not to.

She closed her mouth, opened it again, and closed it again. “Are… Really?”

Right at that moment, her books slipped out of her hands. She let out a panicked yelp and scrambled to catch them, but they ignored her efforts and crashed to the ground.

When they did, Harry saw her math textbook land on her left foot. It wouldn’t hurt her all that much- Dudley had dropped things on his feet, and stomped on his feet, and whatever else, more times than he could remember, and it never hurt all that much.

Judging by her short scream of pain, though, she didn’t agree. She tried to leap backwards- which should have been easy, even with that book on her foot, it wasn’t that heavy- but failed, and instead crashed to the ground. As she did, a sharp cracking noise came from her foot.

That was something Harry had never had happen before, so he couldn’t blame her for the second cry of pain. He bent down and lifted the math textbook off of her foot, which was bent in a way it most certainly wasn’t supposed to- and even bleeding. “Are you okay?” he asked.

She lifted her leg up to hold her injured foot with both hands, whimpering, and didn’t respond. She stayed like that for a few seconds, took a deep breath, and looked up at him. “Y-Yeah, I’m okay,” she answered. Then she rolled over to crawl a few feet to a nearby bench, and climbed up onto it. It looked like hard work. Once she got herself seated, she lifted her foot again- funny, it wasn’t bending strangely any more- to hold it some more. “C’mon,” she said. “Sit.”

Harry only stared for a few seconds, before he looked down at her other textbook. It was an English textbook. He stacked the math one on top of it and, because his left arm refused to support the weight when he tried lifting them with both arms, he slid his right hand under the pair of books and lifted them to carry them to the bench with him.

He placed the two textbooks on the bench next to her, then sat down, on the other side of the books as she was, as she had commanded him to.

She was staring at him. He tilted his head, unsure of exactly how to ask why she was staring.

Then, she suddenly looked straight ahead, and returned her foot to the ground to take a deep breath. “So, um,” she began slowly, before looking back up at him- and at his left arm, since she was to his left. “Where does it hurt?”

It was a miracle. Normally, whenever it hurt that bad, it would take hours and hours before the pain would go away, but she made all of his pain go away in less than a minute with the merest of touches. She even made his left arm work properly once again!

Finally, he asked the most important question on his mind. “What was that cracking noise?”

She stared at him for a couple seconds, then looked at the playground sand. “... Oh. That…” She took a deep breath. “I broke my ankle. It’s fine now- see?” She demonstrated that her foot was just fine, wiggling it for him to see.

He frowned at the sand. “And the book was enough to break your ankle?”

She sighed. “I… that’s because I’m…” She took a deep breath. “Because I’m special. I’m really weak, and get hurt easy… but in exchange, I’m magical.” She smiled at him. “I can heal anything.”

“... Oh.”

She looked down at her books. “That’s… why I carry my books around all the time, actually. Working out, trying to get stronger. So I don’t have to be a total pushover.” She took a deep breath. “It’s… It’s hard work.”

He paused for a few seconds. “What’s your name?”

“My-? Oh, sorry about that. I’m Hermione. Hermione Granger.”

Two years passed. Throughout those two years, Harry knew that Dudley and his friends- his gang, as Hermione told him the word was- were afraid of girls. Not just of Hermione, even, but of all girls.

She fully expected that it wouldn’t last, though, so they were ready for it.

And finally, the time came. It was late January again, when Dudley built up the courage to attack Hermione. It was just Dudley; the other two were hanging back fearfully while Dudley charged in, yelling at the top of his lungs.

Hermione had graduated from two books up to three, but she still got hurt a lot easier than Harry did.

So, Harry took her books, freeing her to move as she saw fit. She wasn’t very agile even without her books, but with Dudley’s charge, she didn’t need to be. She stepped quickly out of his path, right up next to Harry- then snatched the top book off of the stack in his hands. While Dudley was still recovering from his charge, she raised her math textbook high over her head, and brought it down hard on the top of his head.

Dudley collapsed straight to the ground, instantly unconscious.

And from that moment on, Harry knew.

Girls were scary.

And he wanted to be one.

Author's Note

Well, here it is. For those of you who knew about and/or read the original version that never made it to FimFiction, I'm finally rewriting it- and it's no longer just another story, either.

Patreon, Discord.

Chapter 2: Who Disappeared

Ten. Almost eleven.

Harry didn’t really care what the calendar said, though. He could be ten years old, or he could be twenty years old, it made no difference to him. The Dursleys would never treat him any differently.

The important part was that it was close to the end of July. Thus, it was halfway through summer break.

Over the last couple of years, ever since Hermione had knocked Dudley silly, he had wanted to be a girl. He’d told Hermione about that right about when he turned nine.

She’d giggled, and told him that her parents were always telling her she needed more female friends, and suggested that he be her first one.

So he did that. He had worked with her to build himself a female persona- a persona he preferred to his male one, actually. And, since Hermione had healing magic, they figured there was probably magic somewhere that could transform, and had planned out what his female persona would look like, named it, and so on. He’d gotten pretty good at switching between his normal persona as Harry, and her preferred persona as Hailey- and of course, at hiding Hailey from the Dursleys.

Hailey was a pretty girl. Hermione had turned out to be pretty good at drawing as well, so she’d done a few drawings of Hailey, and Harry sorely wished he could truly become Hailey. If he could, she would be so much freer, so much happier, than Harry could ever be. Than even she could ever be, while still trapped in Harry’s body.

Meanwhile, Hermione had graduated to four textbooks- and then, not two weeks later, gone back to just three. Shortly before summer break had begun, she’d been forced to go down to just two once again- and Harry could tell why, even without her telling him. Her body was beginning to take the shape he was used to seeing on all the older girls at school.

She had explained why it was a problem, of course. He hadn’t asked, but she’d felt like he should know. Apparently, she was afflicted by some rare condition that slowed her muscle development to just about nothing. As a result, had she not been constantly working out, training her muscles, and carrying those books around, she would still be only as strong as a three-year-old- and, as a result, be pinned down by the weight of her own body. He knew she was afraid that her biological maturation might do that to her anyways, and prayed- as did she- that it wouldn’t.

Just the week before, when he’d met her out behind her house, she had told him she was getting close to going back down to one book- which, she knew it wouldn’t be long after that that she wouldn’t be able to lift herself into a standing position any more. She’d even explained- with a cherry red face- that he was actually her role model. She was envious of his strength, the strength that had been denied her, and the apparently amazing resilience he demonstrated in regards to pain. She had made sure to clarify that she did not covet his male form, and very much wanted to stay as a girl.

Harry sighed, staring at the ceiling in his cupboard. Earlier that day, he’d accompanied his aunt and uncle out into town so Dudley could get his Smeltings uniform- and it was finally time for him to get some rest. He was thoroughly exhausted from trying not to laugh at Dudley.

He closed his eyes, and allowed himself to drift off to sleep.

He was dreaming. He knew he was dreaming, because he’d never woken up in the morning, just found himself, very suddenly, standing in the middle of an empty hallway at school.

He looked both ways down the passage. There was nothing here. The lockers stood in perfect rows, far neater and cleaner than he’d ever seen them before.

He shrugged, and turned to head for the nearest exit. It was a dream, so it wouldn’t hurt anything.

No sooner had he turned, though, than the bell rang. Classroom doors flew open all around him, and boys came charging out. They quickly formed a large, dense circle around Harry- and then one part of the circle split, briefly, so Dudley could walk into the ring, looking triumphant.

One thing Harry noticed about the boys: They had exactly four faces. He had been surrounded by a hundred copies of Piers, Gordon, Dennis, and Malcom, Dudley’s gang members. Funny, he’d never had a nightmare about Dudley and his gang before.

Dudley smiled nastily at him, raising his fists. “I’ve caught you,” he stated.

“More like the clones of your gang have,” Harry stated fearlessly. It was a dream, so it couldn’t actually hurt him. Not that Dudley usually could anyways, on the rare occasions when he caught him.

Dudley snarled. “No, I have.” He rose one fist to strike.

Then, the dream seemed to shift. Harry was suddenly running through… blackness. Endless blackness, all around him. When he looked down, he could see himself. When he looked behind him, he could see Dudley and an even larger army of Piers and Gordons chasing him. Yet, he couldn’t see where he was going, nor the ground he ran on. It was all just… blackness. He could feel the ground under his feet, though, and he could see Dudley and his gang army falling behind, since he was faster than they.

He wondered, idly, what would happen if they caught him. After a moment’s deliberation, he decided to instead see just how far ahead he could get- his breathing was calm and measured, despite his run, and he wasn’t getting tired at all. He had to admit, he was mildly curious just how long Dudley and his gang would take to run two hundred miles… and how long it would take for him to get that far of a lead on them.

The dream shifted again. The blackness was gone, replaced with darkness. He was sitting in the corner of a lightless room, crying silently, and nursing a multitude of bruises. He stopped immediately- the ‘pain’ from the bruises wasn’t that bad, and they were only bruises. When he looked up, even though he could tell there was no light in the room, he could still see.

The room seemed to be made out of black stone. There was a large wooden door in the wall next to him, behind which he could hear a hundred Dudleys doing some kind of Harry Hunting chant and parading in circles.

The room was otherwise bare. No windows, no lights. Cold, black stone floor.

Except for only one thing.

Right in the middle of the room, there was the corpse of some kind of bug horse. It was covered in black carapace, and shaped… Well, a bit like a horse. It was horselike enough for him to recognize it as that kind of creature, but it looked nothing like the pictures he’d seen. It had long, insect wings. It had a blue-green mane and tail, and its horn- it had one, right in the middle of its forehead- was sharply curved, as if it had once been a much larger unicorn horn that someone had bored massive round notches into. He could see the rings on the horn following the bends, though, so it must have grown that way.

Then, there was the great big hole right through the middle of its chest and out its back, right between its wings. This hole, unlike the ones in its legs, was caked with dried green blood.

Then, its eyes opened, and it stood up to look at him with huge, slitted green eyes. Harry noticed the crown-like structure on the top of its head, which was clearly part of its skull.

“You’re alive?” he asked.

It shook its head and stepped closer. “What’s wrong?” Its voice had an odd, buzzing quality to it, but it still sounded female. Despite how alien it was, it was also warm and caring, like a mother- the mother Harry had never had.

Harry was taken aback- what was wrong? It was a dream. There was nothing wrong.

But words found their way out of his mouth anyways. “Those boys,” he muttered quietly- and felt himself gesture towards the door. “They always attack me.”

Harry very nearly blinked, but caught himself in time. If that was how the dream wanted to play out, who was he to fight it? Who knew, it might even be entertaining!

The corpse nodded. “My power could help with that,” it said. “I have no need of it anymore. Would you like it?”

He tilted his head, genuinely curious. “Your power?” he asked.

She nodded. “Let me show you what I can do.”

Another shift. He was back in the blackness, this time walking purposefully through it. He was all alone. There was nobody behind him, but he saw no reason to stop walking.

Then he thought about that strange corpse, and what it had said. What was it going to show him?

He suddenly became aware that there was someone walking next to him, where there had been nobody, and looked.

It was Hailey.

And Hermione’s drawings didn’t do her justice either- she was beautiful.

She smiled at him, and waved. “Long time no see.” She had a beautiful voice, too- far better than anything he or Hermione had come up with in their discussions.

He smiled back.

And then the dream shifted again. He was standing in that school hallway, facing Dudley, and surrounded by his gang army.

Dudley stepped forwards, fist raised, to strike him. He estimated that he could dodge this blow by leaning to the left; it usually wasn’t that hard to dodge Dudley’s attacks if there wasn’t anyone holding him still.

“Oy!” Harry instantly recognized Hailey’s voice, coming from outside the ring, the same direction Dudley had entered from.

Dudley’s gang-army froze, like so many statues. Dudley himself paused, then turned to look in Hailey’s direction. “What are you doing here?” he asked. “This is a boy’s school!”

Then Hailey stepped through the ring, shoving boys aside with crackling green energy. “So? You leave my friend alone, or we’ll find out how well you fare at MY school!”

Dudley put his hands to the sides of his face and screamed.

Then the dream shifted. The blackness was back; Harry was walking through it again, next to Hailey.

Hailey reached up and touched his shoulder with her fingertips, exactly as Hermione did whenever she wanted to heal some injury or another of his. “And that’s only the beginning,” she smiled.

The dream shifted again, before he had time to respond. He was… sitting in the room with the corpse again. It was closer to him than it was before, like it had walked up to him- it was close enough he could touch it, if he wanted to. It opened its mouth, and spoke. “So, do you want it?”

Harry stared at her for a couple seconds while he tried to figure out what exactly the dream was trying to tell him. Finally, unable to find any logical flow, he opened his mouth, and spoke. “How… What is…?” He tilted his head curiously.

The corpse smiled. “My power is, primarily, the power of transformation.”

He blinked. “So I could become…?”

She nodded silently.

He nodded honestly. “Yes please.” Even if it was only for the duration of a dream, he’d be able to be Hailey.

“Very well.” She lowered her head, and touched his forehead with the tip of her horn.

The moment it touched, the dream shifted, to the blackness again. This time, though, he wasn’t walking. He was standing in one place with Hailey, facing her. She was facing him as well.

She smiled at him. “Are you ready?”

He tilted his head. “Ready for what?”

She grinned, and flicked her silky black hair. “Why, your first magic lesson, of course!”

He blinked. “Magic?” Was this something like Hermione’s healing magic?

She raised an eyebrow at him. “You didn’t think Chrissy’s power was mundane, did you?”

“Oh. I, ahh, thought it was…” He took a deep breath. “I’m ready.”

She grinned. “Well of course it’s transformation- that’s her main power. But she also gave you the rest of her powers, and that includes quite a few other magical abilities. But we’ll focus on the transformation for now- that’ll be the easiest one to use, and besides, it’s also the one you’ll have to use to cement your acceptance of it.”

He nodded slowly. “... Alright.”

She smiled softly at him. “I know, this is kinda coming out of nowhere. But it’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity- quite literally, actually. What you’re going to have to do… is to turn into me.”

“... Turn into you.”

She nodded. “Or anyone else, technically, but whoever you turn into now will be your base form from now on.”

“But you’re you,” he said. “I can’t just… become you.”

She smiled, but it was a sad smile. “I’m not me, though. I’m a magical construct, cooked up by an amalgamation of magics and based on your imagination. By the time you wake up in the morning, I will no longer exist, except in your mind. Unless you become me, where Hailey can truly exist, in you.”

“... Oh. I… Okay. So… How?”

“I am you,” she answered. “Well… think of it that way. You are me.” She shrugged. “Just let it be true.”

“So… I am you,” he stated.

She nodded. “Now let that be true.”

He concentrated briefly.

The dream shifted again- though not with a simple cut like it had the other times. Instead, this time, it shifted with a blaze of green fire. He was back in the hallway with the boys… and Hailey was gone.

No, wait, she wasn’t. Harry was gone, he was Hailey.

She looked around at the boys, while Dudley turned back to her. “Well?” They all looked uncertain.

Dudley stumbled backwards, while his gang army only took a single step back. “Uhh,” they muttered.

She leaped into the air, waving her arms over her head. “Boo!”

The boys all turned and fled. Within moments, the passage was empty once again.

She sighed, and took a step towards the nearest exit.

The moment she did, the dream shifted again. The blackness was back- and she was still Hailey, now facing Harry. “Uhh,” she began.

Harry smiled. “That’s the ticket,” he said. Then he glanced down at himself. “And no, I’m still the same construct, just with a different appearance.” He took a deep breath, and looked up into her eyes. “Just remember: Let it be true.”

With one final shift, the blackness was gone again. She was sitting in the room with the corpse- and still Hailey.

The corpse, meanwhile, was disintegrating into black dust, which then seemed to blow away in a nonexistent wind. “Use it well,” the dust spoke, before vanishing into thin air.

She took a deep breath, and rose to her feet. “I will,” she stated, before turning, and stepping slowly, dramatically, to the door. She smiled. “Dudley, here I come,” she said, and reached for the doorknob.

Then, she touched it.

Hailey bolted awake, sitting straight up in bed, and looking around her cupboard. No, it was still in the middle of night. She took a deep breath, and let it out. It was just a-

She froze, and looked down. Brought a hand to her chest, then down to her groin.

Then she flopped back down on her bed, staring at the ceiling.

It wasn’t just a dream.

She had wanted to be a girl.

And then, she was one.

Author's Note

And NOW it finally goes live on FimFiction, and this ~~piece of literary disaster~~story can become known to the general public that doesn't want to spend money on it!

Patreon, Discord.

Chapter 3: Had a Vision

Hermione Granger knew it wasn’t a dream. For one, she wasn’t asleep when it happened- and for two, she had been carefully wiggling a heavy encyclopedia off a high shelf in the family library, while standing on a ladder. Had she really randomly fallen asleep, the book would have fallen on her, and she off the ladder- and she would likely have died.

But it sure looked like a dream. She couldn’t think of any other reason she’d be so suddenly laying on a mat on the floor, a blanket draped over her… and massive weights, ‘1 ton’ printed comically on their sides, holding the blanket down so she couldn’t move. She had to sigh- she rather regularly had nightmares about heavy objects she had to move, usually that grew or got heavier as she tried to move them.

At least this time, though, she could see the evening sun streaming in the window- she was even still in the library! Usually, those nightmares took place in dim, windowless rooms that kept creaking eerily, with the heavy objects blocking the exits.

Since she was utterly powerless to do anything, let alone try and move the weights, she instead looked around the room.

Well, there was the nightmare. The door had been barred by a big, thick timber.

Almost as soon as she noticed the door, though, it was gone. Very suddenly, she was running- stumbling, really- through a black void. Fleeing from… She slowed down so she could look behind her without falling over. It was… a tidal wave of weights, that was slowly tumbling towards her. But for as much as she was slow, it was even slower- unlike most of her nightmares that involved attacking weights, where they were invariably faster than she.

There was a part of her that wondered what would happen if they were to catch her, and smash her flat, in this strange not-a-dream dream. She overruled that, though, and thought it best not to risk it, so she turned back forward and resumed her flight, though slightly slower, so there wasn’t nearly as much risk of falling down.

She was just starting to wonder what they were chasing her to when everything changed again. The weights, the void, all gone. She found herself whimpering in the corner of…

She looked up, unsure of why she had been whimpering. It was a darkened room. She could see a brick wall behind the window panes, and there was a great beam locking the door closed, looking so heavy that even her dad wouldn’t be able to move it. She could tell that there was absolutely no light in the room, but she could still see.

She shivered. This room was about what all her nightmares took place in.

There was a difference, though. Usually, the room was made of plain stone, and completely empty, except for her and that door- no windows, even. This room, on the other hand, was made of marble. A massive bed dominated one side of the room. There was a large dresser, with a mirror above it, against the opposite wall- and next to the bed was a stand, on which a set of jeweled armor was hanging. It looked like horse armor, though.

Like it might fit the creature lying on the bed.

The first thing she noticed about this creature was that it was dead. Even from her position on the floor, she could somehow see that there was a gaping hole right through the middle of its body, in one side and out the other, caked with dried blood. Its fur was pure white, and it had a flowing rainbow mane and tail. It was a bit horse-shaped, if she ignored the unicorn horn and the wings- but she couldn’t decide what it was shaped like. At least the wings partially hid the hole in its side when they were folded.

Which they did. They had been stretched out behind the horse-like creature, but it rose slowly to its hooves, and folded its wings as it went. It looked over at her, stepped off the bed, and walked towards her.

She sat still, frozen with fear. What should she do? Was it going to attack her?

Then it spoke. “What’s wrong?” Its voice was warm, caring, and very disarming. It made her think of a benevolent monarch.

She was getting less and less afraid as she looked into its eyes, but she was still too frightened to speak. Yet, she found herself answering it with words that weren’t her own.

“That beam,” she said, gesturing at the door. “It won’t let me lift it.”

“My power could help with that,” it informed her. “I have no need of it.”

She took a deep breath, carefully calming her nerves. It had stopped approaching, about ten feet away. Then she looked at it again. “Your… power? Is that like mine?”

It blinked. “I don’t know your power,” it stated, “but mine would not replace it, no. It would be in addition to it.” It took a deep breath, even though its lungs were punctured. “Let me show you what I can do.”

Before she could respond, everything changed again. She was once again walking through the Void- though this time, she was in no particular hurry, and there were no weights. She was just thinking about that corpse, and wondering what it was going to show her, when she realized she wasn’t alone- someone was walking next to her.

She looked.

It was… herself. A doppelganger. Except, it didn’t look nearly as weak as she was- she could even see its toned muscles!

It looked up at her. “Good afternoon,” it greeted, waving.

Once again, before she could respond, everything changed. She was once again trapped under that blanket in the family library.

So was her muscled doppelganger, though. She stepped into view. “Or evening, I guess,” she stated, scowling at the window. She reached down idly, pulling away a couple weights with single fingers- and freeing Hermione’s right arm- before stepping a little closer to that window the sun was reaching in through. “Hmm, why evening, though?”

Then, she reached up, and plucked the sun out of the evening sky with her fingertips.

Hermione stared.

Her doppelganger walked around her. “Why not morning?” Then she reached up, and deposited the sun back into the sky, though a different window- and suddenly, it was a morning sun, instead of an evening sun.

Then everything changed again. She was walking through the Void once again, next to her doppelganger… who was holding the sun in one hand.

“Gah!” She raised her arms to shield her eyes from the light.

Her doppelganger closed her hand around the sun, hiding it from view. “Sorry.”

She lowered her arms to glower at her doppelganger. “Why does everything keep changing?” she demanded. “It’s so- so incoherent!”

Her doppelganger shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine.” She looked down at her closed fist. “With great power comes great responsibility,” she warned, and looked back up at her. “Are you ready?”

And again. She found herself in the room with the corpse. It was close enough for her to touch it, if she wanted to- but she was no longer scared of it- she was irritated. But not with it.

It spoke. “So, do you want it?”

She took a deep breath to calm herself down, keep herself from snapping at it. “With great power comes great responsibility,” she quoted.

It nodded. “My power is great power, yes, and with it comes great responsibility. You shouldn’t need much of it, in your world.”

She tilted her head. “So… what happened to you? Can’t you use it?”

It shook its head. “I’m already dead. He caught us by surprise.”

She nodded slowly. “Alright. So, where’s the catch? Will people come hunting for me?”

It shook its head again. “Only if you let them.”

“So where’s the catch?”

“I don’t think there is one. I don’t have anything to ask of you, except that you use it well- I’m already dead, after all. I’ve simply been given a last-second chance to pass my power on to someone that can use it for good.”

She rubbed her chin for a second, and made her decision. Things were finally starting to make a little sense. “Alright,” she considered. “I’ll take it. I think I’m ready… and if I’m not, it’s not like I have to use it just yet, right?”

“Well… No, it’s not, I guess. Here you go.” She bowed her head, and touched the top of Hermione’s head with the tip of her horn.

Instantly, the void was back. She wasn’t walking this time, though- instead, she was standing in place, facing her doppelganger.

“Why does it keep CHANGING!?” she snarled.

“I don’t know,” her doppelganger informed her. “But the good news is, we’re past the halfway point.”

“We are?” she asked, exasperated.

She nodded. “Yes, we are. Only…” She counted on her fingers. “Three more, unless you count the end of this… Vision, I suppose.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Really? How do you know that?”

“Because I’m part of it, of course. I’m a magical construct, formed from a few different pieces of spellwork and cooked up by your imagination- but I’m still a part of all the spellwork that is making this entire vision happen, so I can at least tell you what it’ll do, even if I can’t tell you why.”

She let out a sigh. “Alright. So… what’s next?”

Her doppelganger shrugged. “Well, right now, I need to teach you how to use Celly’s power. Once I do, you’ll be in that library, but you’ll be able to do what I did, so the weights won’t be an issue. Once you step off that yoga mat, you’ll be back here for me to say ‘good job’... then back with Celly for her to say ‘use it well’. Then, as soon as you throw off the beam in her room and touch the handle, it’s all done, and you’ll be back to… whatever you were doing before this all started.” She shrugged. “All I know is that it wasn’t sleeping.”

“... Alright. So, to… teach me how to use her power?”

She nodded. “Yep. It’s magic, so it might feel a bit… strange the first few times you use it.”

“Magic? You mean, like my healing power?”

She blinked. “You already have magic?”

She nodded. “Yeah. I can heal basically anything- all I have to do is touch it, and…” She scowled, searching for the word. “And… Let it be healed, I guess.”

“Huh. Then you’re already familiar with how to use magic- should make this a breeze. To continue on, you’ll just need to, ahh, ‘let’ yourself float, as it were, in the same way.”

She blinked. “Okay. Um… Before I… float away, um…”

Her doppleganger let out a small chuckle.

She smiled as well. “I wanted to ask. When it… started, I was standing on a ladder in the library, with a heavy book. I’m not going to fall off or anything, am I?”

“Um… You might. This entire vision takes about a half a second, and you are limp throughout it- but the good news is, you should be effectively indestructible when it’s done. I’d be more worried about the floor or furniture than about you.”

“What if I land on something sharp?”

“Once we’re done here, even bullets will have difficulty penetrating your skin very much at all. Any injuries you sustain from a fall- even if it’s a fifty-foot ladder- should be largely harmless, and very easy for you to take care of with that healing ability anyways.”

“And you said… Celly’s power? Is that…?”

“That pony? Yep. Princess Celestia. Those close to her sometimes call her Celly. I… don’t know any more than that, sorry. You might be able to learn more about her if you’re able to find the world she came from. Unfortunately, I can’t even tell you what it’s called- I don’t know it.”

She winced. “Dang. I guess I’ll just… use magic, then.”

Her doppelganger shrugged. “Yeah, right about. I’ve told you just about all I can, I think.”

Hermione nodded. “Alright, here goes.” Then, she did it. It came naturally, after all the practice she’d had healing both herself and Harry. And the occasional dental patient, whenever her dad brought her to work- she could fix any cavity in moments, no fillings required.

The Void disappeared in a flash of blinding white light, and she was in the library again. She raised the arm her doppelganger had freed before- and sure enough, she could see her muscles.

So she snapped her other arm upwards, launching the blanket at the ceiling like a missile. The weights, full tons of lead, went flying.

She giggled lightly as she stood up, and looked around at the carnage. Nearly everything was broken- and one weight had gotten lodged in the chandelier. How it was withstanding the weight, she had no idea.

She chuckled softly, and stepped off the yoga mat.

Exactly as she had expected, she was back in the Void with her doppelganger- who now looked like she had, including the difficulty standing up straight.

Her doppelganger opened her mouth to speak, but she spoke first. “Are you alright?”

She smiled, shaking her head. “Magical construct, remember? I literally can’t collapse. Good job with that- and one last thing: Your band size might have gone up.”

Before she had a chance to respond, she was back in the room with the corpse… with Princess Celestia.

Except, Celestia was disintegrating into white dust, which seemed to be blowing away on a nonexistent wind. “Use it well,” it said, before it disappeared completely.

She rose slowly to her feet, feeling the strength of the muscles she hadn’t had a few minutes before. “I will,” she promised the empty air. “I most definitely will.”

She then spent close to ten minutes searching the room for clues on its location.

Eventually, she found one. One of the awards she found dumped hap-hazardly into a dresser drawer read ‘Best Princess of Equestria: Princess Celestia’.

Even though not a single one of the awards actually sitting on the dresser had Celestia’s name on them. They were all different names, that sounded equally strange. There were Moondancer, Derpy Hooves, Twilight Sparkle, Princess Luna, Princess Cadence, Lyra Heartstrings, Starswirl the Bearded, Cheerilee, Pinkie Pie, and Big Macintosh, among a long list of other names.

Finally, clutching Twilight Sparkle’s Award for Academic Excellence in one hand, she walked to the door, flung off the beam, and touched the handle.

Very suddenly, she was back in her library, standing on the ladder, tugging on the encyclopedia.

Or, more appropriately, falling off the ladder, with the encyclopedia coming down after her like a missile.

She let out a startled cry as she fell, and landed on her back. Funny, it didn’t hurt all that much.

It also didn’t hurt that much when the encyclopedia hit her square in the stomach.

Or when the ladder then fell down on top of her.

It did make a lot of noise, though. She shoved it unceremoniously off of herself, then lifted the encyclopedia out of the way and sat up.

Then she looked down at herself… her muscled self.

And back up.

“Oh.”

She had wanted strength…

And then, she had it.

And her doppelganger was right. She did need a bigger bra.

Author's Note

If you're like my editor, and wondering why an 11-year-old would need a bra at all, it's fairly simple: Female puberty normally starts between the ages of 9 and 14, and that's when the breasts start growing in. She probably didn't technically need one, but wore one anyways because really any bounce at all could throw off her already questionable balance.

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Chapter 4: And Became

Ginny Weasley didn’t even consider whether she was dreaming or not. It didn’t matter that she couldn’t remember how she’d gotten from her bed to the kitchen, despite her normally elephantine memory, since she was used to being surrounded by boys that weren’t interested in anything she had to say.

There were a few different things she could’ve ended up doing, in that environment. The one she had been tempted to do had been to become a recluse, isolate herself from her own family, and just… live.

Then, there was the one she had chosen.

She’d instead become an outspoken, determined little girl. If her brothers didn’t want to move for her, she would make them move for her.

She would make them wish they hadn’t shunned her.

So, she finally looked down at what she was trying to talk to them about, genuinely curious what it was. For some strange reason, she couldn’t remember what it was.

… Why in the world did she have a bra at the dinner table? She didn’t even wear bras yet- it’d be another couple years at least before she’d have any reason to, by her best guess!

She had to concede, though, it was no wonder her brothers didn’t want to talk to her about the bra. She wondered whose it was- it looked too big for her mother.

Very suddenly, she was running- fleeing, really- through… blackness? It was… No, this had to be the Void. She could see herself.

She was still holding that bra.

But when she looked behind her, she didn’t see anything for her to flee from. She paused briefly- then shrugged, decided it must be some sort of dream or vision, dropped the bra, and ran, letting her hair and robes billow in the wind. She could run much faster here than she ever could at home.

Her run got cut short, though. She very suddenly found herself sitting in the corner of a large, crystal room, crying into her knees. She stopped immediately, and looked up. She could see, even though she could tell there was no light.

She rose to her feet, looking around the room. The windows were sealed closed by walls of crystal. The doors looked like they’d been welded shut.

“Lumos,” she muttered, imitating her mother whenever she walked into a dark room, and giggled softly to herself.

At that very moment, something stirred on the bed. She looked.

It was…

It was pink. It looked something like the drawing she’d done almost six years ago- when she was four- of a ‘horsey’, except that it had wings and a unicorn horn.

Oh, and something had bored a hole right through the middle of its body, in its chest and out right below the tail… which also had that hole in it, interestingly enough. The hole through its body was caked with dried blood.

“Uh, hello,” she muttered.

It stepped off the bed, and looked up at her. She was just a little bit taller than it was. “Hello,” it greeted in turn- no, she greeted in turn. The mare’s voice was warm and caring, not unlike her mother’s. “So, um… What’s wrong?”

She blinked. “Uh, what? What happened to you?”

She looked down at herself. “I… I was too slow on the uptake, and died, I guess. Now, if I understand it correctly, I’m being given one last chance to pass my power on to someone who can use it.”

“Is there any way to save you?” Ginny asked. “To… um…”

She shook her head. “I’m already a goner, I’m afraid. My… Would you like my power?”

“Sure,” she answered promptly. “I’ll carry it on for you. Continue your legacy.” She took a deep breath. “Protect your power.”

She smiled. “Alright. I’m going to need you to bend down.”

“Uh, okay,” she answered, and kneeled where she stood.

The mare smiled again. “And just so you know, it’s good to hear that my power- the power of love- will be in good hands.” As soon as she finished speaking, before Ginny had any opportunity to answer, she touched the tip of her horn to Ginny’s forehead.

Very suddenly, she was in the Void again, facing…

It was Ariel. The imaginary friend she’d come up with some years before, who was always there to cheer her up whenever she was feeling down.

And she could finally, truly, interact with her.

She fairly jumped on her, grasping her into a hug and ignoring the startled gasp. “Ariel!”

The moment was over far too fast. She hardly had time to start squeezing when she was back in the room with the mare.

The mare, that was disintegrating into pink mist in front of her. “Use it well,” she said, before seeming to blow away on a nonexistent breeze and disappearing into thin air.

“I will,” she answered.

“So, uh,” Ariel began, next to her, looking around the room.

She jumped, looking at her, then smiled. “Hi Ariel.” She stepped forward to hug her.

Ariel smiled, and rose her arms to accept the hug, and hug her back.

Then they touched. It was only the barest of touches.

And Ginny woke up suddenly, sitting straight up in bed, breathing heavily.

Then, she heard a small gasp of surprise, and a following thump as someone hit the floor next to her bed.

She looked over the edge.

It was Ariel.

She smiled, and held out her hand. “How’d you get out of my head?”

Ariel took her hand, and climbed up onto the edge of the bed. “Good question.” She paused. “... Actually, about that. I… I don’t seem to be able to remember anything from before I fell off your bed. Yet, I know exactly how to get to the kitchen.”

“... Interesting,” Ginny muttered, then smiled widely. “But you’re here now, so no matter.” She held her arms out.

Ariel smiled, and leaned in to hug her. “It’s good to be here with you too, sis.”

“Wait, sis?”

“Uh, yeah? We’re twin sisters, aren’t we?”

“... Oh.”

Ron Weasley had to wonder why he was wearing tattered, patched robes, while all his brothers and his sister stood above him, all older than he- even Ginny- and wearing silk robes and jewels. Maybe it was a dream, trying to point out how his older brothers were overshadowing him? But why was Ginny there too? If anything, he was overshadowing her!

Then, he was fleeing through blackness. Fleeing from… now his gilded brothers and sister had clones, torches, and pitchforks, and they were chasing him. He ran, though as he did so, he had to wonder why his dream was cooking up this strange imagery.

Then, he was sitting in the corner of a large, crystal room, with a small, fancy bed set against one side. For some reason, there were tears in his eyes.

There was… a little pink horse-thing. It had wings, a horn, and a hole through its body, going straight up and down through its back. It sat up on the bed, looked at him, then hopped off the bed to trot towards him. Its head looked way huge compared to the rest of its body. “Is something wrong?” it asked. It sounded like a child, perhaps a little younger than Ginny.

“Wrong?” he asked. “My brothers are all better than me. It’s not like I can really do anything to stand out.”

“Wow. Um, I don’t know exactly how right off, but I’m sure my power can help with that somehow. Would you like it?”

“Mmmm, no,” he answered. “I don’t need your power. I’m fine as I am.”

She blinked, and scowled. “Really? Then why are your brothers a problem?”

“I can take care of it myself,” he declared. “I don’t need help!”

She snorted angrily. “Fine, then. Keep your ineptitude.” She turned her back on him, and started to walk away. The wound in her back glowed sharply white- and then Ron sat straight up in his bed, looking around.

Then he stopped, and clenched his hands into fists.

That little horse-thing’s insult had struck home. But, he had gained something from that vision- he was determined to prove it wrong. That he wasn’t inept, that he could one-up his brothers.

He glanced at the clock, and lay back down. It was midnight; he’d have to wait for morning to start.

Draco Malfoy placed his quill in its holder, capped the ink bottle, and blew softly on the page of his diary to help the ink dry. He was up later than he really should be, he was sure of it- but he’d had a really long and eventful day, and had found himself venting his feelings into his diary. He’d filled almost three full pages, and had only just run out of things to say.

He was so tired of having to act all stuck-up all the time!

He reread his diary entry, and nodded. Yes, it said everything he wanted it to. He took a deep breath, closed the book, and glanced up at the clock, just in time for it to strike midnight-

Very suddenly, he wasn’t in his bedroom. He was standing in a room that looked like Lucius’ description of the Wizengamot Chamber. He was in one of the seats around the outside, and there were lots of unfamiliar witches and wizards. Dumbledore was speaking at the head of the room- and from what he gathered of what he was saying, he would have to ‘play noble’ for real.

Then, just as suddenly, he was fleeing through the blackness of the Void. When he glanced behind him, he saw a wolf pack- with the word ‘noble’ written across each and every one of their chests.

He ran, at full speed.

Everything changed again. It was getting confusing- had he fallen asleep? This time, he was sitting in the corner of a large, crystal room, with tears in his eyes- he had apparently been crying because he didn’t want to be forced to be a little nobleman. He stopped immediately- for one, he didn’t cry, and for two, there was no use crying over spilt milk.

“Interesting.”

Draco’s head snapped up, and he looked to see who was speaking.

… It was a strange purple horse-like creature, with wings, magic horn… and a hole right through its head, the size of one of its oversized eyes. It went in one eye and right out the back of its head, diagonally opposite. The creature was feeling out the edges of the hole with one hoof and looking in the mirror.

It suddenly shivered, and looked at him. “... Oh. Hi. Something wrong?”

He raised an eyebrow. “Is something wrong?” he repeated. “What about you?”

She blinked. “Oh, no, I’m already dead.” She blinked, taking a breath. “... Huh. Never thought I’d ever say that.” She looked up. “But I’m being given a last-second chance to pass on my power to someone that can use it. So… what’s wrong?”

“Uh, what?”

She shrugged. “It’s what I’m supposed to ask.”

“... Oh.” He considered what he’d suddenly had the urge to answer her with. “I… I think I’m supposed to answer that I’m forced to be ‘noble’ all the time. Or something.”

“What, you a prince or something?”

He shook his head. “No, but I might as well be.”

“Ahh. Well, this would be where I’m supposed to tell you ‘my power can help with that’ and offer it to you, but honestly? I’m a princess, and I couldn’t protect myself from getting sucked into the government, so I have my doubts on how useful my power would be to correct that. Still, though, the offer is open, if you want it.”

“... Sure,” he muttered. “I’ll take it. But first, what killed you? How will I make sure I won’t be killed in turn?”

“Good question,” she answered, turning back to the mirror. “It’s some kind of spell matrix, of that I’m certain- and I’ve already checked, I can’t just peel it apart and un-kill myself. However, I’m also not finding any actual mortal components to the spell, which is interesting.”

He nodded, only half-pretending to understand what she’d said. “Go ahead and analyze it, then. I’ll wait.”

“Got it.” She proceeded to start muttering to herself, staring into the mirror as she did so.

What seemed like forever later, even though Draco never seemed to get tired, she turned back to him. “I… I think I’ve figured it out,” she stated.

Draco looked up at her. “Mm?”

“It’s not a killing spell at all. Well, I suppose it is killing my body, but not my soul. It’s banishing that into another world- your world, specifically.” She took a deep breath. “Had you refused my power within the first two minutes or so, I would’ve survived unscathed, still in Equestria. But we’re long past that.” She shivered. “We’re also long past the point- at two hours in- where you would no longer survive refusing my power either.”

“What-? How long do we have?”

She sighed. “If I don’t give you my power within the next five minutes or so, we’ll both die. In any case, it might be possible to bring me back. And Celestia and Cadence. Chrysalis I’m not so sure about, but possibly.”

He nodded. “Alright. How?”

“First, we’ll have to hope that someone got zapped after I did, and that someone in your world refused their power within two minutes. If not, I’ll be trapped in your soul forever.

“If so, merely touching them- the pony that got zapped, that is- should ignite a magical chain reaction that will reconstitute my body and put me back into it, as if I’d never been hit. I’ll still remember this, but I will be uninjured. The same goes for Celestia and Cadence, actually.”

“How would I reach that pony?”

“You’d have to cross into Equestria. For which purpose I’m going to transfer all of my knowledge to you at the same time as I give you my magic. It might hurt- actually, it probably will, right about forty huertz on the ouchdammitometer, but you should know everything you need to know to be able to reach Equestria. I’ve even managed to get you a tether to follow- though where you come out in Equestria is anypony’s guess, and you’ll still have to figure out how to use the spells in question without a horn.”

“... Forty what on the what?”

“Forty huertz on the ouchdammitometer. Do you not have those…?”

He shook his head slowly. “I don’t think we do.”

“Ahh. Then it’d probably hurt about as much as if you hit your head on the edge of a desk by straightening up quickly while sitting under it- that’s a classic forty-two huertz example.”

“Okay.” He took a deep breath. “I’m ready.”

“Alright.” She stepped up next to her. “Here I come, in three, two, one.” On the unvoiced zero, she touched the tip of her horn to his forehead.

There was a bright flash of light, and a searing pain. She was right, it hurt about as much as hitting his head on a desk would.

And then, the pain was gone, and he was standing in the void. The wolves were gone- and he was facing… himself? He wasn’t aware of any twin brothers, so it had to be an apparition of some kind. Or something nefarious- a boggart? No, it wouldn’t take his form.

“Before you ask,” his clone began, “I’m not real. I’m a magical construct, cooked up from the dregs of your imagination. I… Um, to fully accept Twilight’s power, you’ll need to use it.”

“Use it,” he stated. “And it is…?”

“Magic,” his clone answered. “Simply, magic. Any spell should be enough. Even- Even picking me up, with your mind.”

Thanks to Twilight’s knowledge infusion, Draco instantly understood which runes were in play. He also knew the defensive counterspell Twilight had come up with that, had she used it on herself at any point in her past, would have protected her against that attack in its entirety.

It wasn’t too complex- and, by comparing its rune matrix with that of standard levitation, he was able to guess at how to actually cast the spell. It was one of very, very few he could say that about.

He called it up from memory, concentrated on the matrix. Started… letting it awaken. Letting it activate.

His clone blinked. “Wait, not that- that’s gonna have side effe-!”

With a bright flash of light, his clone- and the Void- was gone. He was in the room with Twilight again.

But Twilight was disintegrating into purple mist, and blowing away on a nonexistent wind. “Use it well,” her voice said.

He nodded. “I will.”

Then he stood up, and turned towards the door. He reached for the handle.

Then he touched it.

He jerked upright, having just started falling towards his diary. He gave himself a little shake. “Wond-! Ooh.” He brought one hand to his mouth. That was not what his voice sounded like.

Then he noticed his hand, and raised it up in front of his face. His skin was a lot smoother than it had been before. There wasn’t even any hair on his arms! It was… soft, and delicate. Yet, when he closed his fist, he could still feel his normal strength- as a matter of fact, it felt like he was stronger than he had been.

“Huh.”

Then he looked down.

Then he reached down.

And looked up. “I now know what the side effects were,” he told the wall.

Finally, she fainted, and collapsed on top of her diary.

Author's Note

Well, now Ginny has made the record for the greatest amount of mass created (one whole person, not just some muscles or a bit of hair or the like), and Twilight has suggested quite a bit, hasn't she? Next chapter, we find out what happened in Equestria.

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... Six and a half hours late. Sorry about that, I almost forgot. That said, it's the first day "off" I've taken in months, so I suppose it makes sense that something (nearly) slipped through the cracks.

Chapter 5: A Girl

Princesses looked up as Queen Chrysalis walked into the room.

Close to a week ago, a lone drone had shown up at the Canterlot gates, completely undisguised and carrying a large white flag. He had carried a diplomatic message- a request to initiate ‘peace talks’ between Equestria and Changeling Kind.

After hours of deliberation, Celestia had agreed, set a time, date and location, and sent her reply back with that same changeling. A week later, a pegasus carriage had traveled out to pick Chrysalis up… and returned with her. She’d ridden it mostly to keep ponies from attacking her out of the blue.

Princess Celestia smiled in greeting, sitting next to her sister at the middle of one side of the table. Twilight Sparkle was on Luna’s side of the pair, with Princess Cadence and Flurry Heart on Celestia’s other side. “I must say, your request was rather… unexpected.”

Chrysalis nodded. “I thought it might be.” She looked at Cadence. “First off, I would like to thank you for banishing us the way you did. As I’m sure you well know, love is what we eat- and also what your bubble thing was made of. As such, we all got a pretty good meal on the way out.” She took a deep breath. “And while Queens like myself are as immortal as you or Celestia, and actually can’t starve to death, we do start going a little… ahh, funny in the head, when we are starved.

“And there’s been a persistent starvation problem amongst the Changelings for the last thousand years.

“So, thank you. Because of how you threw us out, I was suddenly able to think clearly.” She sighed, and looked across the Princesses. “I think the starvation problem has been a direct result of our seclusion from the rest of society, and would like to discuss the possibility of integrating Changelings into society… as changelings. Yes, we have normally needed to steal love to survive- but if it’s freely offered, we don’t even have to make contact to absorb it- and it doesn’t hurt the pony giving it any more than if they were loving another pony.

“There’s currently a total of six changelings, scattered across Equestria, in genuine, loving relationships. Their husbands don’t know that they are changelings, and I have reason to believe one of them has forgotten that she can transform- but they each regularly send us far more love than any dozen changelings could ever need- and we make sure to keep our other infiltrators clear of them and their husbands.

“I’d like to make that the pattern, rather than the exception. We don’t need romantic love to survive- simple acceptance, by as few as a couple dozen ponies, is enough to sustain a drone. Add that we’re used to hard labor back at the hive, as we’ve got to manage all sorts of information and the flow of love through the hive, and I’m sure changelings can be useful to ponies in all sorts of ways, and earn our living not just in bits but in love as well.

“Naturally, with such an integration, we would be able to abolish several current Changeling professions, such as infiltrators, love gatherers, and love managers, freeing a very large number of Changelings to help… oh, build a few cities, maybe.”

“... You’re welcome,” Princess Cadence muttered, looking stunned.

“Um,” Twilight began, her head tilting. “Is there a reason only six are married like that? Can’t any changeling turn into a newly-designed pony and mix into pony society?”

Chrysalis nodded. “Technically, yes. In actuality, those six got lucky. Most ‘Lings would get caught, or sloppy, or whatever within a week or so, and end up destroying their budding relationship, completely aside from the difficulty in finding somepony compatible. Believe me, many have tried. That’s why the average infiltrator or love gatherer’s mission lasts for about two days.”

“Wouldn’t the changelings with relationships have been revealed by the invasion?” Luna asked.

Chrysalis shook her head. “No, actually. My mind was clear enough to specifically exclude them from the invasion. One of them happens to be the mother of a Royal Guard here in Canterlot- so long as we don’t transform at all during the entire process, we’re perfectly capable of carrying and bearing pure-pony young- and was struck by the ejection barrier, but was able to return before anypony noticed her absence.” She shrugged. “Her husband was… busy, up at the castle, and had left her at the house. That compounded with how the barrier didn’t throw her very far- Mount Canterhorn got in the way, and she had enough love on hoof to heal herself instantly.” She scowled. “Her next delivery to the Hive was a bit smaller than normal, but I’d rather have that than have her risk herself- or her position- unnecessarily.”

Twilight was looking curious, with one hoof on her chin, but Celestia spoke. “I don’t see why we can’t come to an agreement,” she began.

Unfortunately, she didn’t have an opportunity to finish because, at that very moment, the closed door exploded in, revealing a small army of angry stallions, lead by unicorns.

Immediately, while everypony in the room was still scrambling to figure out what was going on, the team at the head of the group hit Luna with a spell that encased her in something that looked like crystal.

They made a mistake, though: They hadn’t started with Chrysalis. Her reaction, rather than trying to see, had been to shoot into the mayhem, relying more on her empathic sense- now that their empathy-shields had fallen to the same spells as had blown the door in- than anything else to guide her aim.

Unfortunately, though, for as effective as her fire was- she took out fully half of their number with only three seconds of sustained fire- her empathy sense was not enough to tell which ones could shoot back, so she was the first to get hit by the return fire. She seemed to collapse into thin air over about half a second, and was gone.

Then Celestia’s chasm of fire took out half of the remainder before one of the ones still hidden by the dust and falling debris managed to hit her with the same spell. She, too, collapsed into nothing.

Next was Twilight’s turn. She leaped up on the table and started charging her horn- but unfortunately, she lacked any kind of combat training, and so was struck by the same spell before she got off her first shot.

Then Princess Cadence. She started by shoving her daughter, who was only eight, out of sight- then, lacking in any combat spell knowledge, started lobbing chairs at them. She managed to take out six of them before she failed to dodge in time and was struck by the same spell, vanishing into the air.

Finally, Flurry Heart sat up in her chair, looking fearfully at the attackers.

They fired.

The spell hit her.

And… nothing.

Flurry Heart hopped up onto the table.

“Uh, what?” one of the only three remaining unicorns asked, and fired again. His spell had absolutely no effect.

One of the other unicorns tried something different, but it also had absolutely no effect.

She leveled her horn at them.

“Uh-oh,” one muttered.

Her horn started to glow.

“Run!” another yelped, two seconds too late.

Canterlot Castle would later be described in similar manner to swiss cheese. Frankly, it was amazing that none of the staff, including guards, were hurt by the display- and that the structure was still standing.

Some hours after the event, Flurry Heart stepped out of the dining room, walking past the shattered remains of a hundred ponies, and a hundred shattered pods, produced by Chrysalis’ spellwork. She looked at the nearest Guard; since the guards that had been protecting the room had been knocked out by the attacking party, they had been since taken to the hospital, and replaced with fresh guards. Captain Gleaming Shield had taken one careful look in the door, decided that Flurry Heart needed some time, and given the order for her soldiers to wait patiently outside.

“Celestia, Twilight, Cadence, and Chrysalis,” she informed Gleaming Shield, her voice carrying an unnatural calm. “They’re… gone. Find somepony that can save Luna, even if it takes a dozen years.” She looked around at the assembled officers. “Send for Twilight’s friends, and the nobles Celestia trusted more, if you know which those are. As of right now, I’m the only princess left standing, and I need to know what I’m working with.” She looked back into the room. “Among other things.” She looked at Gleaming Shield again. “They hit me with the same spell, but… something happened, and I came back. I’ll be in Cadence’s room, writing a report on what I experienced- but whenever there’s a skilled mage available, I’d like to know if there’s any lingering effects, and find out if it’s possible to get the others back.”

Gleaming Shield only nodded. She might have been a pegasus, but she knew she didn’t fully understand the weight that had just been placed on the young princess’s withers… and, especially given her age, fully agreed with her willingness to seek help from those she knew Celestia trusted.

She only hoped they were fast enough- and as Princess Flurry Heart walked past her frozen father- he had been struck with the same spell Luna had- she turned to her officers, and the rest of the troops waiting for instructions, and started barking orders, assigning duties.

She would see to it that the nation was safe- and that Flurry Heart had all the support she needed to keep Equestria stable.

Author's Note

So we know what happened in Equestria. How well do you think an 8-year-old Flurry will do with governing the nation?

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Chapter 7: A Letter

Narcissa Malfoy looked up when she heard the door open. It was often hard, with Dobby around, to find something productive to do at the Malfoy Manor. He was just too good at his job- she wished Lucius didn’t make him torture himself so.

The person that entered the room was most decidedly not Lucius, Dobby, or Draco. None of those three were girls.

This girl was a pretty one. There was a certain elegance to her face that drew the line almost perfectly between beautiful and gorgeous. The result was nothing short of cute, even though the effect was much diminished by the boys’ robes she wore.

Then there was the girl’s hair. It hung down her back and out of sight, gleaming silver with royal blue stripes splitting it neatly into thirds. From what she could see, it seemed to be waving gently as it did so.

Narcissa was about to say something as the girl walked towards the table, looking like she was half asleep despite having had time to brush her hair so well, when something possibly very important crossed her mind.

Standard robes, of the sort worn by most people, were unisex. The tailor only trimmed them to match the wearer’s height and arm length.

Expensive robes, of the sort that only the ancient, rich families, such as her own, could afford, were not unisex, and were custom-made from the ground up to fit the wearer perfectly.

And this girl was wearing a set of these expensive robes that weren’t made for her. Because of the precision with which they were made, such an act often resulted in anything from mild discomfort to severe pinching.

Especially when wearing robes that were made for someone of the opposite sex. The girl had to be in at least mild pain, just from the clothes she was wearing.

She had to wonder who the girl was, and how she’d gotten her hands on those robes. Whose robes they were.

The girl didn’t seem to care. She pulled Draco’s chair back, and sat in it heavily. “Dobby, I need some water.”

To Narcissa’s surprise, Dobby obeyed. He didn’t normally show himself, or respond to, people outside of her family- as was Lucius’ standing order. Yet, he appeared to offer the girl a glass of water within two seconds of her request.

The girl accepted the glass, drank most of the water, and splashed the last little bit in her own face. Then she shook herself out, blinked a couple times, and looked down at herself. “Dang. Um…” She looked at the empty glass in her hand- then looked up suddenly, at Narcissa. “Oh, hi Mom,” she said.

Narcissa didn’t move. This strange girl had just called her mom. She wasn’t sure how to shatter that illusion.

The girl didn’t wait for her, though. She slumped down against the table. “I think I need to go to St. Mungo’s. I think I’m hallucinating.”

“... Hallucinating?” Narcissa asked slowly.

“Yeah, that I’m a girl. I think it had hallucinogenic side-effects, and the dihydrogen monoxide refresher didn’t even make it blip.”

“... What?” She stared confusedly at the girl. What in the world was she talking about?

The girl put her hands to her forehead. “Right, forgot about that. Perhaps I should start at the beginning, and tell you what happened last night?”

She nodded. “Yes, please.”

It took Aunt Petunia close to half an hour to get Dudley to come back into the kitchen with her to eat his food, by which time even Vernon was getting started with his meal, having gone through his own little shock at seeing Hailey. Hailey had just finished her fairly short explanation of what had happened, which included her new name, when they all heard the click of the mail slot and flop of letters on the doormat.

“Get the mail, Dudley,” Vernon said absently, selecting the first person his eyes fell on.

“Make Harry get it,” Dudley answered automatically. It wasn’t the first time this had happened.

“Get the mail, Harry- er, Hailey,” Vernon continued.

Hailey’s line was usually to tell him to make Dudley get it, after which he would tell Dudley to punch her, but she decided to forgo that today. “Sure.” She headed for the door to get the mail.

And there, on the doormat, was a postcard, a letter that looked like a bill… and a heavy parchment envelope addressed to ‘Ms. Hailey Potter’.

When she got back to the dining room, she handed Vernon the postcard and the bill, then sat back down at her spot at the table to open her letter. She was immensely curious who was sending her mail- especially since she hadn’t existed, as Hailey, just the night before. It certainly didn’t hurt that the address included her cupboard. It had to have been addressed this morning- either that, or someone knew she had become a she.

… Someone that didn’t need a stamp.

She was at the point of putting the letter back into the envelope, after reading it- it was a nice joke, she was sure- when Vernon noticed she had it.

“What’s… that?” he asked.

She finished stuffing the parchment into the envelope, closed it, and slid it across the table to him. “Someone somehow knew I was going to become a girl, and is trying to make a joke, I think. Something about a ‘Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry’... even though witchcraft is another word for ‘experimental cooking’ and wizards don’t exist. I do wonder how they got the address, though.”

Vernon and Petunia both stared at her for a couple seconds, then looked at each other for a couple more. Finally, they turned back to Hailey, and spoke as one.

“We need to talk.”

Hailey blinked. “Uhh… Okay.”

It took nearly three hours for the girl’s explanation to draw to a close- to the point where Narcissa’s early morning was no longer early.

Even so, neither Narcissa nor Lucius- who had shown up about fifteen minutes before she finished- believed the girl that claimed to be their son. It sounded too much like some crazy story that had been invented in an attempt to insert herself into their family as a replacement for Draco. She had yet to even give them her name!

Silence held for several seconds.

Then, the girl’s stomach rumbled, and she flinched. She turned her head slightly. “Dobby?”

After a second’s pause, the house-elf appeared out of nowhere. “Yes, young mistress?”

Both Narcissa and Lucius stiffened slightly. Why was Dobby calling this stranger that?

Fortunately, they didn’t have to ask anything. The girl seemed to think something was strange about his address as well, and looked at him. “Wait. What… What did you just call me?” She sounded confused, and a little bit curious, as well.

Dobby blinked, and answered nervously. “Y-Young Mistress. Unless you still prefer-?” He cut himself off.

The girl shook her head. “No, it’s fine.” Then she turned towards him. “I… have some questions for you. Strange questions, probably, but I need you to answer them as honestly as you can.”

Dobby nodded silently.

“Okay. Am I hallucinating?”

Dobby took almost five seconds to answer- and when he did, it sounded like he was choosing his words carefully. “Dobby doesn’t believe so, Young Mistress.”

The girl blinked. “... Okay. Am I… a girl?”

Dobby only took two seconds to formulate his answer this time. “You certainly appear to be, Young Mistress.”

“Then how did you recognize me?”

“Dobby recognized your magic signature, Young Mistress.” He answered instantly that time.

“My… magic signature? So… I’m still… me?”

There were several seconds of silence before Dobby spoke. “Dobby does not understand.”

“As in…” The girl scowled. “Like, I’m still me, my magic is still my magic, it hasn’t changed, and so on?”

Dobby took a couple of seconds to answer. “Dobby… senses an infusion of power, and what Dobby thinks is a shield of some kind, but from what Dobby can sense, your magic is still the same as it was yesterday, the same as Dobby memorized for Draco Malfoy eleven years ago.” There was a second’s pause, and Dobby looked towards the floor. “Dobby does not know how the Young Mistress wishes to refer to herself.”

The girl looked at the table. “... You know, I’d like to know the answer to that one myself, actually. So…” She took a deep breath, and turned back to Dobby. “Am I dreaming?”

He was silent for a couple seconds. “Dobby does not believe so, but Dobby does not know.”

She blinked. “... Right. I suppose you wouldn’t know anything different if I was versus if I wasn’t, would you?” She sighed. “I guess I’ll go on the assumption that I’m not, for now.” She took a deep breath, and let it out. “So… can I get some breakfast? Anything, really- I’m hungry right now.”

“Understood, Young Mistress! Your meal will be ready in a minute!” He vanished into thin air.

“You… are… Draco…” Narcissa muttered slowly, eyes wide.

Draco nodded. “Though Draco isn’t a girl’s name,” she muttered. “If… If we assume I won’t suddenly wake up, or turn male again anytime soon, what should I go by in the meantime?” She looked up at Lucius and Narcissa.

The room was silent for about forty seconds, before Dobby appeared with a plate of fresh eggs and bacon.

“Thank you,” Draco informed him, accepting her cutlery and taking a bite.

“I- I don’t know,” Narcissa muttered. “I- I didn’t expect…”

“Silver, maybe?” Lucius mused.

Draco raised an eyebrow. “You mean like my hair?”

Right at that moment, an owl swooped in the open kitchen window, landed next to Draco, and offered her a letter.

She accepted it wordlessly, glanced at the front- and paused.

“Huh. How about Silversong?”

“Silversong?” Narcissa asked. “That sounds kinda like a pet name, though.”

Draco shrugged. “Or an Equestrian name. Remember Twilight Sparkle, Celestia, Cadence, Luna, Flurry Heart, even Queen Chrysalis? And that’s not even counting Spike the dragon, or Raven Inkwell, or-!” She cut herself off, and let out a breath, having opened the letter and extracted the parchment inside as she spoke. “Yup. ‘Dear Miss Malfoy’ and everything.” She tilted her head. “I wonder how Hogwarts knows…?” She flicked the emptied envelope across the table to her parents with one hand; Lucius trapped it easily, and they both read the address.

Sure enough, it was addressed to Silversong Malfoy.

“Yup, they’re definitely inviting Silversong Malfoy to Hogwarts,” Silver scowled. She lowered the letter. “Well, I’d hate to miss out on my education just because I became a girl, so…” She took a deep breath. “Maybe we could tell the world that, for all this time, there have been two Malfoy families- one being us, and the other being so secretive nobody- other than the Malfoys themselves- knew about them, including teaching their own children. Then, both of Silversong’s parents died, and she ended up coming here to live with you, and you didn’t want to homeschool her, so sent her to Hogwarts, since it was convenient.

“Draco, on the other hand, wasn’t sure where he wanted to go. He told Hogwarts he needed to think about it, applied for Durmstrang, changed his mind, looked at Hogwarts, changed his mind again, and finally went to Beauxbatons or however you pronounce it. For the schools themselves, we tell Hogwarts he went to Durmstrang, Durmstrang he went to Hogwarts, and Beauxbatons nothing at all- and if someone digs too deep, a lot of letters got crossed somewhere and Draco ended up actually going overseas to someplace in America.” She took a deep breath. “Assuming, of course, the transformation is permanent. If it’s not, then when it reverts, Silversong’s mother turned out not to have died and wanted her back, and at the same time, the letters got straightened out with Draco’s schooling, so he came home.”

“They grow up so fast,” Narcissa half-whispered.

“What about clothing?” Lucius asked. “Silversong can’t exactly go to Hogwarts wearing Draco’s robes.”

“Ahh…” She looked down at her robes. “Um, we go shopping for some clothes. It’d shatter the illusion if I showed up in Diagon Alley like this, so we’d have to find some plain robes or maybe some old girls’ robes for me to wear.”

“We don’t have any of those in the house,” Narcissa muttered. “We don’t keep that kind of thing.”

She winced. “Then… Then you go to Diagon Alley without me, and tell them that when Silversong got dumped on you, she didn’t have any clothes- maybe they were destroyed in magical combat, or in a fire when her house burned down and all she had was the bathrobe she was wearing at the time. So you’re looking for something that you can get without her presence, so that she can come along for a real shopping trip without causing a scene.” She tilted her head. “I mean, it would cause a scene if I went to Diagon Alley in a bathrobe, right?”

“Spoken like a true nobleman,” Lucius smiled. “Er- noblewoman, I suppose.”

She looked up at him, and blinked. “Really?”

Lucius nodded. “Being a noble is all about getting the world to believe what you want them to- especially if it differs from reality. There’s a saying about that- ‘fake it ‘till you make it’. I… had to become the stuck-up noble, for the most part, before I was able to display it convincingly. If you think you can pull off a large enough personality switch to pass as a completely different person…”

She shrugged. “Shouldn’t be too hard. As Draco, everything was always deliberate- and I kept controlling myself. I… might’ve mentioned the three-page diary entry I was writing when the vision started.” She took a deep breath. “As for Silversong… She’s never known the trappings of the nobility, so she just speaks- and acts- her mind, basically whenever she feels like it.” He shrugs. “Should be random and impulsive enough that nobody will ever think to compare her to Draco, only to contrast her to Draco. The hard part will be when- and if- I go back to being Draco, where I can probably blame at least some of it on the Americas.”

“Something I’ve been wondering,” Lucius muttered. “You’ve been using a number of words that even I don’t understand fully. Where…?”

“... Oh. Sorry. When Twilight gave me her knowledge, I think it included not just the list of books that can be found in her library but the entire contents of all three dictionaries and all six thesauruses that can be found there.”

“She must’ve liked studying,” Narcissa observed.

“It seems so. She did not give me her memories, though, so I can only guess.”

Author's Note

Patreon, Discord.

Some of you may have noticed I've been fairly quiet on the Patreon front. I do apologize for that; it's a combination of minor writer's block- specific to JLMoO and OtIoPW- and, affecting all my stories, general stress & depression as I work my hair off to make ends meet. I'm trying to get a new job lined up that should fix that, driving trucks- while I won't have much time to write each day with such a job, it's well-paid, so the stress will be gone... and the time available for me to write in can actually be spent writing, rather than staring at the screen and wishing anything I wrote sounded even remotely like the rest of the story.

I mean seriously. Compare the chapter text to this A/N, written some 4 weeks apart. Hopefully, I will be able to ship out to training in a couple of weeks- it's a get-your-CDL program- and clear the stress away, just like that. Don't worry, my laptop will be coming with me, and I'll still be able to write.

Chapter 8: From Hogwarts

Dudley was safely out of the house, “playing” with his gang. Hailey knew that probably meant he was beating someone up.

Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia, however, were in the living room with Hailey.

“So,” Vernon began. “About…” He looked down at the letter he’d placed on the coffee table between them. The green ink, addressing it to Hailey, was visible, right on top. “About Hogwarts.”

Aunt Petunia took a deep breath. “It’s real.”

“... Real,” Hailey muttered incredulously.

“All of it,” Petunia continued. “Witches. And wizards. Using wands, to do magic. My sister- your mother- was one.”

“Your parents,” Vernon took over, “didn’t die in… In a car crash. They were murdered. By… By wizardkind’s version of Hitler.”

Petunia looked at him. “If I recall correctly, ‘terrorist’ fit Dumbledore’s description of Voldemort better than Hitler did.”

Vernon shrugged. “Same difference. He tried to kill you too- but it didn’t work. He died.”

Petunia sighed. “And as a result, you… were famous.”

“I- I can’t be famous,” Hailey responded incredulously. “I’d know if I was.”

“That’s the thing: The old you, Harry, is famous. In the Wizarding World. A celebrity, even.”

“I- No, I can’t be,” Hailey said defiantly.

Petunia nodded. “They know nothing about the new you- Hailey. No fame, no nothing.”

She took a deep breath. “Good.”

“We swore,” Vernon began, took a deep breath, and started again. “When we took you in, we swore we’d stamp it out.”

Vernon and Petunia then spoke as one. “We’re not having a celebrity in the house.”

Petunia sighed. “Fame is a fast way to get targeted, and we don’t want to be anywhere near that. Then, you’ve become…” She gestured forwards.

“So long as you never return as Harry,” Vernon muttered, “we’re prepared to help you get into magic school- into Hogwarts.”

“Well…” Petunia scowled, looking Hailey up and down. “Not yet. We need to get you a decent wardrobe first.”

Vernon blinked. “True. And a proper bedroom.” He looked at Petunia. “Dudley’s second, perhaps? He probably doesn’t need even half his first if we throw away some of the stuff he’s destroyed.”

Hailey could only stare.

Professor McGonagall looked down at the piece of parchment in her hand, then up at the house in front of her.

Then she looked both ways down Privet Drive.

She could swear the place looked familiar- but she couldn’t remember from where, and the parchment in her hand indicated it to be the classic muggleborn introduction, where she’d have to introduce the new witch and both parents to the existence of magic. It couldn’t possibly be Harry- he wasn’t muggleborn so, even though he lived with muggles, the magic wouldn’t flag him as needing a classic muggleborn introduction. Completely aside from how the witch in question was named Hailey, not Harry. It was an interesting coincidence that a muggleborn with his last name would be entering Hogwarts in the same year as he. Hagrid was looking forward to fetching Harry, once the castle magic gave up on delivering his letter by magic and gave it to them for staff to take care of.

Dumbledore- and she as well- fully expected that to happen, after all.

She stepped up to the door of number four, and knocked.

Silence.

She waited a minute, and knocked again.

Another minute, another nock.

Finally, she slipped her fingers into the pockets of her jeans- uncomfortable as they were- where her wand was hidden, and muttered a soft incantation.

There wasn’t a single soul in the house.

They must’ve gone out somewhere.

She sighed, and headed back for the street. She’d have to come back tomorrow- in the meantime, she pocketed that note, and drew a fresh note from her other pocket. She never headed out to do muggleborn introductions with only one, unless there was only one left; more often than not, the first one she stopped at wasn’t available. She read the next note. Perhaps this… Hermione Granger would be available? It wasn’t even far- a quick incantation informed her it was only a thirty-minute walk!

She decided to walk, instead of apparating. It was a nice day for a walk.

Hailey was having difficulty believing what was happening.

The Dursleys had suddenly gone back on their fear of her thinking of anything behaving in a way in which it shouldn’t, explaining it away as a fear of her attracting the attention of the Wizarding World as Famous Harry Potter.

Who was famous for having his parents killed, and surviving it.

Hailey readily agreed with them, she shouldn’t be famous for that.

Next, since Dudley was still too terrified to get within ten feet of her, Vernon drove Dudley to one of his friends’ houses, then returned to take Hailey and Petunia clothes shopping.

When she saw the sheer size of the lingerie section, Hailey was at once glad that Aunt Petunia had been able to help her verify that she didn’t need to wear a bra unless she wore something see-through- which she didn’t plan on doing.

They spent the entire day going around to the various clothing stores in town. By the time they returned home, the sun was going down- and Hailey had a brand-new wardrobe.

Then, once they returned home, Vernon and Petunia gave her Dudley’s second bedroom, exactly as they had promised.

She couldn’t wait to tell Hermione about it.

The following morning was… interesting, to Hailey. She’d discovered in her morning shower that her new private parts were far more sensitive than she might have liked- and that reminded her of one thing Hermione had told her about girls, that she had not been interested in: Menstrual cycles.

A quick flash of green fire- she couldn’t figure out where it had come from- fixed the sensitivity problem, though, so she had elected to ignore it. When she was done, she’d looked at her scar in the mirror- and, curious about the fire, concentrated on the scar disappearing.

A second flash of green fire, and not only had her scar vanished tracelessly, but her hair was dry as well. Convenient.

This time, they left Dudley at home, since Vernon and Petunia would be returning shortly- and they drove Hailey out to London, and stopped on a big street.

“You’re looking for a grubby-looking little pub by the name of ‘The Leaky Cauldron’,” Petunia informed her, before they got out of the car. “Muggles like myself and Vernon can’t see it without making physical contact to a witch or wizard of at least twelve years of age, so we won’t be able to follow you in.”

Vernon handed her a wad of cash to put into the purse she’d gotten the day before. “This should cover at least some of the list,” he told her.

Then Petunia handed her a cell phone- something she’d never even touched before, though she understood how they worked well enough, from watching other people at school. “Give us a call when you’re done shopping,” she informed her.

“Keep us posted if anything happens,” Vernon told her.

“If I remember right,” Petunia muttered, “you’ll need a wand to get in and out of Diagon Alley… so you’ll probably need to ask someone in the Cauldron to open the gate for you, and the same on the return, if you don’t have your wand yet.”

“So… You ready?” Vernon asked.

Hailey looked out the window of the car, and almost instantly saw what they were talking about. “I think,” she answered. “It’s… The Leaky Cauldron, right next to that bookshop, right?” She pointed.

Petunia looked. “... Yeah, I think so. All I see next to the bookshop is the record store- if you see something between the two, that’s where you’re headed.”

“... Well, I do.”

“Alright then,” Vernon nodded.

She took a deep breath. “So, when people inevitably ask about Harry Potter… I claim to be a muggleborn… whose mother both married a muggle named Potter, and had a sister that was a witch, so knew where to send me?”

Vernon nodded. “Got it in one.”

She took a deep breath. She was starting to get nervous. “Alright. I think I’m as ready as I’ll ever be.”

When Professor McGonagall knocked on the door of Number Four, Privet Drive, she got a response. It was a middle-aged woman- must be the mother. “Yes?”

She started her greeting spiel. “Good morning, I’m Professor Minerva McGonagall, Deputy Headmistress at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. I’m making a courtesy visit to ensure that you and your family are fully informed, and able to send, ahh, Hailey Potter to Hogwarts this year, if you so desire?” She’d had to remind herself that it wasn’t Harry Potter.

Mrs. Potter narrowed her eyes. “And that’s normal?”

“Ahh, yes, it is,” McGonagall informed her. “We don’t make housecalls for young witches and wizards of wizarding blood, but any of non-wizarding stock often need a housecall to be able to answer the letter at all.” She took a deep breath. “My apologies for nearly messing up her name- we’re also expecting a famous student by the name of Harry Potter to come to Hogwarts this year as well. We’re fairly certain there’s no relationship between him and your Hailey, despite how close the names are. Interesting how these things happen, isn’t it?”

Mrs. Potter seemed to relax. “Ahh. We will be sending Hailey to Hogwarts; however, it so happens my sister is a witch as well, so she took Hailey to Diagon Alley for her supplies today.”

“Ahh. Thank you for the information. Um…” She drew an envelope from her pocket. “This’ll be her tickets for the train to Hogwarts on September First- I assume you or your sister already know how to get onto the platform?”

She nodded. “The barrier.”

“Very well. Have a good rest of your day.” She bowed slightly, and left. Mrs. Potter closed the door, disappearing back into the home.

McGonagall sighed as she reached the sidewalk once again, digging in her pockets for the next muggleborn note; she still had five of them left. That had been a lot easier than she had feared it would be- it was always a pleasant surprise when one or the other of the parents happened to have a wizarding relative.

Author's Note

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Chapter 9: Jumping the Shark

When Hailey stepped through the door, into the Leaky Cauldron, she was nervous. It was perhaps the first time in her life that she was wearing clothes that actually fit- but here, she was entering the completely unknown. This was where magic was commonplace. Where people used wands, and where something that looked innocent was probably nothing of the sort.

It didn’t exactly help that she had a good amount of distrust for just about anyone, let alone the kinds of people she’d meet in a dingy little pub like this. After all, everyone except Hermione, from classmates to babysitters to teachers to whatever else, always kept a tally of every little thing she did wrong- and came to collect every once in a while. Sometimes it was simply a telling off- it was always a relief when it was that simple. Sometimes it was detention, which the Dursleys always followed with a weekend locked in her cupboard. Sometimes it was even worse.

And sometimes, like that one time she’d encountered that one questionable-looking man in a back alley last year, it was a lot worse. He’d had a knife hidden in his coat- and she still had no idea how she had survived bringing fists to a knife fight. She’d gone home that day all covered in blood- most of which was her own. He’d limped away, having apparently given up on killing her- even though he’d clearly had the upper hand through the entire fight.

It was this kind of person she was worried about encountering here, in this dingy little pub. This was the kind of place where weak little girls got hurt, or had things stolen from them.

She gripped the shoulder strap for her purse tightly, scanning the pub.

Petunia had mentioned something about the back door, and needing a wand.

She would have to take her chances with someone in here… or flee back to the muggle world, where she would then be on her own in the city while she called the Dursleys to have them pick her up.

They’d also be disappointed that she’d given up.

After all, Petunia had told her to avoid anything that looked shady… except the Leaky Cauldron, because in this place, it was supposed to be a front to help keep any unwitting ‘muggles’ out.

Considering that, judging by her aunt and uncle, the muggles couldn’t find the place when they were looking for it, let alone when they weren’t, it seemed a bit overkill to her.

Then, some motion drew her attention. Nobody in the pub had looked at her when she entered- until, as near as she could tell, one of the place’s staff started towards her. It was a friendly-looking woman, but Hailey wasn’t sure how much of that was real.

The woman stopped a few feet away, and crouched down to be on a level with her. “Hello, I’m Becky. What’s your name?”

Hailey waited a couple seconds for the other shoe to drop, before answering slowly. “... Hailey.”

“Ahh, well, it’s nice to meet you, Hailey. Um…” She looked up at the door Hailey had come through, and took a deep breath. “Did… Did something happen?”

“What do you mean?”

Becky winced. “Um…” She glanced back at the bartender, who gave her an encouraging nod, and took a deep breath. “Er…” Another breath. “I… Did your parents just…?” She trailed off, and winced. “... That didn’t come out right.”

“Did they just what?” Hailey asked, fighting to keep her nervousness from entering her voice.

“Um- er- I mean-!” Becky anxiously rubbed the side of her head. “They- are they coming with you, or…?”

“Uh, no,” Hailey stated plainly. It was fairly obvious, wasn’t it? The Dursleys hadn’t entered the building with her, after all.

Becky flinched. “Uhh… They… Er…” She looked back at the bartender.

There was a moment of silence as the bald bartender put down his cloth and walked around his bar to approach them.

Becky spoke up as he got close. “How badly did I botch it?”

“Well, it’s been over a minute and she’s not screaming in terror, so you’re doing better than I did on my first time,” he answered cheerfully.

Hailey briefly debated screaming in terror, but decided against it. She wasn’t that scared. Yet.

Then the bartender scowled. “Though breaking off in the middle to ask me how you’re doing is botching it pretty bad. C’mon back to the bar, she’s probably afraid of us now, on top of whatever else might’ve happened.”

Then, he headed back to the bar. Becky gave Hailey an uneasy smile, then hurried after him.

Hailey took a deep breath, and let it out again. What in the world were they talking about? And why were they talking about her like she was… like she was an objective of some sort?

She took a quick look around the room. There wasn’t anything to indicate where she would find Diagon Alley… or anyone willing to help her reach the Alley.

She did spot an empty table that she could sit at, to rest her legs and at least look like she belonged while she phoned the Dursleys.

“H- Hailey?” Hermione asked, staring wide-eyed at the girl that had just entered hers and Harry’s little hideout on schedule. She sure looked like Hailey- better, even.

The girl smiled. “Yep, it’s me. Good to see you’re…” She paused. “... You’ve got muscles.”

Hermione grinned. “So I do.” She glanced down. “I’d hug you, but even though it happened a week ago- strange vision and everything- I still don’t know what my limits are.”

“Oh, it can’t be that bad,” Hailey chuckled, sitting next to her.

“Are you sure? I mean, I accidentally ripped the door off the car. Dad said it was fun to explain it to the insurance.”

“Some guy thought he’d punch my lights out in London last week,” Hailey shrugged. “He made three blocks before he landed.”

“... Oh.” She looked down at her hands. “So… I… Um…” She took a deep breath. “It turns out there’s a school for magic. And… they invited me.”

Silence held for a couple of seconds, before Hailey spoke.

“... Is it called Hogwarts?”

Hermione’s head snapped up, and she looked at Hailey. “How did you know?”

Hailey shrugged. “They invited me too.” She looked out of the hideout, in the direction of Privet Drive. “Speaking of which, we said yes, but seem to have missed how I’m supposed to get my stuff for school.”

“You…?” Hermione trailed off for a second. “You mean someone didn’t come to your door to take you to Diagon Alley?”

“Uh… I think someone did, but I wasn’t home. And they didn’t come back.”

“... Oh. Well, Professor McGonagall showed me around Diagon Alley a week ago, so I might be able to fix that.”

Hailey rubbed her chin. “Hmm… According to Petunia, neither of our families will be able to enter the Leaky Cauldron with us until we turn twelve, so…”

Hermione shrugged. “I can casually rip car doors off, you can throw people three blocks. We don’t have anything to worry about.” Then she blinked. “Wait, Petunia? You mean Petunia Dursley told you stuff about magic!?”

Hailey smiled, and nodded. “Turns out ‘Harry Potter’ is famous in the wizarding world, and that was what they were so afraid of: Me being famous in their home. Since the wizarding world hasn’t a clue about Hailey Potter, I’m suddenly a welcome daughter.” She sighed. “Dudley flees whenever I get within about ten feet of him, though. It was satisfying the first dozen times, but it’s gotten old.”

“... Ahh. And yes, you were famous. I got a few extra books for background reading, and you’re in a few of ‘em.”

“Really? Which ones?”

She recited a few book titles.

“... Huh. I guess Voldemort was a pretty big deal, wasn’t he?”

“Voldemort? Who’s that?”

“The guy that killed my parents. Petunia described him as a wizarding terrorist.”

“... Huh. All my books describe him as ‘he who must not be named’, and never mention his name.”

“Strange. I mean, he is named, isn’t he?”

She shrugged. “Yeah. Must not be common knowledge or something. I wonder where Petunia got it…?”

“A letter from Dumbledore, apparently. Arrived on the doorstep at the same time as I did.”

“Interesting. So, shall we see if we can go Diagon Alley hunting tomorrow? I’ll bring my wand for the gate.”

“How would we get there, though?”

She shrugged. “Mom doesn’t work tomorrow; I can ask if she’ll take us.”

Hailey grinned. “Go for it, I guess. I’ll check with the Dursleys tonight.”

“We have a problem.”

Professor Dumbledore nodded calmly to Professor McGonagall, who had entered his office, looking very disturbed. “Noted.” He knew today was the day the Castle would have given up on magical delivery, and dished the letter out for staff delivery tomorrow- which, he knew, Hagrid was planning on delivering at the stroke of midnight tonight, when Harry turned eleven.

“The Castle didn’t give us Harry’s letter,” McGonagall continued. “And I haven’t seen any acceptance letters from him, either.”

Dumbledore sighed, and looked up at a few monitoring trinkets on one shelf. They hadn’t changed in years- and for as much as the information they relayed was comforting, the constancy wasn’t. He hadn’t yet gotten confirmation that they actually worked, though the few times he’d visited to check on things, their constant output was entirely accurate. “I suppose the next step would be to send him a letter ourselves,” he muttered, reaching into his desk to extract a piece of parchment. “If we ask him to send his response with the same owl, and don’t see a response in a couple days, we visit.”

“What broke?” Dumbledore asked, as Professor McGonagall stepped into his office. It was hardly twenty minutes after she’d left earlier.

She silently stepped up to his desk, and dropped a sealed envelope on it. He recognized it at once as the letter she’d taken to the Owlry, destined for Mr. Potter.

He also immediately recognized the bright red stamp that had been magically applied to the front of it at the wizarding post office in Hogsmeade. There were two lines of text inside the border. The first line showed ‘Undeliverable’- and the second, ‘Recipient Deceased’.

He stared at it for about a second, before rising to his feet. “Looks like I need to make a housecall,” he informed McGonagall. “I’ll be back in a couple of hours.”

“Last week,” Petunia answered Dumbledore. He’d shown up to ask about Harry, rather than Hailey, so she was using the cover story she, Vernon, and Hailey had come up with. “We were enjoying ourselves on the beach. Harry was out swimming in the surf; there were life guards on duty, so we didn’t think much of it.

“Then the shark appeared, and just… ate Harry. We still have his glasses- he didn’t have those in the water- but that’s about it.”

“Harry what!?” McGonagall barked, when Dumbledore returned.

“He got eaten by a shark,” Dumbledore repeated. “Last week.” He sighed. “And we’ll have to tell the world, lest society wrongly shunt Hailey into Harry’s role. It’d be far too dangerous for her- she doesn’t have any of the protections Harry had.”

Author's Note

I think this right about marks the end of the setup chapters, so we can finally start getting into the story itself.

Patreon, Discord.

Chapter 10: Government

“Blueblood!”

Prince Blueblood hardly twitched on his pool chair at Princess Flurry Heart’s yell. He was tempted to correct her- it wasn’t just Blueblood, it was Prince Blueblood- but it wasn’t really worth it. The filly didn’t use honorifics like that for anypony, and he doubted he could get her to start with his.

“Blueblood! Answer me!”

She was closer this time. He opened one eyelid halfway, changed his mind, and closed it again. He was ‘sleeping’.

“I said ANSWER ME!”

She hadn’t gone to the Royal Canterlot Voice- instead, she’d used her magic to drag his ear painfully to the side of his pool chair and yelled directly into it.

He let out a shriek of combined pain and surprise, then looked at her indignantly. “What?”

“What are you doing?” she demanded.

“Relaxing,” he answered simply. The way he heard it, she didn’t really care about the titles or other decorum, as long as ponies obeyed. It didn’t exactly hurt that the entire Royal Guard backed her every word- and Captain Gleaming Shield followed her everywhere, as some sort of bodyguard.

“All day?”

“Yeah.”

“And all week?” She was definitely angry now, but he didn’t really care.

“Yeah.”

Her eyes narrowed. “The way I hear it, you’ve been bossing the palace staff around, making them do everything for you, and being lazy.”

“Isn’t that what they’re there for?”

“No, it’s not!” she barked. The two maids he had with him- the one that had been giving him a backrub, and the one that was holding his drink for him- flinched away from her. “Their job is to take care of our basic needs so that we can focus on what we NEED to be focusing on! Now tell me. What have you been doing, For. The. Country?”

“Uhh…. Relaxing.”

Her eyes narrowed.

He continued. “It’s a very important thing to-!”

She broke out the Royal Canterlot Voice, and yelled straight into his face.

“THAT DOES NOT BENEFIT THE COUNTRY!”

He let out a small squeak when she stopped to take a breath, some part of his mind wondering if he would have to worry about hearing loss. He also heard the glass from his drink shatter on the deck, so the maid must have dropped it when she yelled- and he could worry about hearing loss later.

She wasn’t done yelling. “YOU WILL DO SOMETHING USEFUL, OR YOU WILL GET OUT!” She dropped the Voice, and went all the way down to a calm tone of voice- but it was a deadly calm, he could tell. “You have seventy two hours, starting now. Find something useful to do, or I will make you a beggar on the streets.”

He looked up at Captain Gleaming Shield… who was noting the time.

Then he looked at the castle.

“Okay.” His voice came out as a bit of a squeak.

Then he scrambled off his chair and fairly fled back to the castle. He would have to keep reminding himself that Celestia was not here to protect him- and that the little princess both could and would carry out her threat.

Raven Inkwell stood aside for Prince Blueblood to gallop past her, fear in his eyes, and waited patiently as Princess Flurry Heart walked back towards the castle.

“Um,” she muttered, as the still-irritated Princess reached her. “Celestia wouldn’t have done-!”

“I don’t care,” Flurry answered her. “If he’s going to be living in the castle, he’s going to make himself useful.”

“... Understood.” She certainly couldn’t fault Flurry for taking such a hard line with Blueblood- she’d been urging Celestia to do that for years, even though she was merely Celestia’s scribe, tasked with recording every meeting she held in the Throne Room. According to Captain Gleaming Shield, nopony could anticipate Celestia’s decision like she could, and Flurry had been quick to capitalize on that. She was now Flurry’s primary advisor- and Flurry kept her by her side while she was in the throne room, to help her make the decisions Celestia would have made.

She did have to wonder, though, how Flurry had heard about Blueblood- she’d considered him not important enough to worry the harassed Princess about just yet, so hadn’t mentioned it.

Thirty Minutes Earlier, while Raven Inkwell had been using the bathroom…

“Incompetents!” Flurry barked. “Get out of my sight! And don’t come back!” She flapped a hoof at the mages that had crafted the simple spell circle on the floor. All it did was tell them that there was magic in the middle- as a matter of fact, she remembered it clearly. It was one of the things Twilight had shown her the year before- one of the simplest spells available. As Twilight had explained to her, it couldn’t be used to detect magic or spells, only wellsprings- which were only found in living ponies.

And these mages all, to a stallion, believed it would legitimately help them figure out what spell had been used against her.

The mages all fled as fast as their legs could carry them.

Flurry sighed. The Palace Arcmage had been among them. She looked up at Captain Gleaming Shield. “Are there any other incompetents on the palace staff?”

Gleaming Shield shrugged. “Not that I’m aware of- but I know Prince Blueblood regularly calls everypony around him incompetent, so…”

She raised an eyebrow. “Tell me about him.”

When she looked back on that week, Captain Gleaming Shield had to say that it had been a very busy first week of Flurry’s rule- the busiest week of her life so far, she was sure.

Through days one and two, the castle doors had been closed to the public. The Sun and Moon had stayed in their places in the sky- thus, night never fell. Those two ‘days’ had been spent with Guards and the like, processing what had happened, taking and analyzing Flurry’s report, and so on. Flurry had also built herself a staff of advisors during that time, headed by Raven Inkwell; unfortunately, none of Twilight’s friends had been able to stay to take on such duties- and the most anypony could say about which nobles Celestia trusted was ‘none of them’- at which Flurry had rolled her eyes, but accepted the answer.

On ‘day’ three, according to the clocks, Flurry had reopened the Castle for Day Court on schedule. By the time she closed it early in order to attend the meeting of the Mages in that upstairs room of the Castle- they’d reported that they had the sensing spells ready for her- three separate nobles had been sent running from the Throne Room in tears because of how quickly she’d denied their requests for more money and demanded that they earn the money. Then, she’d gone upstairs, and taken all of fifteen minutes to fire all the castle mages as incompetent, asked about Blueblood… and went after him as well. Fortunately, nopony else in the Castle was nearly as useless as Blueblood, so she hadn’t needed to go after anypony else.

On ‘day’ four, the castle chefs cheerfully referred to Blueblood as ‘The Exalted Dishwasher’, as he could be found washing dishes in the kitchen. Day Court was open for its full scheduled timeslot that day- which was even shorter than it had been open the day before, since the afternoon was filled with congress.

A congress during which Flurry had yelled at the entire nobility for voting as they did explicitly because it was what the other party wasn’t voting. She ordered them to vote based on the facts and what it would do for the nation without regard for themselves, and completely forget political parties- else she’d have them all thrown out, and new representatives elected from the general public.

The public spectators, allowed to watch but not participate in the proceedings, had actually cheered. Then, minimum wage had finally been raised to something even resembling a living wage with a nearly unanimous vote.

On ‘day’ five, a lone Changeling bearing a large white flag had shown up during Day Court, and asked after Chrysalis; they had lost contact with her four days prior, and wanted to know what had happened.

Flurry had explained and, even before Raven had an opportunity to provide her input, invited the Changelings to send their next-in-command after Chrysalis to Canterlot, this time with an honor guard, to present the same proposals to Congress the following week- which would be day ten of her rule. Flurry had then sent the next archmage to try and solve the curse problem running with tears in his eyes, as he was unable to improve on the nothing that the prior incompetents had done in six hours.

On ‘day’ six, Blueblood graduated from dishwasher to castle maintenance. It took him hardly fifteen minutes to stop every door and window in the castle from squeaking. He ran out of stuff to fix very quickly- but that wasn’t a problem, because by the time Day Court drew to a close, he had crafted a couple of spell matrixes that, if Flurry provided them power, would cycle the Sun and Moon up and down.

Finally, on ‘day’ seven, the first one to start with the sun rising in the sky, Flurry had asked Blueblood if he could take a shot at analyzing whatever had been used against her- but he had refused, explaining that his specialty was the brute force approach… which worked great for moving celestial bodies, given the amount of power she had available to her, but had a greater chance of killing her than of identifying any spell remnants left on her.

Flurry Heart could hardly believe she had already been Equestria’s sole Princess for an entire week. It seemed like it was only yesterday that the other Princesses had been attacked.

She’d dealt with so many ponies in Day Court that she’d lost count. She’d yelled at Blueblood for his uselessness- and she was seeing good results from him. Even though he’d refused to even try to discover any details on the curse that was used against her and the other Princesses, he gave her a good reason for him not to try- and he hadn’t stagnated since building those matrices to move the Sun and Moon. Last she’d seen, he was analyzing them after she’d used them, and trying to estimate how long they’d last before he’d have to re-lay them, to make sure they wouldn’t break while she was using them.

The Guards, under Captain Gleaming Shield, had been immensely helpful. Whenever she gave orders, they obeyed them immediately- and if they needed help, they simply got help. Which they didn’t usually do- whenever a task might need more than one pony, Gleaming Shield assigned multiple Guards to that task instead of just one. There had even been that one time, when that stallion had tried to kill that mare right in front of her, when she’d ordered the Guard that had stopped him to take him to prison. When she’d done that, Gleaming Shield had promptly ordered a few more Guards to go with him- and considering the attacking stallion had been a unicorn and the Guard that had stopped him a pegasus, she figured it was probably a good thing Gleaming Shield had assigned one earth and two unicorn guards to help out.

She did notice that there seemed to be a lot more Guards moving about the Castle than there ever were in Celestia’s rule- but she also recognized why it was: She was relying on them, more than anypony else, to be the backbone of her rule, whereas Celestia had been the backbone of her own rule.

She’d also had to deal with a few dozen incompetent mages that thought they would find scraps of the curse with a spell that didn’t look for them, and sent them all packing. How they’d gotten to be ‘royal mages’, she would never know.

She was contemplating closing the whole ‘find the curse’ attempt, and having Blueblood screen the incoming mages; for as much as he was afraid to try himself, he was obviously competent, something she couldn’t say about any of the other self-proclaimed mages she’d seen. Hopefully, he was also able to tell when somepony else was competent as well- and so, save her from dealing with quite so many incompetents. She had no patience for ponies pretending to be something they weren’t.

But even with all that going on, she knew she needed her breaks, or she would snap, and the whole nation would go with her.

That was why she had found a stool to put in the palace hot tub, sat on it, and relaxed, just her head above the frothy water’s surface. She’d needed a stool, because the tub had been designed with Celestia in mind, and she wasn’t nearly tall enough.

She sighed, turning her head slightly to look at Raven Inkwell, from her position in the tub. The mare had been amazingly helpful in Day Court, explaining the various laws and precedents to her almost before she could ask. And while Raven declined to pass judgement on any of the ponies petitioning the Crown, she was perfectly willing to suggest action paths after Flurry had passed judgement.

Action paths such as the details of the sentence for that one stallion.

In any case, Raven had just finished filing the day’s paperwork and retrieving tomorrow’s schedule; she’d managed Celestia’s schedule, and gladly managed Flurry’s as well. When Flurry had asked a couple days before if it was too hard, Raven had passed it off as a labor of love- she enjoyed her job, and had actually requested not to have an assistant.

“So what’s on the schedule for tomorrow?”

“Day Court is going to start with a petition by the Flim Flam brothers,” Raven informed her.

She wrinkled her nose. “Ew.” She’d heard enough stories about them from Twilight, and they weren’t pretty.

Raven chuckled. “They say it’s a simple request, and they’ve got the backing of a majority of the nobility, but I’ve gone ahead and allocated us an hour for it anyways.”

Flurry nodded. “Probably take that long to sniff out the scam through official channels, won’t it?”

Raven nodded sagely. “After that, we’ve got a few petitions for building loans, one poor stallion asking for permission to commit suicide…” She trailed off at Flurry’s sigh.

“That’s gonna be fun,” Flurry grumbled sarcastically.

Raven sighed. “Yes, it will. The good news is that if he’s asking for our permission, he doesn’t really want to do it, just sees no other option- so all we have to do is help him see his options. It’s happened before.”

“Oh good. I was worried I’d have to sentence him to misery.”

“Then there’s a team of nobles that want control of Sweet Apple Acres-!”

“Not happening,” Flurry stated simply.

She nodded. “Yeah, Celestia said that too, last month. They want to ‘own’ an Element of Harmony.”

She let out an angry snort. “Let ‘em come. I want to know who to threaten.”

“... Not how Celestia would have done it, but I can’t complain,” she continued. “Your methods may be a little unorthodox, but there’s no denying they’re effective. After that, we’ve got a whole bunch of family disputes to settle before lunch.”

She wrinkled her nose again. “I wish they didn’t have to come to the Crown to solve their family affairs,” she muttered. “It just seems so petty to seek a higher authority to tell them who gets the first shower in the morning.” She sighed. There had been one couple asking her that same question earlier that day- she hadn’t given them a definitive answer, but she had suggested they take turns.

“Couldn’t agree more,” Raven nodded. “These are a little less internal to the family, though- a good half of them are disputes over who inherits the money from their parents, two of them are seeking divorce, one couple wants your opinion on whether they should get married or not, six of them are arguing over the custody of foals born out of wedlock, and the last one will be right after lunch, a couple that wants custody of a filly whose parents were mistreating her.”

“I hope those parents are present for that last one,” she muttered.

“They should be. They approached Celestia two weeks ago, and she was unable to reach a decision because those other parents weren’t present. She had it rescheduled for today, and issued the parents in question a summons for the event.” She paused to take a breath. “We’ve got almost two hours allocated for it, and Captain Gleaming Shield has promised to have the finest psychologists from the Guard’s psychological unit present for that- you’ll want to listen, but we’ll be able to let them do all the talking for a change.”

She scowled slightly. “Wouldn’t Celestia have gone without those psychologists?”

“Celestia holds three separate psychology degrees herself,” Raven answered promptly. “She’s by far the best psychologist of the bunch. Without her, though, I don’t think I’m qualified for that, and you probably wouldn’t know what to ask.”

She nodded. “Agreed. What happens after that?”

“After that, we’ve got the protestors from the train station a month ago; when Celestia had the Guards disperse the protest-turned-riot, she also had them given the option to approach the Crown after ample time to reach a settlement. It seems they weren’t able to reach a settlement, so… there they are. We’ve got another two hours allocated to listen to both sides and reach our decision.

“Then to close out the day, we’ve got a couple that was scheduled to have Celestia marry them this evening- she already gave the go-ahead, so we don’t have to decide anything. I’ve been in contact with them since Celestia’s… disappearance, and they would like to move forward with it, if you’re comfortable performing in Celestia’s stead- if not, three of their wedding guests are ministers, and we can have one of them marry the couple instead.”

Flurry scowled. “That’ll probably depend on what mood I’m in after those protesters,” she mumbled. “But I don’t see why I can’t at least attend their wedding.”

Author's Note

This kept running through my head, so I just had to write it down... and it made a nice scene too, showing what's going on in Equestria.

Patreon, Discord.

Chapter 11: Vaults

“Welcome to the Leaky Cauldron,” Hermione told Hailey, once they’d both crossed the threshold of the same building Hailey had fled from a week prior. The Dursleys had given their go-ahead so, a couple of days later, Hermione’s parents had dropped the pair off at the Leaky Cauldron.

“This… place, yeah,” Hailey muttered uncertainly, eying the bar. Even though she now knew she had the strength to throw them through walls if they tried to take her away, they still made her uneasy, even from so far away.

Hermione looked at her. “... Bad experience?”

She nodded mutely.

“Ahh. Then let’s not linger here. This way.” She led Hailey across the pub and out the back door.

It was into… a walled-in courtyard with a trash can in the corner.

“Uh, you sure this is the right way?” Hailey asked.

Hermione nodded. “Another security step against muggles, I think.” She drew her wand, looking at the wall. “Alright. Remember: Three up, two across.” She counted bricks above the trash can, then tapped her wand on the named brick.

Hailey stared as it opened into an archway.

“Welcome to Diagon Alley,” Hermione announced, leading her through it as she stowed her wand.

Hailey stepped through, and looked around. “That was… a very fancy doorway.”

Hermione nodded. “Yes, definitely. Our first destination will be Gringotts Bank, down this way- they’ll change that cash out for wizard gold.”

“Wizard gold?” Hailey asked. She still had the wad of cash Vernon had given her almost a week and a half ago.

“Yeah. C’mon.”

When they reached the bank, Hailey could tell Hermione found comfort in the scary-looking guards. She, on the other hand, became even more nervous. Big institutions had always done that to her, even when she had been Harry- because that was always where the biggest troubles started. “Um- may I ask,” she muttered to Hermione, as they climbed the steps. “What’s so comforting about the bank?”

Hermione glanced at her. “Comf-? You can tell?”

“Uh, yes, I can?”

“... Oh. I thought I was… Whatever.” She took a deep breath. “Thing is, out on the street, we’re two little girls running around. It doesn’t matter how strong we are, because if some snatcher comes along and uses magic, we’re toast.” She paused to nod respectfully at the goblins guarding the door as they bowed them through. She stopped walking, with Hailey, to look up at the inscription on the second set of doors. “Here in Gringotts, the use of wands is expressly forbidden.”

Hailey looked up, and read the inscription. “That sounds almost like a challenge.”

“Well it’s a warning,” Hermione answered quickly. “Though you’re right, I’m sure there’s at least some challenge in it. Nobody has ever successfully robbed Gringotts- I looked it up- and there have only been two attempts throughout recorded history. You might’ve noticed how… fierce the goblins look?”

She nodded. “Yeah?”

“That’s because they are. Powerful fighters and everything. But we don’t need to worry about that, because they have an agreement with wizardkind- they manage our money, and in return, we don’t go to war. But it’s an agreement with wizardkind, not just the adult wizards. A three-year-old could come in here on her own, and exchange money. There’s a few things they can’t do for people below a certain age, but that’s about it.”

Hailey looked up and down the row of tellers as they walked into the main room. “Ahh. They don’t look too happy about it.”

“That’s because a majority of wizardkind still treats them like dirt. If you’re nice to them, they’re nice right back to you.”

“Ahh. So…” She looked at the tellers again.

Hermione picked one, and pulled Hailey over. “C’mon, we’ve got things to do. While we’re here, McGonagall recommended we get a Vault to put the extra gold in when we’re done, but my parents decided not to.” She looked up at the goblin as they reached the table. “Hi! Hailey here has some muggle money to exchange.”

The goblin gave a small nod. “If you want to open a Vault at the same time, you might want to do that first. Wizard gold is heavier than muggle money.”

Hailey exchanged a look with Hermione. “Uhh… Sure, I guess. Vault first, then.” She smiled up at him.

He smiled back, though only slightly. “Alright, we can give that a shot. We don’t normally allow personal Vaults below the age of seventeen, but there are a few different things that can allow it anyways- and most witches or wizards don’t know when they qualify- especially muggleborns.”

“Especially?”

“Among those things is inheritance from sometimes distant wizarding ancestors. At the moment, there’s almost a thousand unclaimed vaults left behind by dead witches and wizards for their wizarding descendants.”

“Uh, definitely give it a shot, then,” Hailey said. “I actually know I have dead wizarding ancestors.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” the goblin mumbled. “But yes, if they left anything behind, we will be able to open it up to you.”

“... I think I’d like to give that a try as well,” Hermione muttered, then looked up to smile at the goblin. “Just in case.”

“Alright,” he nodded. “We can do that. You’ll need to go into the room separately, though.”

“The room?”

“Right. The office with our Vault manager. I’ll have someone take you to him- and once you’re done, you can look at your vault- or vaults, if it works out for both of you- before changing money. Griphook!”

Griphook was another goblin, who led them down the massive hallway, then through a door to a smaller passage. After a couple of turns, they arrived at a door with a bench on one side and a sentry on the other. Griphook spoke briefly to the sentry in the goblin language that neither girl understood, then turned to them. “He is ready now,” he greeted. “Which one first?”

Hermione looked at Hailey. “You first.”

Hailey studied her face for a couple of seconds. She could tell Hermione was nervous- but the nervousness was sourced more from unfamiliarity than anything else, unlike it had been in the Alley.

Hailey took a deep breath, and stepped forwards.

“So, you want a Vault?” the Vault Manager goblin asked Hailey, once she’d entered the room. “Are your parents with you?”

“Uh, no, they’re not,” she answered. “They’re… dead.”

“Well I’m sorry to hear that, miss...” he said. Then he leaned sideways to peer at her through some strange window thingy. “Potter?”

“Uh, yeah.”

“Hmm… There’s a Vault under that name, but they only pass down to descendants unless all descendants are dead. So…” He opened a drawer in his desk, and pulled out a massive staff that definitely shouldn’t have fit. He stood up, stood it on the ground in front of him, then peered at her through the window at the top. “... Huh. I could have sworn they had a son, not a daughter, but whatever.” He put it away. “Alright, we’ve got your family vault, and it’s yours if you want it.” He looked up at her.

“Uh, yes, please,” she said.

He nodded. “Alright.” He slid open another drawer of his desk, pulled a key out, and did his thing with it; she had no idea what that stapler-like device was for. As he worked, he spoke. “You don’t happen to have a wand, do you?”

“Uh, I do not, no.”

He lifted a silver tray, with a long, silver knife resting on it, from the drawer, and placed it on the desk in front of her. “Then you’re going to need to bleed on it.” He handed her the key.

“I- what?”

“It should only need a few drops,” he continued. “And the wound will heal quickly. Don’t make too big of a cut, though.”

“You want me to… cut myself.”

“Only a little cut,” he nodded. “Preferably on a finger or something over the tray, just enough for a few drops to put on the key.”

“... Alright.” She took a deep breath, taking knife and key. She carefully- very carefully- nicked her finger, put the knife back on the tray, then squoze her finger to get the blood he’d asked for. She then let it drip down onto the key… at which point all the blood seemed to shimmer and disappear, and her little cut disappeared as well. “Uhh…”

He held out his hand.

She looked at it for a half second before reaching out to drop the key in it.

He looked at it with a magnifying glass. “That was enough,” he stated. He gave her the key back. “That key will only open your Vault while it is in your hand,” he informed her. “Now I know your fist impulse will be to spend it- don’t. You’ll probably need some from it for your schooling, but you do not want to be ‘little miss moneybags’, and whatever’s in that vault will have to last you a minimum of six years. You won’t be able to get a job- any job- until you’re seventeen, the Wizarding age of majority.”

She nodded. “Okay.”

“Alright. Griphook can take you to your Vault, if you want.” He gestured towards the door. “Alternately, he can take you back to the main concourse. Tell him which you would like.”

“Ahh, okay.” She left the room.

Hermione was waiting on the bench with Griphook, who promptly sent Hermione in.

When Hermione emerged, Hailey could tell- even before she looked- that she had been pleasantly surprised.

“How’d it go?” Hailey asked.

“McKinnan,” she answered. “I inherited a McKinnan vault. Apparently, I’m the closest magical relative to the McKinnan family, the last of which was killed in the war ten years ago.” She took a deep breath. “I’ve also inherited their house, apparently- and anything left in it.”

She blinked. “Wow. Here I only inherited my parents’ vault.”

“Not surprised,” Hermione sighed. “Their house was destroyed.”

Hailey winced.

“Do you wish to check the Vaults?” Griphook asked suddenly.

The girls spoke as one. “Yes, please.”

Author's Note

Patreon, Discord.

Chapter 12: Robes

Silversong wasn’t nearly as nervous when she arrived in Diagon Alley for her Hogwarts supplies as she had been on previous times. It had been over a week since she had been transformed- a week through which she had been practicing thinking of herself as herself, alongside going shopping each day with one parent or the other for something or another she might need, now that she was a she.

During her free time, she’d found that while she knew how to analyze her transformation to determine permanence and so on… she couldn’t actually perform that analysis, since she lacked a unicorn horn with which to cast the requisite spells.

So here she was, finally wearing a set of brand-new, gleaming blue girl’s robes on her way to get her Hogwarts stuff. Custom robes, unfortunately, took time to make- so she’d been wearing generic robes up to that point. These robes had been finished just the night before.

She followed Lucius and Narcissa down the street, directly to Madam Malkin’s once again- it was the same place they had ordered her custom robes from.

Madam Malkin looked up as she entered; she had darted ahead of her parents. “Ahh, Silversong,” she smiled- then she paused, to look her over. “Yes, that does look nice, doesn’t it? I haven’t finished your formal or winter clothes yet, though.”

Silversong shook her head. “No problem. But, um…” She glanced back at her parents, who were walking in the door, then back at Madam Malkin. “Hogwarts.”

She blinked, then smiled. “Getting everything at once, are we?” she chuckled. “Unfortunately, Hogwarts doesn’t allow custom robes, nor any fancy colors or materials, so we’ll have to get you fitted for them separately.”

She wrinkled her nose; while the generic robes had been a lot less uncomfortable than her boy’s robes had been, she had noticed basically from the moment she put them on that her new girl’s robes were significantly more comfortable than those generic robes had been, much like her boy’s robes had been when she had been a boy herself.

Well, kinda. She had been outgrowing them.

“Meh,” she muttered. “How long would it take?”

“For Hogwarts robes? The fitting takes about fifteen minutes, then it takes less than a minute to prepare the full set. That’s generic robes for you.”

“Ahh. Well, um, when would be a good time?”

She shrugged. “How about now? Your other robes are waiting on supplies right now, so…”

“Okay. So, where do you need me?”

Madam Malkin smiled. She’d smiled at Silver a lot on previous visits; Silver suspected she liked the happy-go-lucky attitude she’d assumed. “Right over here,” she indicated, gesturing at a small stool as she plucked a plain black robe off of a rack. “My, this is going to be boring next to your other robes.”

Narcissa chuckled. “While you’re doing that, I’ll go get all your coursebooks.”

Lucius smiled. “And me your other supplies. Meet us at…” He paused, thinking.

“Fortescue’s?” Silver proposed.

He tilted his head, and shrugged. “Yeah, Fortescue’s, when you’re done.”

“Alright, will do.”

Not even a single minute had passed since Silver’s parents had disappeared when the door chime rang again- and Madam Malkin passed her work off to an assistant so she could tend to the door. Silver watched from afar, doing her best to hold still for Madam Malkin’s assistant. It looked like two girls, about her own age, were entering the shop- both wearing muggle clothing, and no adults in sight.

“Hogwarts, dears?” Madam Malkin asked them.

“Uh, yes,” the black-haired one said, smiling nervously up at Madam Malkin.

“Er, I already got mine last week,” the bushy brown-haired one said, smiling innocently up at her.

Madam Malkin chuckled. “Got the lot today. Got another young lady being fitted up right now, in fact. Right over here, miss…?”

“Hailey.”

“Right then, Hailey. On this stool, please, and we’ll get you fitted right away.” She plucked another robe off the rack as she spoke.

“Uh, okay,” Hailey muttered, before stepping up onto the stool for her.

Silver waited a couple of seconds of silence before speaking up. “Hi,” she greeted.

Hailey looked at her and, apparently confused, answered slowly. “... Hi.”

“Uh… Do you know what house you’ll be in?” She had no idea why Hailey seemed so confused.

“House?” Hailey asked, her prior confusion replaced instantly with curiosity.

“Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, Slyth- Oooh, Harry died.” It was Hailey’s companion, who had sat on one of the chairs set aside for parents to wait for their children to be fitted- or vice versa- and picked up the newspaper sitting next to it.

“Who died?” Hailey asked.

“He died?” Silver asked. “Wasn’t he famous for surviving?”

“Harry Potter,” the girl answered. “And yes, he is famous for surviving the Killing Curse. Seems like that wasn’t everything, though- according to this, he got eaten by a shark a couple weeks ago.”

“And here I thought the Light was going to rally around him,” Madam Malkin sighed. “Of all the things that could have done him in, a shark was probably one of the least dangerous ones.”

Silver tilted her head. “Wait. When he survived the Killing Curse, his mother was there, right? Did… Is it possible that she gave her life for his?”

There was silence for several seconds.

“... Possible,” Madam Malkin eventually broke the silence. “Nobody knows what happened that night, though, so we may never know for sure.”

“If so, it makes sense,” Silver mused. “A mother’s love is one of the most powerful protections out there- but it only protects against intent, making that shark one of the more dangerous things that could have hurt him. Anything done intentionally by another witch or wizard- or even a muggle- would’ve been magically attenuated or redirected until it was just shy of deadly. It wouldn’t stop him from getting hit and killed by a poorly-aimed blasting spell, or a falling anvil, or whatever else, but…” She took a deep breath. “It would have kept the shark from biting him, though.”

“It says there were no witches or wizards present,” Hailey’s friend muttered. “And that the muggles that were caring for him said he disappeared beneath the waves some minutes before they saw the shark. They never saw him again, and had to assume he was dead.” She took a deep breath. “Which was verified a week later when his Hogwarts letter was returned as undeliverable, because he was dead.”

“A riptide,” Silver muttered. “He got pulled under by a riptide and drowned, and only possibly eaten by the shark.”

“What’s… ‘attenuated’ mean?” Hailey asked.

“Adjective, having been reduced in force, effect, or value,” Silver recited from one of Twilight’s dictionaries. “So… weakened. Like, if somebody swung a twenty-pound sledgehammer at his head, it would not have hit nearly as hard as it would have hit, say, a wooden post.”

“Sledgehammer?” Madam Malkin asked.

“It’s a really big, really heavy hammer,” Hailey’s friend supplied helpfully. “Hitting anyone on the head with one with any speed at all would be a death sentence.”

Silver closed her eyes and sighed. Another word from Twilight’s dictionaries she hadn’t realized she was using. There seemed to be a lot of them.

“So, uh, to answer your question about the houses, I have no idea,” Hailey told her.

“Lucky you,” Silver smiled. “You get to be surprised when you get there. Me, I just know I’ll be in Slytherin. All my family have been.”

Hailey’s friend tilted her head. “Aren’t we sorted into houses when we get there?”

“Well, yeah. Technically speaking, nobody really knows which house they’ll be in until they get there, but sometimes, it’s really, really easy to guess.”

“Um,” Madam Malkin’s assistant spoke up, as she moved to Silver’s sleeves. “What’s an anvil, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“A very large block of metal,” Hailey’s friend answered cheerfully. “Usually used by blacksmiths, as something to hammer their hot metal against.”

“They wouldn’t normally be falling from high enough to kill anyone, would they?” Hailey asked.

Her friend shrugged. “True, they’re never really lifted very high- the most he’d have to worry about from a falling anvil would be a broken leg or crushed foot.”

“So, uh,” Hailey looked up at Silver again. “Why a falling anvil, instead of something like a car crash? He was living with muggles, after all.”

Silver blinked. “I, uh… First thing that came to mind, I guess.”

“Alright, that part’s done,” Madam Malkin suddenly announced. “If you could remove the robe please, Hailey?”

“Uh, sure,” Hailey answered, and slipped the pinned-up robe off, handing it to Madam Malkin. “Is that it for me, or…?”

Madam Malkin shook her head. “Unfortunately, no, it’s only the beginning. The Hogwarts dress code is very specific- no matter how simple the materials list makes it sound- and unless you’ve got stuff that fits perfectly, you’ll need to get some.”

“... Ahh. How much does it cost?”

“Free. I only charge for the robes.”

“Oh, nice. So, what do you need?”

“Next up is a few measurements, before I fit you for your skirts.”

“Skirts?”

“Yup. You’ll be wearing a shirt and a skirt underneath your robes while you’re at Hogwarts- anything else is against dress code. Except for boys, they get special pants… that, the way I hear it, are not all that comfortable. Ready?” She held up a measuring tape.

“Go for it,” Hailey told her.

Right at that moment, Madam Malkin’s assistant informed Silver that it was her turn to shed the pinned-up robes.

Hailey’s friend was quick to notice her normal robes when she did so. “Oooh, nice robes.”

“Thanks,” she muttered, hiding her nervousness. For as much as she was enjoying her new female persona, she wasn’t yet completely comfortable with it- so, among other things, she felt naked when she wore a skirt. Which of course, skirts were part of any girl’s wardrobe- a girl simply didn’t wear robes without a skirt.

At least the skirts that went with all the robes she’d gotten were long. And, according to Narcissa, so would the ones for her Hogwarts robes.

Then, Hailey’s voice got her attention again. “Wait a minute, I thought I didn’t need to wear, uh, that…?”

She looked. Hailey was looking at the bras that Madam Malkin was adding to her pile.

Madam Malkin looked up at Hailey. “It’s the dress code, believe it or not- it’s required, whether you technically need it or not.”

“... They know what underwear I wear…?”

She shook her head. “No. I think they require it because these shirts- which, you’ll notice, are embroidered with the Hogwarts coat of arms- are sheer. If they get wet, or sweaty, they become transparent.”

“... Oh.”

“Wouldn’t the black offset that?” Hailey’s friend asked.

“It does, some,” Madam Malkin answered. “But only some. The way I hear it, a couple dozen years back, they had a few too many students get… assaulted after walking in the rain- and believe it or not, requiring all the girls to wear bras reduced that occurrence.” She looked at Hailey. “The dress code does not have specific requirements for the bras, except that they must have full coverage and be both solid and black- so if you have something that fits, you don’t have to take them. Wouldn’t affect the price any, though- and these are spelled to always be the right size.”

Hailey shivered slightly. “I’ll take ‘em,” she said. “I just…”

“Odd requirements?” Silver asked. She was actually wearing a bra herself, even though she technically didn’t need one; according to Narcissa, she did not want to have her first experience with a bra at Hogwarts.

“How big of a range does that enchantment have?” Hailey’s friend asked.

“Uh, wouldn’t that be ‘anything’?” Hailey asked.

“No, it wouldn’t,” Silver stated. “Sizing enchantments can only stretch or compress a garment- or other object- so far.”

“That would be correct,” Madam Malkin nodded. “I picked one based on your current size, and it’ll tolerate about an eight inch increase in underbust or overbust measurements before you’ll need to come get a larger bra. The limit for decrease is about two inches, but in all my years selling them, I have yet to have someone come in for a smaller bra.”

“If there’s any girls like Dudley, they might,” Hailey grinned. Silver could tell she hadn’t fully understood what Madam Malkin was talking about- as a matter of fact, she herself only barely understood the part about underbust and overbust.

Hailey’s friend let out a snort of laughter. “I wonder what she’d be named? Dudleah?”

At that, Hailey laughed as well, and Silver smiled. It had felt good to not feel required to attack these two for looking like muggleborns- and by now, she was reasonably sure that they actually were muggleborns… and that she liked them. Hailey felt almost like a kindred spirit, like she could truly understand what Silver had gone through, even though she couldn’t know- and between the two of them, mostly Hailey’s friend, they had actually understood the various Twilight-words she’d used without thinking! Maybe that was a muggle thing? Did Equestrians not draw a line between their muggle and magical populations?

She certainly didn’t know about any- just about every Equestrian she knew about was magical, yet they still used anvils. And sledgehammers. Even the unicorns did!

Even so, she knew that muggleborns were inferior… Yet, she also knew- she suspected from Twilight- that everypony was equal, no matter if they be unicorn, pegasus, earth pony, thestral, kirin, griffin, dragon, and so on. By her best guess, the Changelings seemed to be Equestria’s version of ‘muggles’- except that they were magic too, just feared and hunted. And the last couple tidbits of Twilight’s knowledge seemed to invalidate any kind of superiority complex related to them, as well.

She elected not to mention it in the growing silence. She already valued them as friends more than she valued voicing her conflicting knowledge.

“So, uhh…” Hailey’s friend muttered.

“Are you familiar with Quidditch?” Silver blurted out- then promptly bit her lip. By that question, she’d assumed that they were muggleborns… which she had intended not to do.

“Never heard of it,” Hailey promptly answered.

“I’ve… heard of it,” her friend muttered. “Just about everything I’ve seen seems to refer to it in one way or another, but no, I’d have to say I’m not familiar with it.” She tilted her head, looking up at Silver. “Can you tell us more?”

“Oh. Um,” Silver muttered uncomfortably. She hadn’t expected to find herself in the position of explaining the game- and wasn’t sure that she knew it well enough herself to explain it accurately, at that.

Madam Malkin- and her assistant- had perfect timing, though. “Alright, that’s you done,” Madam Malkin informed Hailey, as she packaged Hailey’s new robes into a paper bag.

Her assistant merely nodded. “Done,” she said, as she packed Silver’s new robes and handed the bag to her.

“Oh, time for the gold then,” Hailey chuckled, walking around to meet Madam Malkin at the register.

“And silver,” her friend reminded. “Definitely silver.”

Silver let out a snort of laughter.

“What?” Hailey’s friend asked her.

“Nothing,” she answered. “It’s just… that’s my name. Silversong.”

“... Oh. Well, nice to meet you! I’m Hermione.” Silver couldn’t help but notice her hands curling nervously at her sides.

Hailey merely smiled at her before looking up at Madam Malkin, opening her purse- her muggle purse, slung across her body- to start counting wizard coins out of it. “How much was it again?”

“Nice to meet you too,” Silversong answered Hermione, bowing slightly as she did so. Then she drew her purse- her wizard purse, which was basically just a bag with a fancy name, rather than the utilitarian thing Hailey had- out of her pocket to count out the coins she’d need.

They were silent until after they had completed their purchases, before Hermione spoke again.

“So, uh, Silversong,” Hermione said. “Are you, um, getting your Hogwarts stuff on your own, or is someone waiting…?”

She shrugged. “Kinda, kinda not. I mean, my… Oh, I don’t know what word applies. Step parents? Foster parents?”

“Family,” Hailey suggested. “I live with my aunt and uncle, but they’re still my ‘family’.”

“... That works,” she agreed, stuffing her purchase into her hair; unlike Twilight, she had actually understood what Pinkie had said about how she stored things in her mane- which she only knew because Twilight had written it verbatim in her Friendship Journal. She’d done some testing the night before, and gotten it to work reliably. It was fun to watch in the mirror as her smooth, wavy hair swallowed large objects she put into it, like her pillow. It was a little less entertaining to watch them come back out- but only a little. “My family will be waiting for me at Fortescue’s, but if I tell them where I’m-!”

“Aw, dang.”

When Silver looked, it seemed Hailey had dropped her bag of robes on the ground behind her; she was bending down to pick them up again.

“What are you doing?” Hermione asked, confused.

Hailey ignored her, instead looking at Silver. “How’d you do that hair thing?”

“Hair thing?” she repeated, confused- then she understood. “Oh. Um… I… I don’t know if you’ll be able to do it at all, but… It’s… There’s a space, in my hair, that isn’t there, and that’s where I’m putting it.”

“And you just… let that be true?”

“Uh… Yeah, I guess that’s one way to look at it.”

Silver knew that it was Twilight’s magic that made it possible- a regular British witch simply wasn’t capable of stable dimensional pocket magic like that, even though every pony was. Judging by Twilight’s knowledge, a witch or wizard traveling to Equestria would gain that magic the moment they arrived in the Equestrian magic fields. As such, Hailey wouldn’t be able to do it.

She tried anyways. Silver couldn’t fault her for it- and then, on her third try, she managed it.

Silver blinked. “What-?”

Hailey grinned, then snatched Silver up with a surprise hug. “Thank you,” she murmured.

Silver smiled, returning the hug- carefully, after she’d accidentally crushed her glass the other day, and subsequently been unable to find the limit of her strength, when Dobby had helped her test it. “You’re welcome.”

“Uh- Hailey? Aren’t- Aren’t you going to hurt her?” Hermione asked.

Hailey drew back, and looked at Hermione. “No, of course not. She’s like us- isn’t it obvious?”

“Like-!?” Hermione asked, then looked at Silver for a second, then tilted her head. Silence held for another three seconds before she nodded. “Ohh, I see. And no, it’s not obvious, genius.”

“Hey, I thought you were the genius.”

“What do you mean, ‘like you’?” Silver asked.

“Ahh…” Hailey looked instantly unsure, as she glanced around; they had just left the shop. “This… isn’t the place for that. Maybe… on the train? Or if we can arrange a visit of some sort?”

Silver shook her head. “My ‘family’ is of the belief that muggleborns are inferior,” she stated.

Hailey wrinkled her nose. “Good thing I’m not one, then. Though, I am living with muggles…” She scowled. “Hangon. You don’t have that belief? Isn’t stuff like that kinda learned in?”

Silver nodded. “I don’t have that belief,” she said, telling herself as much as she was Hailey; if nothing else, Hermione- who, by her best guess, actually was a muggleborn- was a great example of why muggleborns were not inferior. “And yes, it does tend to be indoctrinated. I… moved in recently, though. My parents died a week or so ago, sent me to some distant relatives- the only relatives I have, apparently- via portkey. I don’t even know what they qualify as, in terms of relationship, but they do have the same last name.”

“Well, I’m sorry to hear that,” Hailey said- though Silver noticed that she didn’t sound all that sorry… and she’d raised an eyebrow during the explanation.

“Hailey! That’s insensitive!” Hermione barked. Then she turned to Silver. “I’m really sorry about-!”

“No worries,” she informed her. “I hated them anyways. They didn’t care about me, except for that portkey- which was, I’m pretty sure, intended to ensure their family line remained unbroken. New family might be the stuck-up ‘noble’ sort, but they actually care.”

“Interesting,” Hailey muttered. “My parents died when I was a baby- but they left behind a Vault in Gringotts, soo…”

“They did? How’d you get it?”

She shrugged. “Went in and asked the goblins about a Vault. They’ve got their magic window thingies to look through, and find out if there’s something for you to inherit.”

“Magic window thingies…? Whatever.” She looked in the direction of Gringotts. “Huh. Who knows, might not be a bad idea.”

“Only took a few minutes,” Hermione muttered. “I ended up inheriting something from someone I’m not even related to, because apparently I’m their ‘closest magical relative’. So…”

“Wow. Um. Okay. Then, I’ll go see if there’s anything waiting for me, go tell my family what I’m up to, and meet you again… somewhere?”

Hailey shrugged. “We were going to stop at the apothecary next, then start browsing at Flourish and Blotts, so we’ll meet you at the latter?”

“Works for me,” Silver grinned. “I’ll see you in a few, then.” She trotted off in the direction of Gringotts.

Author's Note

Yup, it's a long one, just under twice my target length. Couldn't find any way to break it up without also breaking up the flow, though, so you get more words!

We also find out that adolescent wizards at Hogwarts were still adolescent boys...

And no, none of the three have anything significant in that department, they're too young for that.

Patreon, Discord.

Chapter 13: Discord

“Hey. Princess.”

Flurry looked up at the speaker- and as she did so, she felt Captain Gleaming Shield stiffening by her side. It had been spoken without any respect. She didn’t give it the courtesy of a verbal response- not only was he being disrespectful, but she had just closed Day Court for lunch.

He didn’t wait for one. “Who do you think you are, to be ruling us from on high?”

Gleaming Shield leaned in slightly. “He’s a member of the anti-Celestia faction,” she muttered.

Flurry gave a marginal nod; she’d been told about the various factions before Gleaming Shield had ever let her into the throne room to open Day Court the very first time. This was the distinct minority faction that was opposed to Alicorn rule; Celestia had shut them down hundreds of times over the ages.

“I am your princess,” she answered firmly. “And you would do well to remember that.”

“Oh yeah?” He lowered his horn at her.

The response was immediate. Gleaming Shield might not have been a unicorn, but that didn’t stop her from defending against one. One of her shoes became an instant missile, headed directly for his horn, while she shoved Flurry backwards and stepped protectively in front of her, spreading her wings to further obstruct his view. Simultaneously, the various Unicorn guards around the room leveled their horns to lay attacks- and at least three cast shields between Gleaming Shield and the attacking stallion, all three of which were slow enough her shoe made it out uninterrupted.

Pegasi didn’t have magic horns, and they might not have been the strongest, but they were the fastest, and by a significant margin. Captain Gleaming Shield was no exception- as a matter of fact, had she not decided to become a Guard instead, she would have made a top-tier Wonderbolt, as her speed rivaled that of Rainbow Dash herself. Combined with Guard training and reflexes, that left her metal shoe moving at a whopping two hundred miles an hour.

Then, the shoe collided with the attacker’s horn, right on target. None of the Unicorn Guards had gotten far enough into their spells to start launching attacks against him. That didn’t matter- because at the very moment the shoe struck, as if to add insult to injury, a lightning bolt crashed out of nowhere to strike the tip of his suddenly fractured horn, charring his horn and fur black.

He cried out in pain, head snapping back, then collapsed straight to the ground.

Then, Discord stepped into the Throne Room through the door, looking… suspiciously normal. “Now, now,” he remanded. “We can’t be having any of that.” He stepped up to the stallion and lifted him into the air by the scruff of his neck. “Celestia might have been attacked when I was looking, but did you really think I’d let you wipe out the only hope Equestria has left?”

“Discord,” Flurry nodded, stepping around Gleaming Shield. “I was wondering when I’d see you.”

He glanced up at her. “Worried about all the God of Chaos stuff?”

She tilted her head. “Um… a little bit.”

He shrugged. “I sow harmless chaos. Right now, much at all would be very harmful, so I’ve been keeping it elsewhere. Least I can do.” He then looked back at the stallion in his paw. “This idiot tried making the harmful sort, of course. There’s always someone, isn’t there?” He flung him casually to the side.

Flurry winced when he landed with a distinctive crunch. “Um, on that topic, are you able to get the other Princesses back, or…?”

He shook his head. “That curse sent them across the interdimensional barrier- and while I can reach across it, I’m no more than an average Joe in other dimensions. It’s only here that I have my powers- I know where they are, but I’m powerless to retrieve them.” He sighed. “And even if I could retrieve them, they’d probably die in a few days anyways. Not to mention the people serving as their hosts right now- those would be killed by the transaction.”

“... Oh. So we’ll never see them again?”

“Oh, I wouldn’t be so quick to think that,” he mused. “Twilight managed to give her host quite the motherlode of information, so they should be able to make their way here- at which point mere contact with Equestria’s magic fields might be enough to bring the other Princesses right back.”

“What happens if… something happens to their hosts?”

He shrugged. “I might be powerless in other dimensions, but I can send my power between dimensions to do things. Not very precisely, mind, but…” He sighed. “I’ve donated a part of my power- rather permanently, I might add- to each of their hosts. They should be completely invulnerable and immortal, whether they were already or not, even to magical attacks- and, at least over time, it’ll even free them of prior… ailments.” He shuddered so hard some of the floor tiles popped up to shudder as well, before cementing themselves back down.

“So how long do we have?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know, to be honest- all depends on when they start trying. So… anywhere from a week to eight or nine years to possibly even longer, if they wait after school.”

“Can we talk to them?”

He shook his head. “I’m afraid their local magic fields aren’t strong enough for that. If ever they’re all in one, magic-dense place, I might be able to reach them then. And if I can, there’s a good chance I won’t have the power to spare to be the one talking.”

“What about the guy I talked to, that refused my power- Ronald Weasley?”

He rubbed his chin with a talon. “Hmm… I don’t know. It’s theoretically possible for you to reach him, but you’d have to use some complicated spellwork that I’d have to turn to Twilight to assemble.”

She rubbed her chin with a hoof. “Do you… know where to start, perhaps? Maybe Blueblood or the like can build on it?”

He rubbed his chin again, this time with his tooth. “... True,” he mused. “He was able to make standing spells to move the Sun and Moon, long thought impossible even by myself. I’ll give him the matrices he might need.” He snapped his tail, and a second Discord appeared out of thin air, holding a thick manilla envelope, to walk out the side door of the throne room.

“Um-!” one of the Guards muttered. “Can I, er, ask something?”

“Obviously,” Discord answered. “You’ve just done so.” He grinned. “Ask away.”

“Y-You said you sow harmless chaos… if that’s the case, what was that when you, ahh, de-petrified yourself?”

He shrugged. “Spending a thousand years in stone will drive anyone crazy. The good Celestia knew about that, though, so she gave me a second chance, with Fluttershy- and she helped me, ah, snap out of it.” Then he rubbed his chin with a hoof. “Not unlike how Cadence’s love-shield helped Chrysalis snap out of her starvation-induced craziness.”

If there was one thing Molly Weasley was conflicted about, it was Ariel. She loved her new daughter’s endless curiosity; she was like a ten-year-old baby. However, Ariel might as well be the new Gryffindor mascot as well; she was completely and totally unafraid of plunging herself into the unknown, despite having been afraid she wouldn’t be accepted by her own family.

It certainly hadn’t hurt that they had found out that both her daughters- Ginny and Ariel- were now possessed by superhuman strength. After Ginny had accidentally tipped the table up when she was trying to see where her fork had fallen to, Ariel had tried too- and found it just as easy. They’d tried- but to date, the only limit they had been able to find to either one’s strength was the other of the two.

Fortunately, they were both cheerfully optimistic- Ariel just by who she was, and Ginny because of Ariel’s appearance, Molly was sure. It certainly didn’t hurt that they were as close to each other as Fred and George; it hadn’t bothered them at all that they didn’t have another bedroom- or bed- to give Ariel. She’d just slept with Ginny in her little bed.

Now, though, they had gotten Ron’s Hogwarts supplies the week before- and Arthur had just gotten paid, so with the family still on a diet rich in potatoes, they were going to get Ariel some clothes of her own- so she didn’t have to keep sharing Ginny’s already scanty clothes.

Now, though, Ariel had run off and struck up a conversation with what looked like a muggleborn and her sister, both just a little older than herself, outside Flourish and Blotts.

“Mr. Weasley?”

Mr. Weasley smiled at the Ministry of Magic Records Department clerk’s surprised question.

“What brings you in here?” the clerk asked.

It made sense to him; the last time he’d walked to the Records Department, rather than sending an interdepartmental memo, was years before, when he’d accepted his current job. “Family matters,” he answered.

“Oh? Molly get pregnant?” Even as he spoke, the clerk stepped down one of the aisles to retrieve a folder.

He shook his head. “Nah, nothing as simple as that. I’d like to make sure my new daughter is recorded properly.”

“New daughter-? What happened to whats-her-name, the first one, um…” He glanced in the folder he’d just pulled out of the drawer. “Ginnerva?”

Mr. Weasley smiled. “Nothing. Well, unless you count super strength.”

“She… got stronger, and you got a new daughter…?”

He grinned. “Imagine my surprise when I walked downstairs to find that my daughter had spontaneously duplicated herself overnight,” he chuckled.

“She… duplicated herself.”

“Yes. They’re both incredibly strong- we actually weren’t able to find their limit, even by magic, except when putting them against each other.”

“... Ahh. So, which one’s stronger?”

“Both. Or neither, if you prefer it that way- they seem to be equally strong, but still immeasurable.”

“Okay then. Do you want us to record that, or… Wait a minute.” He looked a little closer at the files he’d brought back to the desk. “Ginnerva is ten, right?”

He nodded. “Yes? Don’t the details self-update?”

“... Yes, they do, but they’ve been known to be wrong from time to time. I…” He rifled through the pages. “It’s Ariel, right?”

He blinked. “Yes, actually. How- how’d you know? I thought they didn’t auto-document new family members.”

“... Not normally, no,” the clerk muttered, staring at the pages.

“What?”

“Well, aside from the magical power rating of the infinity symbol on both of them… there’s a mother-daughter relationship between the two.”

“There’s a what!?”

“They’re recorded as the same age, but Ariel is Ginnerva’s daughter, not yours. You and Molly are still Ariel’s legal and magical guardians- but…”

“... Who’s the father?”

“She doesn’t have one. Just the one parent, no mention of the other parent being unknown or deceased or whatever else. I’ve never seen it before.” There was a second’s pause. “Hangon. Title… Princess, on both of them.”

“Princess,” he repeated flatly.

“... Yeah.” He looked at the other pages. “No hint of royalty elsewhere in the family, but according to this, Princess Ginnerva and Princess Ariel are both members of royalty- and so entitled to their own senior seats in the Wizengamot if they just ask.”

“... Really?”

“Yeah. Um… I’ll keep this under wraps for you for now? I can’t guarantee nobody else will see it down the road, but I can at least buy you some time.”

“... Yes, please,” he muttered, in somewhat of a shock. “Any… title, for Ronald? He had a… similar vision.”

“Um… Ambassador. Ambassador Ronald.” He rifled through the pages. “Doesn’t look like any of the rest of the family have gained any titles since I last checked- though Merlin only knows how long that will last, with princesses in the family.”

Author's Note

I've had some people asking about Discord... so here he is, intelligently preserving the nation by keeping his chaos elsewhere. No doubt it'll be back once things stabilize, but...

Patreon, Discord.

Oh, and the Weasley family has quite a bit of potentially interesting stuff going on, haven't they?

... And yes, I'm late. It'll probably happen a lot, with this new job eating most of my time... so I'm contemplating shifting to a "variable rate" release schedule, based on how many chapters I have waiting.

Chapter 14: Priceless

“Amelia.”

Amelia Bones, Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, nodded in recognition of the Records Department clerk’s greeting. “Just over a week ago, the Trace was blinded for nearly twenty-four hours by a massive surge of energy,” she informed the clerk. “We’ve been able to narrow it down to five point sources, but two of them were in muggle territory. I was wondering if you could help me out.”

He blinked. “Me? Um…” He looked back at the shelves for a second, then back at her. “I wouldn’t know where to start. Pretty sure magical phenomena aren’t recorded.”

“Two were at the Burrow, and one was at the Malfoy Manor.” She had passed Mr. Weasley on her way here, and already suspected the clerk knew at least something about it. “Has there been anything unusual at either location?”

“Um…” He looked back into the shelves. “Well, I believe I can say yes to both.”

She nodded once. “Alright.”

“The only thing I can say about Malfoy Manor is that I’ve had some of the other nobles come in with forged marriage contracts for one ‘Silversong Malfoy’ these last few days. Some of them were pretty impressive forgeries, but still forgeries- I haven’t checked the Malfoy file to see if Silversong is even a real person, yet.”

She nodded slowly. “... Interesting.”

“As for the Weasley Family…” He took a deep breath. “I did just promise Mr. Weasley to help keep it under wraps, so if you wouldn’t mind…?”

She raised an eyebrow. “That serious?”

He nodded, and spoke quietly. “His daughters are princesses.”

She blinked. “... Oh. Definitely not telling anyone about that. And… Yeah. Let’s move it to the Vault.” It was a special filing cabinet hidden in the corner of the room that couldn’t be opened without a key kept on her person. Technically, Cornelius Fudge also had a key, but he never used it- anything in that drawer was there for a reason, and he always asked her when someone asked him to unlock it. He even kept his key in her desk! Fortunately, the key was not required to put things into the cabinet, only to get stuff out.

“Ahh, Understood,” he acknowledged.

“So. Daughters?”

“... Yeah. Apparently, around a week ago, Ginnerva Weasley gained super strength, reached a power rating of infinity, and gained a twin sister with the same… attributes. For some reason, her new sister’s file auto-populated.”

“He doesn’t have the income to properly support six children at once, even with Hogwarts,” Amelia muttered. “I’ll… have to see about that. Anyways.” She looked up at the records clerk. “Could you check the Malfoy file?”

“Will do.” He jogged back into the shelves, and after a minute, came back with a folder, which he laid flat before he opened it. “Hmm… Lucius… Narcissa… nothing strange there.” He moved to the third page. “What-? Draco is… ‘indisposed’? No reason or anything, either… but nothing else seems to have changed.” He looked up.

“There’s a fourth,” she observed.

He looked down, and flipped it up. “... So there is. Could’ve sworn- Oh, it’s Silversong- er, Princess Silversong… who also has an ‘infinity’ power rating. And… She’s eleven. Yet she’s already graduated from the ‘Upper Canterlot Magic Kindergarten’, ‘Canterlot General High School’, and… what’s CSGU stand for?”

“Completed a fifteen-year apprenticeship under Princess Celestia,” Amelia read on. “Ten years of experience as an oligarch, and… fifty years of experience in varied magical combat and friendship techniques?”

“Fifty years? That’s- She’s only eleven! How is that even possible…? Oh, and she’s also apparently qualified to teach Muggle Studies at any school on the planet.” He tapped the symbols that indicated a native-level expertise with muggle matters, something Amelia had only ever heard about. To her knowledge, even muggles often didn’t qualify for that stamp until they were at least into their twenties!

“She’s… quite the prodigy,” Amelia muttered. “This goes in the Secure Drawer as well,” she ordered.

“Understood,” he nodded- and as he spoke, the text on the page seemed to shift slightly. He looked at it. “... Huh. She must be at Gringotts, talking to the goblins. Looks like she just inherited a Vault… and an estate, presumably from a distant ancestor.”

“Alright. So, the last two point sources for the magic surge actually came from muggle homes- could you pull the files of new muggleborn Hogwarts students this year?”

“Sure.” He vanished into the rows, and shortly came back with a small handful of folders. “Only six of ‘em this year.” He laid them on the counter, then opened the one on top. “... Nope.” He closed it, set it aside, and opened the next. “... Yup. Princess Hermione Granger, infinity power rating, inherited vault and estate. Nothing else of note, though.”

“Okay. That one goes in the Secure Drawer too.”

He closed the folder, and stacked it on top of the closed Malfoy folder. “Alright then.” He opened the next on the stack.

The rest of the stack was uneventful; nothing turned up.

Amilia held up a key. “Potter,” she said. “Try Potter. The last one was near the home he was living in.”

It took nearly five minutes for him to retrieve the Potter folder from the Secure Drawer. He laid it on the counter, facing her, and handed her key back.

She reached forward, and flicked the folder open.

Exactly as she had expected, the page on top read Harry Potter, and was stamped Deceased in bold red letters. There was, however, no ‘cause of death’ entry on the page, as there usually was when files had that stamp.

She lifted the page up… and sighed. “Princess Hailey Potter,” she muttered.

“That’s going to make things complicated,” he nodded. “On top of that, she’s Harry’s sister- and I saw the Daily Prophet, he was eaten by a shark. She’s probably devastated.” He blinked. “... Huh. She’s living with muggles, but I can’t say I recognize that magical guardian.”

She looked at it. “... Queen Chrysalis,” she said slowly. “I… can’t say I recognize that either.” She flicked open the Granger folder. “And Princess Hermione’s magical guardian is Princess Celestia Solaris,” she mused. She looked up. “Think you can find it?”

“Easy,” he answered, and vanished into the shelves.

She looked at Hailey’s file again. The picture looked somewhat similar to that on Harry’s file; she even had the same scar, it looked like.

Then she noticed an entry in the bio.

Hailey was a metamorphmagus.

She let out a small sigh. No doubt Hailey would wear Harry’s scar after his death, as a way of promising him he could live on in her… or something. Then she tilted her head, looking between Harry’s and Hailey’s files. They both showed the same parents- but neither listed the other as a sibling. She returned to the Malfoy folder, and compared Draco’s and Silversong’s files… for the same result. “Interesting.”

Silversong, however, didn’t have a strange magical guardian- her Magical Guardian was listed as ‘Lucius and Narcissa Malfoy’, exactly as she had expected.

The clerk returned with one folder. “I couldn’t find them,” he informed her. “I grabbed the Weasley folder while I was at it.”

“Can I take a look?”

“Sure.” He put it in front of her.

She paged through to Ginnerva’s and… Ariel’s files, and compared the two.

She immediately found a difference. Ginnerva had Arthur Weasley as her father, and Molly Weasley as her mother. She also had her brothers listed as siblings, but not Ariel.

Instead, Ariel was listed on her file as a daughter.

Ariel’s file, meanwhile, was completely missing the ‘father’ entry, and listed Ginnerva as her mother, despite being the same age. She had no siblings listed.

“Very interesting.”

The clerk looked up. “Mm?”

“Harry and Hailey both show the same parents, and they both show on their parents’ files as descendants, but neither list the other as a sibling. The same is true for Draco and Silversong.

“Then, Ariel is Ginny’s daughter.”

“And Draco is ‘indisposed’, Harry ‘deceased’, and Ginny alive and well,” the clerk noted.

She nodded. “I’m starting to wonder if we’re running into a case of transgenderism. Two of them.”

He blinked. “... True. That does tend to mess with the files, doesn’t it?”

“The part that doesn’t add up, though, is that Hailey is a metamorphmagus… and Harry is not. And Silver’s… extensive education and experience.” She looked down both files, and touched her key to the face of the pages. While it was in contact, a few extra entries appeared- among them, ‘location’. They were both in Diagon Alley. Even Ariel and Ginny were, when she touched them as well!

“Alright then. Make sure all the Princesses’ files get into the Secure Drawer for me, and I think I’ve got somewhere to be.” She smiled at him.

“Understood,” he answered, closing and stacking the Malfoy, Granger, Potter, and Weasley folders before he carried both stacks back into the shelves.

She, meanwhile, headed for her office. She needed to grab something- then use the floo.

When she reached Diagon Alley, Amelia wasn’t searching for the girls themselves. No; she was looking for their parents, who were presumably with them.

The first set of parents she saw was the Malfoys, sitting at an outside table at Florean Fortescue’s Ice Cream Parlor. Their daughter was nowhere nearby. She stepped up.

Lucius was the first to notice, and look up at her. “Amelia,” he greeted. “Can I help you?”

Amelia nodded. “Yes, probably. I just came from the Records Department- and I noticed some… funny details, about your children’s files.” She paused, looking between them. She hadn’t been the head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement for the last ten years for nothing- and even through the raised eyebrows, she could tell it was an uncomfortable topic. “Ahh… Would you prefer we discuss it somewhere more private?”

“Uh, yes, please,” Narcissa smiled.

“Alright,” she nodded. “If you could meet me in my office at your next opportunity, then?”

“Tomorrow work?” Lucius asked.

She nodded. “Yes, it will, thank you.”

She was unable to locate any of the other families in the Alley. She’d have to go to them directly.

By the time Molly Weasley arrived at Gringotts, her daughters had already run inside some time ago; after chatting with those muggleborn witches, Ariel had run back, grabbed Ginny, and run for Gringotts.

She paused when she hit the main concourse, looking around. Neither girl was anywhere to be seen.

She sighed, and started walking up to the counter; she’d have to ask one of the tellers.

As she walked, though, she saw one of the doors down the hall open… then a goblin led her daughters out of it, and along the wall towards her. She moved to meet them.

Funny. One of them had a stunned expression. The other looked up at her. “Oh, hi Mom! We just, uh, inherited a vault from a distant ancestor. Want to come see what’s in it with us?” She even held up a key for her to see.

“... Sure,” she answered, stunned herself. They had something to inherit?

The goblin chuckled. “Follow me,” he muttered, and continued on his way.

Molly fell in with her daughters- she was fairly sure it was Ariel that had spoken- and followed.

The silence held until they were clambering into the cart, to take the ride down to the vault, when Molly asked the question.

“So… who did you inherit from?”

The cart launched itself down the rails before Ariel smiled up at her; she could tell who it was by the color of her eyes.

“Godric Gryffindor.”

Author's Note

And now, we find out what the Trace thought of interdimensional penetration and the magical transformation of a few people... and of course, someone actually noticed the mystery. Not Dumbledore, of course, since he'd undoubtedly just call Hailey out as Harry if he were to find out at this stage, in an effort to keep his plans relevant (and Voldemort assured defeated), and we'd get something only slightly removed from the books.

Oh, and do you think that vault will be enough to cover the additional expenses from Ariel's appearance?

Patreon, Discord.

Chapter 15: Weasley

Molly was still having trouble wrapping her head around what had happened at Gringotts when she caught up to her daughters, waiting outside Madam Malkin’s.

Then of course, she only had two problems then. They were glaring annoyedly at the door. “What’s wrong?” she asked.

Ariel looked up. “Some noble dude said we weren’t rich enough to wait inside the store, and chased us out with his wand.”

“That ‘noble dude’ was, I’m pretty sure, Mr. Goyle.”

Mrs. Weasley thought for a second, and shrugged. “Who is he to say you’re not rich enough? You could probably buy his entire family with an afterthought.” Their new Vault had been stuffed full with a veritable tidal wave of gold- and the goblin had even informed her that it was about time someone claimed the vault to spend the money that continued to flow into it, from royalties on Hogwarts itself, among other things. He said the vault had been expanded nearly a dozen times- making it the largest Vault at Gringotts, by a rather significant margin. “And if he tries pushing you out, show him how girls hit.”

“Really?” Ariel asked.

“Carefully, I expect?” Ginny asked. “I’m pretty sure we could accidentally kill someone if we weren’t.”

Molly nodded. “Yes, carefully. We don’t want to actually hurt someone.” She then frowned to herself- had she just told her daughters to hurt someone? Whyever would she do that? Perhaps she was in too much shock. She’d have to see if she could sneak off to Fortescue’s while Ariel was picking her robes; the family vault laid untouched, but Ariel and Ginny had each poured a double handful of galleons from their vault into the bag she’d brought. She almost routinely accepted small change assistance from Bill and Charlie, so she couldn’t exactly complain about their larger contribution.

Ariel, meanwhile, wasn’t interested in letting her contemplate her deeds in peace, but seemed to be of the same opinion. “Good,” she nodded, before she pulled the door open and led her sister and mother into the shop.

Molly almost immediately recognized Mr. Ghirahim Goyle. It wasn’t exactly hard, after all- the man still wore the nametags from his school days, and she was fairly sure- from personal experience- that it was because Lucius hadn’t been around to tell him to stop wearing the things after graduation.

Ghirahim looked in her direction. Specifically, in her daughters’ directions. “What- I thought I told you to wait outside!”

“And I told you, this is a public store,” Madam Makin reminded him calmly, while working on his son’s Hogwarts robes.

He ignored her completely, drawing his wand. “You’re not worthy of my presence!” he told the girls. “Now go!”

“I’mma go with no,” Ariel smiled sweetly at him.

Molly noticed Mad-Eye Moody straighten up to peer over a nearby shelf at them, then head for the fireplace with the distinctive clunk of his wooden leg.

Molly put her hand in her pocket, with her wand. She was just as sure as Moody that the man was going to start something, and could only hope she would be fast enough to protect her daughters.

He went off faster than she expected- and not with the spell she expected. “Crucio!” There was a flash of light, then his son collapsed in agony; she wasn’t fast enough to protect her daughters.

Ginny blinked. “Huh, that’s new.”

Ariel grinned. “Punishing your own son for nothing at all?” she asked.

Molly noticed the faint green tinge coming from the fireplace, moments before Moody spoke.

“Backup.”

He tried again. “Crucio!”

This time, Molly had her wand out- and concentrated on following the spell with her eyes, rather than blocking it.

Ariel didn’t even try to dodge it. The spell bolt bounced right off her forehead and rebounded back at its attacker, who let out a brief shriek of agony before he cancelled the spell.

“I’ll get you for that,” Ghirahim snarled, then took aim. Then his eyes tracked up, to Molly- and his aim shifted as well.

Ginny glanced up at her, then fumbled for something. Molly selected and cast her shield spell with a silent incantation, and braced herself to dodge the spell anyways. Fortunately, she had practiced it well enough with the Order of the Phoenix that, for as much as her reflexes weren’t enough to protect her children- something she was determined to work on, whether spells bounced off of them or not- she knew they would be enough to protect her.

Then, he started his incantation. “Cruc-!”

He cut off when, mid-incantation, a galleon- thrown by Ginny- had struck him in the belly with the crack of a very loud whip. He folded around the coin, which had struck him flat-side first, and started to fall.

He didn’t have the chance to finish. Ariel’s coin bounced off his forehead next, not thrown nearly as quickly; it struck edge first, though, and proceeded to hit the ceiling before it fell back to the floor.

“Stupefy!”

Then there were the four separate bolts of red light from the direction of the fireplace, that all hit the center of his chest simultaneously. She looked- there was Moody, and three more aurors. As she watched, the fire roared green again, and Amelia Bones stepped out of it herself. “So what’s going on in here?” she asked, irritated.

“Mr. Goyle,” Moody answered her immediately. “Used the Cruciatus Curse twice, attempted a third time.”

Amelia rolled her eyes. “Of course he did. What happened to him?”

“The girls threw coins, then we hit him with stunners,” Moody mused.

Madam Malkin’s assistant looked up from where she was checking Mr. Goyle’s pulse. “Well, he survived… for how long, though, remains to be seen.” She gestured at the blood spot forming on his robes, right where Ginny’s coin had struck him. The coin had fallen away.

Amelia stepped around the rack, then facepalmed. “Oh, merlin. Take him away.” She paused, briefly. “To St. Mungo’s, first, then to the Ministry, pending trial. And somebody tell his wife she needs to take over her son’s shopping trip.”

“Nice shot,” Ginny finally told Ariel.

Ariel scowled. “I missed. You had a nice shot, though.”

Ginny flinched. “I missed too.”

“Oh, merlin,” Molly groaned.

“What were you aiming for?” Amelia asked.

Ariel shrugged. “His spell bounced off of us, but he was aiming at Mom for the third one- and I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t have bounced off of her.” She then scowled. “It still hit harder than I intended, though. Probably a good thing I didn’t hit his mouth.”

Ginny giggled nervously. “Y-Yeah. I didn’t even know a coin could make that noise. I’d say it’s a good thing I didn’t hit his groin.” She looked at where the aurors were levitating the unconscious Goyle in preparation for apparition. “I… I didn’t kill him, did I?”

Moody let out a snort, not joining the party apparating Goyle away. “Not if he then survived four stunners for more than a second,” he informed her. “Even if he dies on the way to St. Mungo’s, it won’t have been you that killed him.”

“Oh, good. I was worried about that.”

“Perhaps you two should practice your throws,” Amelia sighed. Then she glanced at Goyle, just in time for him to vanish with the thunder of disapparation. “Er, with ping-pong balls, specifically, so you don’t do any accidental damage.”

“Practice their throws?” Molly asked.

Amelia shrugged. “Well, say one wants to toss a bottle of ink to the other. You wouldn’t want it to sail over her head, out of her reach, and smash open on someone else’s head, would you?”

“... True.”

“Scary,” Ginny muttered.

“No, we’re scary,” Ariel corrected.

Ginny looked at her. “So is the idea of hurting people by accident.”

“Yes, yes it is,” Ariel sobered instantly.

At that moment, Mrs. Goyle appeared in the suddenly green fireplace, and stepped out of it. “Has my husband been starting fights again?” she asked immediately.

Amelia looked at her. “Wait, you are Mrs. Goyle?”

She nodded. “It was an arranged marriage, I didn’t have a choice. He’s also kept me- rather forcibly, I might add- out of my son’s life.”

She sighed. “Oh boy. Do you think you can handle his Hogwarts shopping, or…?”

She shrugged. “He let me out of the house once a month or so,” she answered. “A day of shopping shouldn’t be too hard.” She jiggled the rather sizable bag of gold she’d brought, grinning mischievously. “I’ve gotta do a bit of shopping myself, after all.”

“Oh boy.”

“Alright, that’s you done,” Madam Malkin informed the Goyles, wrapping up the boy’s new robes. “Should be able to get on with the shopping, eh?” She smiled up at them.

Mrs. Goyle seemed all too eager to pay for the robes and depart the shop. Everyone else waited quietly while she did- save only for Moody, who went back to the shelf he had been browsing before.

Madam Malkin waited for the door to land closed behind a very confused Goyle Jr. and a thoroughly overexcited Mrs. Goyle before she broke the silence. “I’m still amazed there was no collateral damage,” she commented.

“Yeah,” Ariel mused. “He even managed to wait until you were done sizing his son’s robes before he tortured him.”

“You know he was trying to torture your sister, right?”

She shrugged. “Yes. And when he tortured himself, he was trying to do it to me.”

“... Er, you are sisters, right?”

They spoke together. “Yep!” They put their arms around each other’s shoulders, in a side-on hug. “Twin sisters!”

“... Huh. I could’ve sworn… Whatever.”

“We had only one daughter,” Molly informed her. “Until a week and a half or so ago, when Ginny’s twin, Ariel, appeared out of nowhere. She didn’t have any clothes- but fortunately, she’s the same size as Ginny… and unfortunately, the two of them don’t have much clothes, so here we are.”

“With enough money to be throwing it around as a weapon, I guess,” Madam Malkin shrugged.

Molly winced. “... We also just found out Ariel is rich.”

“Inheritance from a distant ancestor?” Amelia guessed.

She nodded slowly. “Yeah.”

Madam Malkin looked between the two girls, then looked up at Molly. “How do you tell which is which?”

Molly smiled. “Ariel’s eyes are blue,” she answered simply. “She also has a separate personality.”

“Yeah, we’re not like Fred and George,” Ariel giggled. “We don’t finish each other’s sentences.”

“And that’s quite the bond between the two,” Amelia observed. Then she smiled. “Makes sense, considering the magical relationship between the two.”

“Oh?” Molly asked, while Ariel split off from Ginny for Madam Malkin to fit her for her new robes.

She nodded. “Magically speaking, Ariel is Ginny’s daughter.”

Ginny’s head snapped around to look at her. “She’s my what!?”

Author's Note

Okay, I'll have to admit, Ginny's exclamation at the end there has been on my mind ever since I first decided that they should share a mother-daughter relationship (which was when I decided what effect Ginny's bonding with the only mother among the princesses would have- and therefore that Ariel would appear at all)...

Patreon, Discord.

Chapter 16: Family

Amelia raised an eyebrow slightly when Lucius and Narcissa Malfoy didn’t come to her office alone the following morning. Instead, they brought with them a pretty little girl with twin royal blue stripes- that matched her robes- splitting her gleaming silver hair evenly into thirds.

It took her almost a full second to recall the image she’d seen on the document the day before, and link a name to the girl.

This was Silversong- Princess Silversong, with that long list of qualifications.

… Silversong looked mildly disinterested, like she would rather be elsewhere.

“You asked to meet us?” Lucius began.

“Ah, yes, I did,” she answered, and surreptitiously took a deep breath, bracing herself for the inevitable arguments… or political maneuverings. “About your children, actually.”

“Children?” Narcissa asked, an eyebrow raised.

She nodded. “Yes, both of them.”

She blinked. “Oh. Um, Silversong isn’t ours… her parents passed away, and we took her in.”

Lucius tilted his head. “Speaking of which, I don’t think her parents ever registered her with the Records Department, and I haven’t checked on that yet. Is that what you were asking about?”

“Funny thing about that,” Amelia smiled. “She is registered with the Records Department… as your daughter.”

“Okay,” Lucius muttered, scowling.

Silversong, meanwhile, sat in a nearby chair and started examining her fingernails, looking entirely disinterested.

“At the same time,” she continued, “Draco is marked as ‘indisposed’.”

“Draco?” Silversong asked, looking up. “Who’s that?”

She couldn’t help but notice the flash of surprise going across Narcissa’s face.

“He’s our son,” Narcissa explained. “Your new brother. He’s been… I’m not exactly sure where, actually. Something about the Americas, I think.”

Lucius looked back at Amelia. “So, why is that…?”

“The thing is, you two are listed as both Draco’s and Silversong’s parents, and they as your children… but Draco is not Silversong’s brother, and neither is she his sister.”

“Makes sense,” Silver mused. “With the whole foster parents thing.” She shrugged. “Good to know that it’s updated, should simplify things later on.”

Amelia studied Silver’s face, but found no telltales. “... That discrepancy in the records usually means someone was trans, and turned themselves into a girl by some means or another,” she informed Silversong.

Silver shook her head. “Nope, I’ve always been a girl.”

She found it interesting how Lucius and Narcissa Malfoy, some of the finest nobles of the land, were easier to read than their daughter. There was only one person she knew that was harder to read than the Malfoys- and Silversong was giving Dumbledore a run for his money.

“And the records would seem to agree,” Amelia nodded to Silversong. “After all, you’ve got nearly eighty years of education and experience that Draco never did.”

Silver scratched the side of her head with her finger. “I knew it’d come up sometime.”

“Oh?”

“Well, after that age reversal spell went bonkers and took me back in time too…” She shrugged. “I had to make something up to tell my great-grandparents.”

“Grandparents?” Narcissa asked, looking genuinely surprised.

She nodded. “Don’t tell anyone, but Draco was my grandfather. And I was a grandmother myself, before that spell failed so spectacularly.”

“You… were a grandmother.”

She shrugged. “I can only assume the timeline has been rewritten,” she answered. “Either that, or I’ve dumped myself into an alternate universe. In my timeline, Harry Potter grew old with Pansy Parkinson and had six kids- one of which was my mom, actually. But I’ve seen the newspapers, and a dead man can’t have kids.” She rubbed her chin. “I wonder what the difference was…?”

“And Draco being ‘indisposed’?” Amelia asked. “Usually happens a few months before they’re marked ‘deceased’, in transgender cases.”

She shrugged. “No idea.”

“Why, then, would a time travel spell have registered you- and three others- with the Department of Records?”

She blinked. “Three others? Huh. No idea… but I came alone. I was the only one in the entire mansion when I cast that spell. Even my husband- a Weasley, they saved the world in my timeline- was away for the weekend.”

Amelia studied the girl’s face for a second, but it told her exactly what the girl wanted it too. “Alright. How about this: Do you know why the Records Department has you listed as Princess Silversong?”

“Princess?” Narcissa asked, surprised.

Silver, meanwhile, scowled. “Must’ve been my return attempt,” she mused. “About the first thing I did when I realized what had happened was to try and get back, but the blasted spell didn’t seem to do anything but consume my wand.”

Amelia winced. Only the most powerful spells could consume the wand used to cast them- and the weakest one of them was the reason time turners were so expensive and hard to come by. “So you then went to Gringotts and inherited a vault?”

“You what?” Lucius asked Silversong.

Silver just shrugged. “Yup. Same one I inherited in my youth- or, first youth, I suppose. None of my parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, and so on knew about it, so I knew it would be there- and the only question was if the goblins would give it to me.”

She nodded slowly. “Alright. So, with eighty-odd years of experience, why are you going to Hogwarts?”

She shrugged. “You’ll notice Hogwarts isn’t on that list,” she answered simply. “That’s because, in my timeline, Voldemort razed it before I was born. After he died, it was then transformed into a memorial for those that had died in the war.” She completely ignored all three adults’ gasps at the name, and shrugged. “As a result, I was deprived of a chance to attend the finest wizarding school in Britain. Even CSGU- the Combined Systems General University they built next door- couldn’t compare to the legacy Hogwarts left behind.”

“Combined Systems?”

“Yeah. It was one of the finest boarding schools in the world, to the muggles- but the magic curriculum was terrible, so I had my earlier school years at more local schools with better magic curriculums, then only went to CSGU for my postgraduate studies.”

“... To the muggles.”

“Yeah. It was a bit of a surprise when I found out the Statute of Secrecy is still in effect- in my world, it collapsed when the war ended in nineteen eighty five.”

“Eighty five?”

She nodded. “Woulda taken a few more years- and Voldemort would have won- had the muggles not figured out where he lived. Turned out they had weapons capable of decimating anything they pointed them at, magical or not.”

“... Okay then. How did you get an infinity power rating?”

“Infinity?” Lucius asked, alarmed.

Silversong just scowled. “Huh. Must’ve exceeded the capacity of the self-updating paperwork spells; nothing is truly infinite.”

“Okay,” Amelia blinked. “I believe that answers all of my questions. Did you have any…?” She looked between the Malfoys.

Silence held for a few seconds, before Lucius spoke plainly. “No, I don’t think so,” he stated. “I believe they’ve all been answered.”

“Meanwhile,” Narcissa said, looking towards Silversong. “You’ve got a lot of explaining to do when we get home, young lady.”

“Alright then,” Amelia smiled. “I think we can add one more thing to your already extensive list of qualifications, Silversong.”

Silver looked up. “Mm?”

She smiled. “The perfect poker face. Time or dimensional travel- no matter the source- is always permanently recorded on your files, labelling you as a time traveler or the like, and your file shows nothing of the sort. Had I not known that, you probably would have fooled the head of the DMLE.”

Silver flinched. “... Sorry.”

Amelia didn’t drop the smile. “No, don’t worry about it, Princess. I’m sure the reality of it is even stranger than that, right?”

Silver raised an eyebrow, and nodded. “Did you know the Malfoys are descended from Rowena Ravenclaw? I know I didn’t.”

“... Much stranger,” Amelia nodded. “Unless you’ve got something else to say, I think we’re done here.” She hoped to be in better standing with the young princess before their next conversation came about.

Narcissa hardly waited until they were walking away from the closed door of Amelia’s office before she looked at Silversong. “Where did all that come from?”

Silver answered immediately. “I made it up,” she answered.

“So the part about Rowena Ravenclaw…?”

“Oh, no, that was real. I inherited her vault yesterday. And her estate…” She rubbed her chin with a finger. “I haven’t yet looked at either, of course.”

“How about the last little bit… Princess?” Lucius asked.

Silver winced. “That was a surprise,” she answered. “And I’d rather people didn’t know about it. Can’t exactly live a normal childhood- even for a Malfoy- with that much power hanging over my head, can I?”

Amelia sighed as she approached the front door of the Granger home. The Dursley home- in which the Potters lived, one past and one present- had been empty… and now, she was fairly sure she wanted to talk to both parents and children, after Ginny, Ariel, and Silversong had been so enlightening.

… Nevermind that about the only thing she’d learned from Silversong was that the girl didn’t trust her. She needed to build some rapport with the others, and perhaps gain some insight or another that would help her build rapport with Silversong.

She raised her hand, and knocked on the door.

There was silence for a few seconds, before Mrs. Granger answered. “Who is it?” she asked, even as she opened the door.

She smiled, and waved; she was wearing muggle clothing. “Hello, Mrs. Granger, I’m Amelia Bones, the Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement.”

The woman seemed instantly uneasy. “So, the magic police?”

She tilted her head. “... Kinda, I suppose. But I’m not here for enforcement business, just wanted to clear a few things up. You see, a week and a half ago, a powerful magic surge blinded the spells we use to track illegal magic use for a whole day- and your daughter seems to have been caught up in it.” She held up a calming hand. “No, nobody is in trouble, we’re fairly certain it wasn’t any of their fault, just something that happened to them, or something.”

“So…”

She shrugged. “I just looked over the records in the Records Department, then I wanted to ask a few questions about what happened, and make sure you’re aware of some of the more magical changes it has had.”

“... Alright then.” She pulled the door open- and as she did so, turned her head. “Hermione!”

Amelia blinked, and very nearly stared into the house. It was nice and pristine- except for little spots of heavy damage, as if someone had thrown a few blasting spells around.

The reason for the damage showed itself very quickly. An eleven-year-old girl, wearing her Hogwarts uniform all except for the robe, darted to the door out of the kitchen, stopping in the doorway, and catching herself on the door jam as she leaned out. “Hmm?” Her ‘lean’ had too much energy in it, though, as a chunk of door jam tore free in her hand, and she crashed to the floor. “Oof,” she grumbled, before tossing the chunk of wood aside and rising to her feet. “Sorry.” She glanced sheepishly at the new damage.

Mrs. Granger flinched, and gestured to Amelia. “This is Amelia Bones,” she introduced. “Head of the… something related to magic law enforcement.”

“The Department of Magical Law Enforcement,” Amelia nodded.

“Yeah, that. Anyways, she has a few questions for us. Let’s try not to break her, okay?”

Hermione flinched, a flash of worry crossing her face as her hands curled nervously. “... Sorry.”

Mrs. Granger turned back to Amelia. “Anyways, come on in. I’m sure we can discuss this in the sitting room?”

“Absolutely. Lead the way.” She then followed Mrs. Granger into the sitting room, into which Hermione walked much more sedately.

“So,” Mrs. Granger began, once they were seated- Hermione on her own armchair by the fireplace, Amelia noticed. She took a deep breath. “You can call me Emma; Dan is at the practice right now. You wanted to talk to us?”

“The practice?” Amelia asked, tilting her head.

“We’re dentists,” Emma answered.

She nodded. “Ahh, makes sense. Anyways, I suppose I should start at the top then, hmm? Well, when that magic surge happened… According to the self-updating paperwork, your daughter now has a power rating of infinity.”

“Doesn’t surprise me,” Emma mused. “I don’t think she’s had any difficulty going through anything yet, have you?” She turned to Hermione.

Hermione winced. “... No, but I haven’t broken any books yet, either.” She took a deep breath. “And are you sure it’s infinite, and not just… I don’t know, an error in the spell?”

She shrugged. “That’s what we’re thinking it is, yes- but specifically, an error related to the level of your power exceeding what it can record.”

“... Okay then. I mean, it’s not like I didn’t see that coming, though, with…” She took a deep breath. “I mean, I could do magic even before Celestia gave me hers, so…”

“Celestia?” Amelia asked, eyebrows raised.

She rubbed the side of her head. “... Yeah. Imagine being so weak you could barely stand… then having a vision, in which Celestia gave me her magic… and suddenly I look like this, and can probably lift a building if I really wanted to.” She took a deep breath. “Made my healing magic that much more powerful, too- before that happened, I never would’ve been able to save Dad after that beam crushed his ribcage, let alone watch him leave for work five minutes later…”

“Healing magic?”

“Yeah. I… I think it was something I got instead of strength. I can heal anything with the lightest touch. Before, it was slow, and took a minute to mend things like broken bones… but after…” She shuddered. “It took hardly five seconds to heal him.”

“... Okay then. Do you know why Princess Celestia Solaris is listed as your magical guardian?”

“She was a princess?”

Emma looked at her too. “Magical guardian?”

Amelia elected to answer Emma’s question first. “Yes… the Magical Guardian, the person we turn to to represent minors in matters of wizarding law, as different from the normal ‘parent or guardian’ for muggle law. By wizarding law, the Magical Guardian has to be magical themselves- so for purebloods, that’s their parents; for half-bloods, it’s the magical parent; and for muggleborn… it’s often Dumbledore for Hogwarts students, or otherwise the person that introduced them to the magical world.”

Hermione rubbed her chin. “How would you turn to Celestia, though? She died. Unless there’s another Celestia… And she never told me her last name, either.”

“... Strange,” Amelia scowled. Then she shook her head. “Anyways. I’m sure you’re already aware of the estate you inherited?”

“The what?” Emma asked.

“Yeah,” Hermione nodded. “The goblins told me about it. The McKinnons, it was… Apparently, I’m their closest magical relative. And apparently, they were rich. Haven’t visited the house, yet- though come to think of it, the goblin did give me an address.” She looked up at Emma. “Maybe we could look at it sometime?”

Emma sighed, shaking her head softly. “I knew from the beginning that you would go far,” she chuckled. “Never expected it to be this far, nor so fast. But sure- how about tomorrow, when the practice is closed?”

“Okay,” Hermione nodded.

Amelia smiled. “You know, I kinda hate to burst the bubble here, but she’s already well past the McKinnons,” she mused.

Hermione looked at her. “I am?”

She nodded. “Yes. Whatever that magical event was… it made you into a princess.”

“How does that differ from being a girl?”

She blinked. “Uh… Royalty. Specifically, magically speaking, you- Princess Hermione- are a member of the Wizarding Royalty… which hasn’t existed for nearly five hundred years. Meaning, you’ve got a senior seat in our highest ruling body waiting for you if you just ask.” She took a deep breath. “I would recommend against asking until you’re sure you’re ready for it, though.”

“So if she’s secretly a member of your highest ruling body…?”

She nodded. “Wizarding law technically doesn’t apply to her, yes. Should make the difficulty in reaching a dead Princess Celestia if something happens rather moot, but it does mean she’ll need to watch out for herself. The moment the rest of the wizarding world finds out about it- which I’ve taken steps to delay, but we can’t hide it forever- there will be people that want her life or her power.”

“What about the others?” Hermione asked. “Hailey, Silversong, Ariel, and Ginny? They… had similar visions, though with different…” She trailed off. “Are they princesses too?”

“You’ve already met them?” Amelia asked, surprised.

She nodded. “We met in Diagon Alley a couple days ago.”

“... Ahh. And yes, they would be…” She took a deep breath. “Speaking of which, a couple days ago, there was a… scene in Diagon Alley, where one of the Unforgivable Curses literally bounced off of both Ariel and Ginny. I don’t know if the same will carry over to you, but…”

She took a deep breath. “So, I’m a princess with limitless power and some kind of invisible shield?”

“... I guess, yes.”

“But nobody knows about that?”

“Yes, nobody but myself, your mother, that one records clerk, and possibly the other four.”

“Then I’d like it to stay that way,” she muttered, looking up. “Where nobody knows about it. I… I don’t want that much power.”

Amelia smiled. “No worries. And…” She glanced around the room; there wasn’t much damage. “You don’t happen to like reading, do you?”

“I do…?” Hermione asked, confused.

“Well, there’s a little charm they teach in the first year,” Amelia informed her. “If I remember right, it’s in the Standard Book of Spells, Grade One.” She drew her wand, pointed it at the nearest broken object. “Reparo.” The rocking chair practically sprang back into one piece, and she looked back at Hermione. “It’s pretty hard to mess it up badly enough to have any really negative effects, and ought to be convenient while you get used to your strength.”

She blinked. “But wouldn’t the Decree for the Restriction of Underage Wizardry…?” She trailed off. “I read about it this morning.”

Amelia smiled. “Oh, that. Except while people don’t know you’re a princess, the magic will know- and the Trace will automatically ignore anything you do, just like it does for adults. Do try to stay within the Statute of Secrecy, though?”

“... You mean I could cast magic all day long, and nobody would be any the wiser?”

She nodded. “As long as it isn’t noticed by a muggle that doesn’t already know about magic,” she answered. “As a Princess, you wouldn’t get in trouble for it… but then the entire Department of Magical Law Enforcement would know, and I can name at least a couple rats in there off the top of my head- you’d probably make the news.”

“... So…”

“So your parents are fine, but anyone else probably isn’t.”

“... Okay then.”

Author's Note

I honestly have no idea where Silver's fabrication came from. And apparently, nearly-hundred-year-old Dumbledore could take lessons in unreadability from an eleven-year-old...

Patreon, Discord.

And an inconsistency I noticed, but am not all that worried about fixing: Hermione already knows Celestia was a Princess, at least peripherally. She got the name of the land Celestia was from off of a 'Best Princess' award before her vision ended, back in Chap. 3. Perhaps the Princess part didn't sink in... Or something.

Also, a note to my Bronze+ patrons, pertaining to a little hint that appeared on my Discord a couple days ago: Yes, there are a few chapters waiting for me to publish them on Patreon. No, I haven't published them yet. Yes, they cleared my editors a couple days ago. Yes, I will do my best to get them live today... later today, I'm much too tired now. Just like the last few days, actually- living in my parents' home is draining.

And yes everyone else, I've already pre-loaded them on FimFiction, so it'll only take a couple button presses (and fixed "TODO: write better A/N" notes) to publish them on schedule on here in a month or so.

Chapter 17: Occlumency

Petunia Dursley knew, even before she opened the door, that the woman on her doorstep was a witch. She had looked through the peephole- and while wizardkind did understand what ‘muggle clothing’ was supposed to look like, they didn’t really understand what normal muggles wore… and certainly didn’t act like muggles, either.

This woman was doing far better than most in the clothing and behavior department… though the tip of her wand was visible, sticking out of her pocket.

“Good afternoon,” she greeted the woman. “Are you also here for pictures of Harry’s glasses?”

The woman blinked at the evidently unexpected question. “Uh, no, actually. Have a lot of people been coming for that…?”

She nodded. “Journalists all up and down the street, yes. One of them was even wearing robes!”

The woman blinked again. “Really? Who was it?”

She shrugged. “No idea, they all got turned away anyways. Why ask?”

“Ahh. And that would be because I’m Amelia Bones, the Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement.”

“Law enforcement? What brings you out here?”

“About that. A couple weeks ago, a powerful magic surge blinded the spells we use to track illegal magic use. I came because I have reason to believe that Harry- and Hailey- may have been involved in it.”

Petunia stiffened at Hailey’s name. She and Vernon had been spending a lot of effort to keep it from the various journalists that Hailey lived in their house at all. “Involved how?”

“Like, affected by it. Nobody is in trouble, I’m just trying to figure out how it affected everyone… and make sure she- and you, of course- are aware of the changes our self-updating paperwork was able to detect.”

“... You are aware that Harry died, right?”

Amelia nodded. “Yes- that’s one of the things the paperwork noticed, though there were a few peculiarities about the way it noticed it, that I wanted to discuss with you.”

Petunia sighed. “Come in, then. The porch is no place to talk about magic, in these parts.” She pulled the door open, and gestured Amelia in- and into the sitting room.

“Agreed, and thank you,” Amelia bowed, entering and following Petunia into the sitting room.

On her way over, Petunia stopped by the base of the stairs, calling up. “Hailey!” She didn’t wait for a response.

“So then,” Petunia began, as she and Amelia sat down. “Are you aware your wand is sticking out of your pocket?”

Amelia winced, glancing down at it. “Yes, actually. These pockets really aren’t deep enough for it- I also constantly worry I’ll break it when I sit down.”

“So wear a jacket,” Hailey suggested, walking into the room. As she had been doing every day since she’d gotten them, she was wearing her Hogwarts uniform, all except for the robe and hat.

Amelia looked up. “A jacket?”

“Yeah,” Hailey answered, pausing only a few steps into the room. “Do wizards not have those?”

“... No,” Amelia answered slowly. “They’re something muggles use to stay warm, right?”

Hailey shrugged. “Yeah. A lot of them have inside pockets.” She then walked briskly forwards and sat smoothly on the couch, facing the two women. “So, you called?”

Petunia looked at Amelia.

“Ahh, yes,” Amelia nodded. “I’m Amelia Bones, head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement.”

Hailey raised an eyebrow. “Law enforcement? What brings you here?”

Amelia smiled. “A week and a half ago-!”

“I heard that part,” Hailey interrupted. “Open window. And the part about Harry. So…”

She blinked. “Okay then. First of all, was there some kind of vision, related to receiving power from someone?”

Petunia stiffened. That almost perfectly matched what Hailey had described to her so long ago.

Hailey, however, raised an eyebrow, face impassive. “Before I answer that, can you prove who you are?”

Petunia must have forgotten to tell Hailey that wizards weren’t sneaky like that.

Amelia seemed confused. “Prove…. who I am?”

Hailey nodded. “Yes. Because just anyone can walk in that door and say ‘yes I’m Amelia Bones from the DMLE at the Ministry of Magic and yes Fudge is the prime minister and yes I’ve been in office for ten years and yes stuff blows up from time to time now spill your deepest secrets’, but how can I be sure you’re not that ‘just anyone’, that you actually are who you say you are?”

Amelia’s hand twitched towards her wand, but stopped. “You don’t… know the wand verification method, do you?”

Hailey shook her head. “It’d be illegal for me to cast it anyways.”

Amelia winced. “Then…” She trailed off, thinking.

Petunia looked at Hailey. “Why…?” She began, trailing off at Hailey’s look.

“If some stranger were to walk up to the front door and say ‘hey I’m what’s-his-face the head of the Ministry of Defense’, and not present any badge or papers, would you believe him?”

She blinked. “Absolutely not.”

“That’s essentially what she’s done so far.”

“So you’re asking for her badge?”

Hailey shrugged. “In a manner of speaking. Wizards don’t carry badges- and even if they did, magic could duplicate them very easily.”

“Meaning,” Amelia nodded, “all verification must be magical in nature, or through a trusted third party.” She sighed. “Which means…. what, Tom, at the Leaky Cauldron?”

Hailey simply shook her head.

“The goblins at Gringotts?”

“They do that?”

She nodded. “Once upon a time, they were the only way to truly, officially verify the identity of a witch or wizard. They still do that, from time to time.”

Hailey nodded. “Particularly when wand verification is not available, I imagine,” she chuckled. “And yeah, that’d work.”

Petunia looked between the two witches, and made a decision. “So,” she began. “Shall I get the car keys?”

Amelia was a little worried about Hailey, as she rode to the Leaky Cauldron in the back seat of Mrs. Dursley’s car. The girl definitely had trust issues; when she’d mentioned Tom, Hailey had only shaken her head- but her body language, which had- aside from that point- only ever agreed with what she was saying, informed her that it wasn’t because he was unfamiliar, it was that she didn’t trust him… or like him at all.

At least she had been willing, unlike Silversong, to come out and tell her she didn’t trust her… and, in so doing, present a way by which she could earn at least a little trust. Hailey was clearly willing to defer to her… as soon as she knew she actually was the authority figure she claimed to be.

She was really curious how Hailey was going to react whenever she found out she was a Princess.

So far, Ariel and Ginny were both overly cheerful, largely careless personalities, still fully dependent on their parents. Silversong… was clearly a force of her own, though of what kind, she had no idea. Hermione evidently had a talent for magic- it was very rare indeed for someone to develop wandless magic before going to school!

And finally, Hailey was very much the most… mature of the bunch, somehow. Unlike the others, Amelia got the feeling that Hailey was actually fully ready for the revelation of her legal power.

She had told the Grangers and Weasleys that their Princesses had senior seats in the Wizengamot if they but asked… which was technically true. After all, their every word had the force of law, if they so desired- even on the wizards of the Wizengamot.

Everyone on the Wizengamot knew about that, and several Ministry employees, mostly in the law enforcement division- but most nobles, which included the Malfoys, were not aware.

And so far, Hailey seemed to be the one that was most ready to learn about the incredible power she wielded with every breath- and thus, probably the one she would tell about it. She’d leave it to the girl to tell the others; they had, judging from Hermione’s comment, already met and made at least tentative friends with each other.

On the other hand, Amelia had to admit, riding in a muggle car was a fairly novel experience. Not one she was very fond of- for one, Hailey had seemed so amused when she told her how to use the ‘seat belt’- but it beat apparition when speed wasn’t of the essence.

To be fair, though, it didn’t take much to beat apparition. And it was nice to be able to relax in the vehicle- she had judged that any further conversation about the records would need to wait until after Hailey had been satisfied as to her identity, and so rode quietly.

It didn’t last very long, of course. Before long, she helped Mrs. Dursley into the Leaky Cauldron- the physical contact rule was a pain- and Hailey followed behind them.

“It sure has been a while since I last set foot in here,” Petunia sighed, looking around the Leaky Cauldron.

Amelia nodded. “I can imagine. It was your sister, right?”

Petunia nodded, and sighed. “A shame she died.”

“Anyways,” Amelia continued, glancing at Hailey, who was eyeing the bar uneasily. “Shall we be on our way?”

“Lead the way,” Petunia smiled.

“Hailey?”

Petunia looked. It looked like a young girl had spoken, about Hailey’s age, wearing royal blue robes, her hair gleaming silver- except only two stripes, splitting it evenly into thirds.

Hailey looked too- and smiled. “Silversong,” she greeted. “Fancy seeing you here.”

“No, fancy seeing you here,” the girl- Silversong- answered. “After you told us you probably wouldn’t be here again this year?” She paused, very briefly. “Besides, it’s rare to see anyone walking down Diagon Alley with the Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement during work hours. And…” She looked up at Petunia. “Who might you be?”

“Petunia Dursley,” Hailey answered her promptly. “My… mom.”

Silver blinked at Hailey. “Mom…? Oh, right. Yeah.” She smiled and bowed to Petunia, hands held firmly at her sides. “Nice to meet you.”

Petunia recognized the reluctance to shake hands- Hailey had adopted something similar ever since that attacker had flown three blocks- and returned the bow instead. “Nice to meet you too,” she greeted.

“So,” Silver looked at Hailey. “What gives?”

Hailey shrugged. “Well, when high-ranking government officials that you don’t recognize randomly show up on your doorstep, name themselves, and ask you to spill secrets without offering proof of their identity, what do you do?”

“Mail them to the Crystal Empire,” Silver answered, so quickly it might have been instinctive.

Hailey blinked. “... Well, that would work, in a world where establishing credibility is a legal requirement. Too bad it’s not in Britain, I looked.”

Silver blinked. “That should be changed.”

Hailey nodded. “Agreed. Wizarding Britain sure could afford to take a few pages from Twilight’s book, couldn’t it?”

“Not if they want to keep their arms attached to their bodies,” Silver mused.

“You know what I mean.”

“I do, and I agree.”

“If they want to-?” Amelia began, cutting herself off.

“Twilight’s a librarian,” Hailey informed her, by way of an explanation, before turning back to Silver. “So what brings you to the Alley?”

Silver shrugged. “Mostly just picking up the next set of finished robes,” she answered. “Then doing a bit of shopping around. It’s a shame first-years aren’t allowed their own brooms, isn’t it?”

Hailey blinked. “Brooms? You… You don’t mean the classic flying broom, do you?”

Silver blinked as well. “You don’t…? Whatever. And yes, actually, I do- they’re real. I never did tell you about Quidditch, did I?”

“No, I think we were interrupted,” Hailey mused, rubbing her chin. “We’ll have to rectify that sometime. Anyways.” She looked up at Amelia. “Is it okay if she hears it too?”

Amelia blinked. “Ahh… Some of it probably, but the rest…” She shrugged.

“Okay then.” Hailey turned to Silver. “I’ll meet you on the train, then?”

Silver smiled. “Yup, meet you there!”

Hailey giggled, and hugged her- earning a startled squeak. “Bye then!”

Silver returned the hug, and when they separated, waved. “Yup, see you then too.” She ran off again.

Hailey watched her go, then turned back to Amelia and Petunia. “Okay, I’m satisfied.”

Amelia stared at her. “You’re… satisfied.”

Hailey shrugged. “Well yeah. I trust Silver, and she recognized you.”

“Even though she’s got the perfect poker face?” Amelia asked.

“She does? Huh. I wonder why she distrusts you…?” She tilted her head curiously at Amelia.

Amelia shrugged. “Probably because she lives among the nobles- and rule number one in the nobility is to distrust everyone.” She sighed. “She’s just got that one down pat.”

As she followed Petunia Dursley back to her car, Amelia considered the conversation she had just witnessed between the two Princesses. They both obviously knew more about the strange world Hermione had said Celestia was from- and had agreed on a change to wizarding law. Neither of the two could be truly aware of their legal powers, so their agreement didn’t have the force of law.

That didn’t mean it wasn’t prudent to do it anyways, of course. Not that it wasn’t even a good suggestion- Amelia was actually pushing such a law already, though gently. It was evidently a prime time to make it a priority- along with finding an alternative to the wand verification method as well.

The two witches were once again silent, save only for Hailey asking Amelia if she needed any help with her seat belt, until they were back in Petunia’s sitting room. Amelia entered first, and sat down once again; Hailey flopped herself down on the couch opposite, where she had sat when she’d first entered the room.

“So,” Hailey said simply. “To answer your question, no.” She looked at Amelia.

Amelia blinked. “My question…?”

Petunia tried for a second to remember what Amelia’s question had been, but couldn’t. She only remembered that Hailey had asked Amelia to do the wizarding equivalent of showing a badge… and evidently, since she had done that, Hailey had decided to treat it as if it had taken as long as actually showing a badge would have.

And remembered the question.

Hailey only smiled.

Amelia stared at Hailey, wracking her brain as she tried to figure out what she had asked the girl before they spent nearly two hours going to Diagon Alley to have a brief chat with Silversong.

However, for as much as Hailey clearly remembered what it was, and had declined to remind her, all she remembered about it was that it was meant to be an icebreaker.

“Uh, okay,” she eventually muttered.

“So,” Hailey began again. “What’s this I hear about paperwork?”

“Right,” Amelia muttered. “The paperwork, then.” She took a deep breath, and looked up at Hailey. “Any idea how you got a power rating of infinity?”

“Inf-!?” Petunia gasped.

Hailey, on the other hand, scowled. “Well that can’t be right,” she muttered. “For one, nothing is infinite- and for two, if I was that powerful, I would have been successful in saving Harry.”

Which reminded her. “About that. Are you and Harry siblings, or…?”

She shrugged. “Who knows. I lived in an orphanage- no papers- before the Dursleys adopted me, and Harry lived with his parents.” She wrinkled her nose. “He wouldn’t let anyone forget about that. Nor about how he vanquished Voldemort- he kept trying to use his past to get extra privileges, or to get out of work.”

Amelia flinched. That didn’t sound like the Harry she knew- but then again, she had never met the boy, only heard stories… all told by Dumbledore, who Amelia knew was the sort to spread misinformation if he thought it would further the cause of the Light.

Thus, it was propaganda… versus Hailey’s word, which would be the first time she’d ever heard a genuine opinion of the boy.

Then, she noticed the complete lack of scar on Hailey’s forehead.

“Alright,” she accepted. “So… The paperwork is showing you and Harry as having the same parents, but no relationship between the two.” She nodded. “And yes, I checked their files, you’re both marked down as their children.”

Hailey scowled. “No idea. Maybe the doctor stole me away from them? Or somebody else did?”

She clasped her hands together. “The photo on your file showed a scar on your forehead to match Harry’s,” she informed them. “Do you know why?”

She winced. “Did the magic seriously take that photo during one of those times when Harry clubbed me unconscious and used my makeup kit to draw his scar on my forehead?”

Amelia winced as well. “It’s supposed to capture a natural-appearance photo with no makeup or anything… it must’ve glitched.”

“Just like with the power rating thing.”

She nodded. “Yeah, I guess. So… it said you’re a metamorph magus. What do you say to that?”

“What is a metawhatever?”

“That’s… a witch or wizard that can change certain aspects of their own appearance at will.”

She frowned, and shook her head. “I’mma have to say no, then.”

“... And it said you’re a Princess?”

She raised an eyebrow. “Are you sure you have the right person?”

“Very sure.”

“Because that’s the first I’ve heard of it.”

“Not surprised,” she answered. “That title makes you part of the Wizarding Royal Family- which hasn’t existed for five hundred years.”

Hailey folded her arms, raising an eyebrow. “And now you’re about to tell me that my every word has the force of law, aren’t you?”

Amelia watched Hailey calmly for a second, trying to judge the girl’s reaction, before she spoke. And when she spoke, whereas Hailey had spoken jokingly, she spoke seriously.

“Yes, I am.”

Hailey raised one eyebrow. “You’re serious.”

She nodded. “I’m serious.”

Hailey put her head in her hands. “And here I thought we were rid of the popular figures,” she groaned.

“Well,” Amelia began. “I have taken steps to keep it quiet. It won’t last forever, but it should last long enough for you to get through Hogwarts… in theory.”

“Well good,” Hailey declared, straightening up again. “Because if anyone comes to ask me for orders, the only order they’re going to get is to clear off and leave me alone. I didn’t ask for that power- and in any case, I’m not ready for it, either.” She looked up. “So who all knows?”

“For the ones that know what power a Princess possesses, you’ve got the entire Wizengamot and a few scattered Ministry workers…” She trailed off, watching Hailey for signs of confusion- and, finding none, assumed she had already at least heard about the Wizengamot. “And anyone that reads the full text of the laws in the Ministry of Magic, which is free for all to read.

“For the ones that know that you are a Princess, you’ve got everyone in this room, the other four, at least some of their parents, and the records clerk, who I swore to secrecy.

“For those who fall into both categories… You, me, and Mrs. Dursley here.” She gestured towards Petunia, who had maintained a stunned silence for much of the conversation.

Hailey raised an eyebrow. “The other four?”

She nodded. “Princesses Silversong, Hermione, Ginnerva, and Ariel.”

“And you haven’t told them?”

“Ah, no, I haven’t. You seemed… the most ready.”

She snorted. “That’d be Silversong, by a long shot, but whatever.”

She took a deep breath. “I was going to let you decide when to tell them, unless…?”

Hailey rolled her eyes. “Thanks, I guess.” She took a deep breath. “So, if my word is law… what happens if I, say, break the law?”

She shrugged. “Wizarding law actually doesn’t apply to you, technically speaking. The Trace will automatically ignore any magic you do, without any human intervention- though Statute of Secrecy violations are monitored by a less sophisticated piece of spellwork, so if you do magic in front of a muggle that wasn’t already aware, you’ll still be in the clear… but the world will know.”

“Meaning…”

“Meaning that your family, and those of the other four, are fine, but anyone else…” She shrugged.

It was ten minutes later, when she was walking back down the Dursley’s front walk to return to the Ministry, when Amelia suddenly stopped walking, and facepalmed. “Oh, I’m so stupid,” she told herself.

Hailey had obviously trusted Silversong, who didn’t trust her. Then, she had straight-up told the girl not to trust her, by explaining why Silversong didn’t trust her! As such, it was quite likely Hailey had been acting for much of it, and made up anything she told her- and of course, the girl was easy to read… crisply easy to read. Her body language, expression, and so on, all said exactly what the girl wanted them to- meaning she was harder to read accurately than even Silversong.

As she continued on her way, she idly wondered how Dumbledore would react if she told him she’d met eleven-year-old girls that were harder to read than he was.

Petunia watched Amelia walk down the front walk, before she flicked the lock closed and turned to Hailey. “So… how did you do that?”

Hailey looked at her. “Do what?”

“You were so… Well, mature all of the sudden. And I think you single-handedly sold the Harry story, too.”

“Oh, that.” Hailey shrugged. “Well, when Queen Chrysalis gave me her power, I didn’t realize that her kind’s minds are intertwined with their magic, to a degree at the very least. As a result, once my magic had enough time to adjust to actually read it, it turns out she didn’t only give me her magic when that happened, but her memories and experiences as well.”

“And Queen Chrysalis… was just that good, I guess.”

Hailey shrugged again. “You could say that, or you could say she had about two thousand years of experience as the Queen of the Changelings- a race of shapeshifters whose only real strength is deception.”

Author's Note

So when Silversong decides she's going to start "bullshitting" to government officials, she gets called out basically immediately, since deception was never Silver's- or Draco's- strong point. When Hailey does, though... this happens.

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On that topic, what do you think Dumbledore's reaction is going to be?

Chapter 18: Estate

Emma Granger looked out the window as her husband brought the car to a stop.

At the… empty fields and foreboding forests, as far as the eye could see.

“Are you sure this is the spot?”

Dan, who was comparing the pin on the GPS with the scenery around them, shrugged. “I don’t know about you, but I’m not seeing anything here either.”

Hermione looked at them, then looked out the window. “Huh. I wonder if it’s like the Leaky Cauldron, because I can see it just fine. Maybe… oh, two hundred feet ahead, on the right. It doesn’t look like the gate was made for cars, though.”

Dan looked at her, put the GPS down, and put the car in park where they were; he had pulled off to the side of the road before he’d stopped. “Very well,” he stated. “Shall we wait for you, or…?”

“No, come with me, please,” Hermione answered him promptly- and, Emma noticed, nervously.

“Something worrying?” Emma asked, looking back at Hermione.

Hermoine pointed out the window, at something Emma couldn’t see. “The iron arch over the gate already says ‘Granger’ on it.” She lowered her arm. “Then, the McKinnons died over ten years ago, but it looks like someone’s been taking care of it.”

Dan nodded slowly. “In other words, someone’s here. Well, I don’t know how far we’ll be able to follow, but we’ll come with you as far as we can.” He looked out the windows. “You’re sure this is the spot?”

Hermione nodded. “Yep.”

He unbuckled his seatbelt. “Might as well get started then, eh?” He stepped out of the car.

Emma was next- and Hermione climbed out right after she did.

Finally, she looked up and down the road, then down at her daughter. “Alright, Hermione. Lead the way.”

Hermione took a deep breath, and led.

Before long, they were standing a couple hundred feet in front of the car, facing a large, open field.

Hermione looked up at them.

Emma placed her hand comfortingly on Hermione’s shoulder; Dan did the same for the other one.

“Lead the way,” he informed her.

“Alright.” Hermione took a deep breath, and stepped forward- then seemed to… shimmer in the air for a second. As she did so, she shuddered noticeably.

“Something wrong?” Emma asked- mere moments before the meadow in front of them shimmered as well, then seemed to split in two, making way for a massive, walled estate. True to Hermione’s earlier statement, the wrought iron archway above the gate proclaimed it to be the Grangers’ estate, rather than the McKinnons’.

“Weird, tickly-tingly feeling,” Hermione answered.

Dan looked around at the place. “Wow. It’s a nice place.” He stepped forwards to peer through the gate.

Then, at exactly the moment the gates inexplicably started opening themselves, Hermione let out a gasp.

“What is it?” Emma asked.

“I…” Hermione took a deep breath. “That… That was the wards. The… The magic protecting the place, has… Has recognized me as its new master.”

Emma hugged her gently. “Are you okay?”

Hermione stared into her eyes for a few seconds, before closing her eyes and taking a few deep, calming breaths. Finally, she opened her eyes, and spoke, far more coherently. “Yes, I think. I’m probably just overthinking it.” She looked up at the building. “No, make that definitely. These wards were designed to protect the master of the house, which is me, my spouse and descendants…” She smiled amusedly when Dan let out a small snort of laughter. “And any ‘authorized guests’, which would be how it sees you… from intruders. And since they don’t exactly form a physical barrier…” She shrugged. “Presumably, if we find such an intruder inside the building, we’re not completely defenseless.”

“Nevermind your impossible strength,” Emma reminded her.

Hermione blushed. “And that.”

Dan tilted his head. “So what happens when someone enters to knock on the front door?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. Presumably, they’re classified as ‘random visitors’ or the like until I make some kind of determination, or they do something that would clearly define them as ‘intruders’.”

Dan patted her on the shoulder. “Then we’ve got nothing to fear, don’t we?”

She smiled. “Only the moving pictures.”

“The… moving pictures,” Emma stated.

She nodded. “Yeah. Wizarding photographs move… and I’ve heard some of them can talk, too.”

“That’s got to be interesting,” Dan mused.

“Anyways,” Hermione said, starting suddenly towards the house. “We might as well look, find out who’s been tending to the lawn, eh?”

No sooner had she said that then, with the suddenness of a cannon blast and a crack like a whip, a small… creature, of some sort, appeared not three feet in front of Hermione.

Hermione screamed in fright, jumping back- and clear over Dan’s head in the process. By some miracle, she landed on her feet.

Emma looked at the creature that had appeared. It was humanoid… and seemed to be wearing a pillowcase with holes ripped in it for its head and arms.

The creature flinched.

Dan looked at it for a second, then turned to Hermione. “Are you okay?” he asked.

Hermione, eyes wide and breathing deeply, spoke haltingly. “What. Was. That!?”

Dan stepped aside, so she could see the creature again; as he did so, he also looked uneasily back at the creature.

“Archie is sorry!” the creature proclaimed fearfully, bowing deeply. “Archie did not mean to scare the Mistress! Archie is very, very sorry!”

Hermione stared at him for a couple of seconds, then spoke. “Who are you?” It came out as more of a demand than a question- but considering what had just happened, Emma really wasn’t surprised.

“Archie is the family servant,” he answered promptly, rising to look up at her. “Archie wanted to welcome the Mistress to her new Manor.”

“Family servant?” Dan asked. “I wasn’t aware we had one.”

He looked at Dan uneasily for a second, but Hermione spoke first.

“Wait a minute. You’re- You’re a house-elf, right?”

He turned right back to her, bowing again. “Yes, Archie is a house-elf. Archie is very sorry for scaring the Mistress!”

“My name is Hermione.” She took a deep breath. “So… Correct me if I’m wrong, but when I inherited the estate, I inherited the family… house-elf to go with it?”

He bowed a third time. “Yes, Mistress.”

She looked up at her parents. “So I guess we didn’t have one, but do now.” Then she looked back at Archie. “Why are you wearing a pillowcase?”

Archie blinked at her, momentarily confused. “Archie is wearing this because it is a house-elf’s garb,” he answered. “It is the mark of a house-elf.”

“Why not clothes?”

He teared up almost at once. “Does the Mistress not be wanting Archie?” he half-cried.

She blinked. “My name is Hermione. And what do you mean? I assume you’ve been taking care of the manor for the last ten years or so, right?”

He nodded vigorously. “Archie has maintained the manor alone for almost eleven years,” he informed her. “Does the Mistress find Archie’s work inadequate?”

She scowled. “My name is Hermione. And no, this lawn looks amazing.” She glanced around, as if to double-check, before looking back at him. “So… is there a reason you can’t wear clothes…?”

He shivered noticeably. “If- If the Mistress gives Ar-!”

“My name is Hermione,” she interrupted. “Please, stop calling me ‘the mistress’.”

He bowed. “Archie is very sorry, M-Mistress H-Herm-Mion-Ne!” He seemed to have a lot of trouble getting her name out, and stumbled over it quite a bit more than anything else.

Hermione rolled her eyes. “Whatever. You were saying?”

“If- If Mistress Hermi-!” He froze up for a second, looking absolutely terrified.

Hermione spoke flatly. “You know, I’m not afraid of pronouns either. So, what happens if I give you… what?”

He took a very deep breath. “If… If Mi- If y-you- gives Archie clothing… Archie will be- will be freed.” He averted his eyes sadly.

Hermione stared at him for a couple of seconds. “Well of course I want you to be free,” she told him. “You work for me because you want to, not because you have to, you hear? And if you don’t want to, don’t.”

He turned slowly to stare at her. “... Archie… does not understand?”

Hermione sighed, putting one hand to her forehead and shaking her head, before looking up at him again. “I’m not like other nobles,” she told him, almost pleadingly. “Any master- or mistress- worth their weight in gold must take proper care of their servants, such that the servants in question stay because they want to stay, rather than because they have to.” She stepped up to him, and crouched down to be on his level- even put a hand on his shoulder. “It’s not that I don’t want you- it’s that I want you to be free to stay.”

Archie just stared at her for several seconds.

“... Archie never knew such goodness was possible,” he finally muttered.

Hermione smiled. “Then Archie never met a muggle before, did he?”

He blinked, alarmed. “A muggle-! But the magic-!”

She chuckled. “Oh, I’m not talking about me, I’m talking about my parents. I’m a muggleborn.”

He stared at her, looked up at her parents, and then back at her. “... Archie never knew.”

Mr. Weasley parked the car on the side of the road, next to the massive, wrought iron gates blocking the path into the manor. “Is this it?”

Fred turned the muggle map around again. Unfortunately, the Gryffindor Manor was not on the Floo Network, and only had a muggle address. “Should be,” he muttered. It didn’t exactly help that the nearest point by which he’d been able to confirm their location on the map had been nearly six miles ago, according to the ‘oh-dammit-er’, as Mr. Weasley pronounced it (he had been forced to forbid the twins from talking about it), behind the steering wheel.

Ariel looked up at the archway over the gate. Forged into the arch was the name ‘Gryffindor’. “Looks like it,” she stated.

Molly popped the door open and stepped out. “Alright then.”

The rest of the family practically piled out after her, save only Mr. Weasley, who was a lot more sedate than the exodus behind him. It had been a four hour car ride, thanks mostly to the confusing muggle maps- and how they’d had to stop not once but three times to buy additional maps to cover roads they didn’t have on the maps they had already. It hadn’t exactly helped that they’d also had to ask for instructions twice- once when they set out, since they had no idea where it was, and the second time because they’d taken a wrong turn and been unable to figure out where they were.

Ariel ran right up to the gate while the others were still stretching their sore joints.

“Wait!” Mr. Weasley called towards her. “The wards-!”

Ariel stopped at the gate and looked back at him, as the gates behind her emitted a distinct clunk and started opening themselves. “The wards…? Oh, they won’t bother us.”

“What makes you say that?”

Ginny walked calmly across the property line to join Ariel at the gate, and shuddered slightly. “Because the wards have already recognized us as their new masters,” she informed him, awed.

“Mistresses,” George corrected.

Ariel rolled her eyes. “Masters, mistresses, whatever. C’mon, I wonder if there’s a ghoul in the attic?”

Molly looked around the grounds as she followed her daughters through the gate. “It’s well-kept,” she muttered. “There might be someone living here.”

Ariel looked back at her, then looked around. “True. Where’s the gardener?”

With a crack like a whip, a house-elf appeared about six feet in front of her, wearing a neat little suit and tie. “That would be Thiobald, Mistress,” he greeted, bowing deeply. “Thiobald is the Gryffindor Family House-Elf, at your service.”

Ginny simply stared.

Ariel blinked. “... So we inherited a house-elf with the mansion?”

Thiobald nodded silently.

“Oh.” Then she looked back at her mother. “You said you’ve always wanted a house-elf, right?”

Molly’s jaw articulated up and down, at a loss for words.

“Thiobald will gladly help out at the Burrow as well,” he smiled.

“But the clothes,” Ginny muttered.

Thiobald looked at her nervously. “Does the Mistress find Thiobald’s attire insufficient?”

She shook her head quickly. “No, no, it’s fine. But… isn’t a house-elf freed when you give them clothes…?”

“The gift of clothing only frees a house-elf that wants to be free,” Thiobald answered calmly. “Any house-elf can reject freedom when it is offered.”

“... Oh.”

“Wouldn’t that suit,” Fred began.

“Get messed up when you’re working?” George finished.

Thiobald nodded. “Thiobald doesn’t wear his suit for most of his duties,” he answered, “but Thiobald thought it appropriate to greet his new Mistresses.”

Author's Note

Why did Archie originally only flinch at Hermione's scream, then get suddenly fearful? Because he hadn't realized who his new master was just yet...

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Chapter 19: Silence

“Portus.”

Silversong knew that she shouldn’t have been making a portkey- let alone at a whisper in her bedroom in the dead of night. There were a few different laws in play- for example, the Restriction on Underage Wizardry… or the fact that it was an unauthorized portkey.

“Portus.”

Make that two unauthorized portkeys. Fortunately, since she was at the mansion, the Ministry would never realize she had done anything- and they never could tell when a portkey was created. She only had to keep them from realizing she had them, and they would never know.

She then scanned across her desk. It was littered with muggle maps, a couple wizarding maps, several pages of notes, three separate checklists (the first had been an experiment to see whether Twilight’s organizational method actually was more effective or not), a lamp, and her two portkeys.

Which were, of course, golden galleons.

She lifted the third checklist. “Okay. Portkeys, check. Maps, check. Muggle maps, check. Wand, check. Wearing everything but the robe…” She looked down at her clothes; she was wearing the polo shirt and skirt that had come with her favorite set of robes and, according to Hermione’s letter, she ‘passed’ as a muggle with it, so long as she left out the robe and didn’t add her Hogwarts hat. She returned to the checklist. “Check. Warmth spell…” She flicked her wand, checking on the spell she’d cast on herself earlier; it was going to be a chilly night, and she didn’t want to bother either Hermione or Hailey about how to get a cloak to pass as muggle clothing… or what muggles used to stay warm.

“Check. Watch…” She lifted one of the maps to check the time underneath it. “Check. Purse…” She lifted a muggle purse from next to her desk, and slung it across her body. She’d gotten it during a secret excursion into London the night before. “Check. IDs…” She flipped open the purse, and pulled a piece of enchanted plastic from the purse. “Check.” It had come from a wizarding joke shop, a ‘psychic card’- and while it was next to useless in the wizarding world, it would assume the appearance of any ID card she might need in the muggle world. Plenty of wizarding nobles carried them whenever they went into the muggle world.

She continued down her checklist. “Portkeys in the purse.” She moved the two golden galleons into her purse. The Malfoy Manor was warded against portkey penetration, so she was going to take the floo to the Leaky Cauldron and find some secluded corner there- or in Diagon Alley- to key out from. The return portkey would put her in a warded alleyway next to the Leaky Cauldron in Muggle London- the one that wizards (especially foreigners) used all the time when portkeying or apparating in and out. “Check. Maps in the purse…”

It took her almost ten full minutes to finish off that checklist, before she rose from her desk and stepped up to the door, taking a deep breath. She pressed her ear against the door, and closed her eyes, listening.

For some reason, she had noticed that ever since she had been transformed into a girl, her senses had been unusually acute. She could hear people talking from much further away, she could see much sharper- even her sense of smell was much stronger than it used to be.

As such, she listened carefully for the sounds of her parents.

Finally, she heard them.

Lucius was snoring. Narcissa was yawning, then it sounded like she was climbing into bed.

Dobby, meanwhile, was scrubbing dishes in the kitchen. She could hear him humming softly as he worked.

She gave a nod, slipped out of her bedroom, and moved slowly, carefully, downstairs. Her skirt moved a lot more without her robe to control it. It wasn’t enough to really make her worry, but it was enough to make her uncomfortable- just as uncomfortable, as a matter of fact, as she was when she’d worn a skirt for the first time.

She made it almost all the way downstairs before Dobby’s humming stopped. When she reached the bottom of the stairs, Dobby hurried out the kitchen door to meet her; as usual, he didn’t apparate during the night unless absolutely necessary. Dobby came running towards her- and when he opened his mouth to speak, her finger flashed silently to her lips.

He stopped, closed his mouth, and tilted his head.

“I’m going to check out the estate I inherited from Gringotts,” she informed Dobby, in a whisper. “I want to do it alone.”

Dobby blinked at her, then opened his mouth again- and whispered as well. “The Young Mistress will be safe, yes?”

She smiled, and nodded. “I’m invulnerable, remember?” She let out a small sigh. “Just to be safe, though, come get me if I’m not back by… oh, morning, I guess?”

He bowed his head. “Will the Young Mistress be needing anything, then?”

She shook her head. “No, I’m pretty sure I’ve already got everything I’m going to need.”

He bowed, and withdrew back to the kitchen.

She followed him in, and plucked a pinch of Floo Powder from the mantlepiece. “I’ll be back,” she muttered softly, took a deep breath, and threw it in.

The fire roared instantly green and tall enough for her, despite having been mere embers a moment before.

She stepped in, and spoke softly, but clearly. “Diagon Alley.”

Her journey through the Leaky Cauldron was fast. The fireplace was near the exit to London- and at that late hour, there was nobody in the pub to see her. She heard Tom bustling about in the kitchen, and approaching- but she made it out the door before he got there. She swept around the corner of the building, into the warded alleyway, checked both ways, and stuck one hand into her purse, laying fingers on both of her portkeys.

“Out.”

The first of the two activated on command, and she was gone.

Silver was very hungry- almost hungry enough to return early- by the time she jogged up to the massive gate to the… manor that used to be Rowena Ravenclaw’s.

If she was honest, it looked a bit more like a castle. The wall had turrets in it, there was a portcullis behind the gate and a drawbridge in front of it, and the building itself was enormous, with several towers of its own.

As she approached, the portcullis slid upwards and the gates swung open, all as silent as a ghost, almost as soon as she felt the wards recognize her.

She walked slowly forwards, eyes peeled for any plants that might want to do her in, or the like- but she didn’t see any. The gate, portcullis, and even drawbridge all closed behind her- but she knew they would open again the moment she wanted them to.

Nothing jumped at her. The well-kept lawn stayed smooth and silent, the gardens waved lazily in the gentle breeze.

The next thing to jump out at her about the place was that it looked like it was being cared for by a house-elf. Self-maintenance spells weren’t capable of this level of detail, and no wizard would ever have it looking so pristine, clean, and beautiful.

She walked slowly up the wide, sweeping walk, plenty wide enough for a couple of muggle ‘cars’ to roll up it side-by-side. It even looked like it was made for something similar; as it approached the building, the path split in two, and swept around in a massive circle.

She stopped when she reached the steps, and looked down at the paving stones again. Yes, that would be it- it was for horse-drawn carriages.

This place was old.

She looked up at the building, and walked slowly up to the door.

Just like the gates had, it silently and gently opened itself for her as she reached it. She felt the cutouts in the wards making it possible- making it respond to her will. They only existed for those two spots, though; all the other doors, she would have to open manually.

Inside, it was spotless. Massive, sweeping staircases… and even in the entry foyer, every inside wall surface seemed to be constructed of bookcases. They all had wood-framed glass doors on them, revealing the thousands- tens of thousands, or even more- of pristine, ancient books stored within. The space was lit by a chandelier that, rather than holding candles, instead held a ring of light. Despite the chilly night, it was comfortably warm inside.

Then, she heard the clink of china. She looked; there was a door hanging slightly open. She tiptoed towards it, listening, thinking. The sound of running water- someone was filling a glass.

Then she reached the door and, gently, pulled it open, to look inside.

There was a house-elf, wearing a nightgown, drinking deeply from a clear glass of water in the kitchen.

She stood, watching.

The house-elf finished its drink, placed the glass on the counter for later, then turned around… and turned to the side again, to look at Silver. “Mmm?” she muttered, then blinked, once, twice. Finally, she gasped, suddenly wide awake. “Oh! Eleonore is sorry, she did not know you were coming, Mistress!”

“Oh, no problem,” she answered. “So… do I take it you’re my new house-elf, or…?”

She nodded. “Eleonore is the head elf here, Mistress.”

She raised her eyebrows. “Head elf? So there’s more?” She’d only heard of the families with estates so ostentatious they required multiple house-elves to care for them.

She nodded again. “Twenty-seven more. But Eleonore gets bored if they is here, so they is helping at Hogwarts. Does the Mistress want Eleonore to call them?”

She shook her head. “No, that’s fine. So… do I take it that giving a house-elf clothes doesn’t immediately free them, or…?”

Eleonore tilted her head confusedly, then blinked. “Oh, that. The gift of clothing frees a house-elf to break their bonds, but does not force them to.” She tapped her nightgown with one finger. “I chose to stay.” Then she looked up at Silver again. “Does the Mistress be wanting a snack?”

Her stomach chose that moment to growl, loudly.

“Uh,” Silver began. Dobby would probably have something waiting for her when she got back, but she also didn’t want to mess up her first impression by refusing the offer.

Eleonore smiled softly, and rephrased her question. “What does the Mistress be wanting to eat?”

She rubbed the side of her head. “Well, um… Dobby will probably have something waiting when I return, so…” She shrugged.

“Dobby?” Eleonore asked curiously, tilting her head. Then she blinked, and nodded. “Ahh. Dobby has not prepared anything yet, but can if the Mis- if Mistress Silversong would like.”

Silver blinked. “You’re talking to him?”

Eleonore nodded. “All elves under the same master can communicate freely with one another,” she informed Silver.

She nodded slowly. “... And even though Dobby is technically under my father, he’s still bound to my orders as well, meaning…”

She nodded. “Yes Mistress.”

“Okay then. Um…” She looked around the kitchen; there wasn’t a dining table in sight. “I don’t know. Something, I guess. Nothing too extravagant, though- it is in the middle of the night.”

Eleonore tilted her head. “It is almost six,” she answered. “Dobby was going to check on the Young Mistress in about five minutes.” She seemed amused when she used Dobby’s title for her.

“Oh Celestia,” Silver muttered. “It’s later than I thought. Um…” She rubbed her chin. Usually, her father took care of requesting specific meals. “I… I guess I’ll have breakfast then, but…” She shrugged.

Eleonore smiled. “Eleonore can take care of that. How quickly does Mistress Song want it ready?”

She blinked. “Mistress Song… Huh. I like it.” She smiled at Eleonore. “I’ll take it whenever it’s ready,” she informed her. “No need to rush.”

Her smile grew distinctly wider. “Very well.” She bowed her head. Then she indicated a door. “The dining room is through there, if Mistress Song wants to wait there.” She gestured back at the door Silver was still standing in. “Or the big door from the entrance hall.”

Silver smiled, and bowed herself. “Thank you,” she greeted. “And I think I will, thank you.”

When she left the kitchen, Eleonore was very happy, looking around the kitchen- and then, she disappeared with the crack of disapparition.

Silver smiled to herself as she headed for the dining room. Eleonore probably just didn’t want to cook in her nightgown.

Author's Note

So now I’m on a truck. This story has one more chapter in line, but I currently expect not to be able to update it very much at all, beyond that, for a while.

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Chapter 20: Ravenclaw

Silversong paused in the door into the dining room.

It was huge.

And, entirely as expected, there were bookshelves… everywhere. Not only bookshelves, though- at the foot of the room, there was a massive oil painting of… the top of a chair? The subject of the painting must’ve wandered off somewhere.

She walked slowly in, to the chair at the head of the long wooden table. The wood was gleaming in the light cast by… She looked up.

The chandelier was different in this room. There were two of them, one at either end of the table, bearing each end of a massive, glowing oval that shed light across the entire room.

“Fancy seeing a human face in here.”

She jumped.

… It was the painting. A wizened but severe looking woman had returned to it, and was seating herself in the painted chair. She was wearing black robes, emblazoned with what Silver recognized as the Hogwarts crest.

“I- I take it you don’t see very many?”

She laughed. It was bright, and cheerful. “That’s one way to say it. This place hasn’t seen a single human soul since my time, and that’s saying something.” She scowled. “Would’ve thought my kids- or even later descendants- would have come back to the ancestral home, but…” She sighed. “Their loss, really.”

Silver blinked. “So… You’re my ancestor?”

She raised an eyebrow. “I take it you just inherited the place?”

“Uh… Yes, I guess. Technically last week, but…” She shrugged. “So you would be… what, Rowena Ravenclaw’s mom, or… some other ancestor?”

She laughed. “Oh, I wish my mother would’ve left me a portrait. Nope, I’m old Rowena herself.” She tipped her glasses down, to peer over them at Silver. “You’re not planning on destroying the place, are you?”

She shook her head. “No, absolutely not! It’s- It’s an honor to meet you, even…” she bowed, and resumed when she straightened again. “Even if it has been a thousand years.” She blinked. “Which means I’m standing in a pretty big piece of history right now. That’d make it tantamount to treason to bulldoze it, wouldn’t it?”

“It ought to,” Rowena stated- then she smiled. “And I can tell you’re one of mine, too. Not even… what, twelve? Thirteen? And already using words that I don’t understand.”

She rubbed the side of her head. “Heh heh… About that…”

She waited for about a second, before changing the subject. “In any case, what might your name be?”

“My-? Oh. Silversong. Silversong Malfoy.” She smiled sheepishly- of course she had forgotten to introduce herself to the painting!

“Silversong, eh? Nice name, I have to say. And it even matches your hair.” She chuckled softly. “But a Malfoy, too, now that is interesting.”

She blinked. “Huh?”

She nodded. “Seems almost yesterday when little Wulfric Malfoy came to Hogwarts. He was one of our first students. Pureblood wizard, though, so of course Salazar took him in.” She scowled. “Really didn’t care for knowledge, though. He skipped several of mine and Helga’s classes, and never showed up for Godric’s.”

Silver wrinkled her nose. She knew that, had someone tried that in the modern Hogwarts, they’d be punished… and, likely, expelled. Meanwhile, had someone tried that at Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns, they would’ve been denied access to the buildings after a couple of weeks. After all, by doing so, they would have voluntarily withdrawn from the curriculum- and so, through no fault of the School’s, they would have removed themselves as a student.

“Yikes.”

She sighed. “It’s like they say, though, like father, like son. So I wonder where my family got involved to bring you here? And to make you so much, well…” She gestured around at the bookcases. “Smarter, really.”

“I’m wondering about that too,” Silver answered. “One moment, all the Malfoys are in Slytherin, and only ever marry Slytherins… then the next moment, I walk into Gringotts and they tell me I’m your descendant.” She shrugged. “As for smarter, that’s probably because skipping classes carries some pretty steep repercussions.”

She blinked. “... Did they make it a required education?”

She shrugged. “It’s not quite compulsory attendance, but if you do attend, they expect you to be attentive as well, no matter the class or instructor.”

A nod. “And attendance is part of being attentive, isn’t it?”

She nodded. “Yeah.”

Then Rowena shrugged. “I always knew I sucked at passing on my knowledge. Never could figure out how to improve, though.” She scowled. “In retrospect, that’s probably about the only thing I couldn’t figure out: How to talk to people.”

“... Okay then.” She looked up at the light. “I’ll have to admit, I’m really curious how this light spell lasted so long?”

“Oh, that’s because it’s not a light spell.”

“Okay.” She nodded expectantly.

She smiled. “Instead, it’s the sunlight that hit the roof last week, stored and channeled in for your comfort. I’m actually quite proud of it.”

“... Creative,” she mused. She looked around. “I wonder if the other Founders of Hogwarts all have similarly… well, large dwellings?”

Rowena sighed, and shook her head. “Nope, mine was the biggest. Not that I asked for it- I inherited it, after all. Along with so much gold it probably wouldn’t have run out even now if I was still alive, and had not earned any more. Most of it is in the Vault here at the Residence, by the way, not in Gringotts; in my day, Gringotts wasn’t nearly as safe as it is now. As old Salazar can attest- he kept everything in his Gringotts vault… and it was pillaged no less than four times.” She shrugged. “To be fair, though, he also didn’t have anywhere else to put it.”

She tilted her head. “So what did the others have?”

Another sigh. “Well, I had all this inheritance- but believe it or not, Helga had more, though not by much. She lived much more humbly, though- a small estate on a quaint little land, which she gave away when she died a virgin. The most recent name I remember being applied to it was McKinnon, then they died out ten years ago.

“Godric had a slightly larger estate than Helga- and unfortunately, not because he was being humble. Yes, he was rich, but not on the scale of either I or Helga.” She rubbed her chin with a finger. “He always seemed to be the best at teaching, among all of us. I tried to get him to teach me a few times, but neither of us could figure out where to start.”

The silence held for about three seconds before Silver spoke. “What about Slytherin?”

She blinked. “Oh, yes, I shouldn’t forget old Salazar, should I? Even though he was late to the party, and didn’t really have anything to contribute- either scholastically or financially. It was he that insisted we build it in a castle- just like it was Godric that talked him out of a perimeter wall and moat. Me and Helga felt like Godric did- that a full castle, like the Residence here, would be too intimidating to young wizards. I was the mediator between the two of them- helped Salazar see sense in that it was a school, not a fortress- and Godric see that a majestic castle on a hill would be quite the view, and help encourage our students to aspire to new heights.

“But Salazar himself… He tried very hard to hide his home from us, but we eventually discovered it. Before, I thought he lived in the castle so much because he wanted to be that much closer to his students, even though he insisted we should only take those of wizarding descent.” She sighed. “Unfortunately, it was not so; Salazar was leeching off of us. We confronted him, and it was a good thing that Godric, ever the brave at heart, thought to bring his sword. Helga was gravely injured in the ensuing fight, but Godric drove Salazar from the school with a missing arm.” She bowed her head sadly.

“What about you?” Silver asked.

She shook her head. “My shield charm was impenetrable, but I had yet to develop it to the point where I could protect others with it, nor was I any good at magical combat. No doubt Godric saved my life that day as well.” She smiled. “There’s a reason he led the school, even though me and- especially- Helga owned the place.

“As for Salazar’s home… over the ages, it was expanded a few times- and from what I hear, it’s now known as The Burrow, and serves as the seat of the Weasley family.”

“... Wow.”

She nodded. “Yes. I hear the Weasleys have followed very closely in Godric’s stead- makes me wonder if they’re related to him?”

She took a deep breath. “Was… Was Helga okay?”

“Hmm? Oh, she survived, no worries. It was a good few months before I was able to invent the spells necessary to heal the damage to her legs, but we were able to heal her up again.” She smiled. “Oh, I still remember, it was ten years after that incident before Godric would go anywhere without his sword. And even then, that was only because he was confident in his combat magic being enough to stay the enemy long enough for him to summon his sword. Bravest man I ever met, but he also took every precaution in the book whenever he could. He used to say that it was better to be safe than to be sorry, but that there was still no reason not to enjoy life to the fullest.”

“You must’ve liked him.”

She nodded. “Yes. Had he not already had more than he could handle, I would have gladly been his wife.”

“He had more than he could handle?”

She nodded. “Yes. He had three wives- all three of which died during childbirth.”

Silver winced. “I’m… sorry to hear that,” she muttered.

“We never could figure out what killed them,” Rowena mourned. “Especially since they all died in the same year; Godric asked us to babysit his children and went on a hiatus from the school for a year. When he returned, he politely refused all of his suitors, and declared himself single for life, even though he had some twenty or so children, aged newborn to twelve, to take care of. As you can imagine, they spent a lot of time at Hogwarts, where we could help watch and care for them.” She paused for a second. “How about you? How’s your time at Hogwarts?”

“Ah,” she muttered. “It… actually hasn’t started yet. There’s another month or so before the term begins.”

Rowena burst out laughing, just in time for Eleonore to bow her way into the room, holding a plate of tasty-smelling food.

Eleonore looked at Silversong. “Is the seating inadequate for Mistress Song?”

Silver, who had yet to select a seat, shook her head. “No, it’s fine, just…” She looked at the table again.

“Go ahead and take my seat at the head,” Rowena instructed her. “After all, you are the Head of the Ravenclaw Residence, are you not?”

Author's Note

Some of you were wondering what would happen if this happened...

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This is the last chapter I have currently written. I'm also facing a period of unexpected availability, so assuming I'm able to find an adapter to let me use my car charger in the hotel, I should be able to write more. In theory, at least... In the meantime, my new story, The Equine Starliner- a new take on the premise of The Equestrian Starliner- will be going live tomorrow.

Chapter 21: Sorting

Professor Dumbledore smiled to himself as he read a letter on the morning of September First. It was from Amelia Bones, the head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement- and one of the best… Well, she technically wasn’t a legilimens, but she didn’t need to be. Even Occlumency couldn’t fully defend against her watchful eyes.

He took pride in how frustrated she got whenever she was trying to get information from him.

Unfortunately, he wasn’t nearly so good at reading her- and she was very good at occlumency herself, so whenever she didn’t want him to find something out, he would never find it out from her. It bothered him from time to time, but he wasn’t all that overly worried about it; it wasn’t like she often had important information he didn’t.

And in this letter, she was telling him about just how hard he was to read- how she even ranked him as the number one hardest to read, even over professional nobles like the Malfoy Family.

Then he reached the last sentence.

P.S. I have now met eleven-year-old girls that are harder to read than you are.

He stared at it, reread the letter. That was the only mention. In a letter that was completely full of commending him for being so incredibly difficult to read… eleven-year-old girls were harder to read?

No, it had to be some first year girls, not all of them.

But then, who? And what was their secret, that allowed them to hide their minds so incredibly well?

“Albus?” Minerva McGonagall asked, seated next to him at the breakfast table.

“Yes?” he asked, looking at her.

“You’re doing it again,” she informed him.

He blinked, taking only half a second- with no legilimency involved- to realize what she was talking about. “Right, sorry.”

“Granger, Hermione.”

Hermione, who had spent much of the last week trying to figure out how the sorting worked- to no avail- and much of the train ride learning as much as she could about the various houses, half-ran to the Hat once she was clear of the line.

The sorting was a bit of a challenge to her, and possibly even dangerous as well- thanks to her stupendous strength, which she had yet to fully control, she knew she could very easily accidentally rip the Sorting Hat in two.

Even though, by some miracle, she had yet to damage any of her clothes or books.

So she stopped at the stool, lifted it carefully, and allowed it to settle over her head as she sat down gently.

She was really hoping she, Harry, and even Silversong would be in Gryffindor, no matter how sure Silver was that she’d be in Slytherin.

There was a tiny chuckle in her ear. “I’m sorry to say you can’t affect their Sorting, but I can definitely put you in GRYFFINDOR!”

She twitched slightly as she heard it yell the final word to the entire hall, then lifted it- equally carefully- off of her head, smiled at where Silver and Hailey were standing next to one another in the line, and headed for the cheering Gryffindor table.

“Malfoy, Silversong!”

Silversong stepped sideways out of the line, then danced forwards, humming a tune. She was showing off, being as ridiculous as she possibly could, in the hopes that she would be sorted even before she reached the Hat… and not into Slytherin.

Her father had gotten her two ‘bodyguards’- even he had used air quotes- before he sent her to school… for appearances. Because the Head of the Malfoy Family, no matter how impulsive or indestructible his foster daughter was, must be seen taking care of his family to the best of his ability.

She gave her skirt a twirl; she’d practiced this little ‘dance-walk’ back home. Her heavy robes kept her skirts from flying anywhere near high enough to be a problem.

Both of those two bodyguards had already been sorted into Slytherin. She knew that she would be there too- and those two were so utterly stupid she was glad she would be in the girl’s dormitory, rather than the boys’ dormitory… and while she could enter theirs, they would be unable to enter her dormitory.

She somersaulted over the stool, plucking the hat from its place while she was upside-down. It was only thanks to her practice that she managed to avoid flashing anyone in the act.

She landed with a bow, then swept the hat up to her head and sat down while about half the room, scattered across all four houses, applauded her performance.

She noticed that the Weasley Twins- she had encountered them during one of her first trips to Diagon Alley- were cheering the loudest, and even standing up to do so. “You go, girl!” they cried.

She smiled as the hat dropped down over her eyes.

There was silence, aside from the last of the applause, for almost a full second, before she heard a small voice in her ear.

“Now that’s interesting,” it mused. “Very interesting. Twilight would definitely have been a Ravenclaw.”

She tensed, listening for the word that would doom her to sitting between those two idiots at every meal.

The voice chuckled. “Well, I suppose the Malfoys are generally placed into Slytherin- but before I send you there, would any Slytherin you know have let themselves get caught dead doing that little dance?”

She could feel the heat rushing to her face. That answer was, very definitely, a no.

“See? You’re not a Slytherin. Probably would have been, before Twilight came along, but you have used the knowledge she gave you to change not just what you are, but who you are as well.”

A flood of relief washed through her so powerfully that she very nearly let it show.

She did wonder, though- if not Slytherin, then were? Perhaps Ravenclaw, since she had so much knowledge? Or even Hufflepuff, because of her strength?

The voice chuckled again. “Ravenclaws seek knowledge for the sake of knowledge,” it informed her. “And while you probably would do well there, that’s not your defining trait. And Hufflepuffs aren’t necessarily strong, they’re just unafraid of hard work. Think about your actions- what have you been doing since Twilight gave her magic to you, and what do they suggest?”

She blinked at the dark inside of the hat. What had she been doing?

She had been going on so many shopping trips she’d had to replenish the Floo Powder not once but twice, she had met not just Hailey and Hermione, but dozens more witches and wizards. She had played with basically anything she could get her hands on, making herself out to be a bit of a ditz, constantly finding new things to play with, even at her parents’ expense.

But that wasn’t who she was, no matter how much she enjoyed playing like that.

“Well, do you want to turn back into Draco?”

She surprised herself by wrinkling her nose in revulsion.

“Exactly.”

But then… She thought for a second. That’d make her a Hufflepuff, wouldn’t it? Doing so much, working so hard, and all? She really didn’t want to be a Hufflepuff.

The hat chuckled a third time. “Oh, no, you’re no Hufflepuff- though that’s not to say you wouldn’t do well there too. You’ve got traits from each of the four- but you probably would never have left the Manor if not for your defining traits. After all, you’re no ordinary Malfoy- you’re a GRYFFINDOR Malfoy!”

Silver couldn’t believe her ears- and by the sound of it, neither could about half of the students in the room. With as deep as her family was into the Dark Arts, she was certain that it would be impossible for her to get into Gryffindor, and so hadn’t allowed herself to even hope for it… but she was almost immeasurably happy about being sorted into it.

Measured Happiness, the author of Emotions and How to Measure Them in Twilight’s library, could go to the Crystal Empire without a jacket. The scale he had come up with couldn’t even hope to contain how glad she was.

So, grinning broadly, she startled Professor McGonagall by backflipping straight off the stool, depositing the hat back onto it while she was upside-down. She bowed to the room, then danced her way to where the Weasley Twins were cheering loudest, next to a Hermione that was far too stunned to cheer herself. She made sure to give both twins high-fives- she’d practiced controlling her strength before she’d ever come up with her dance- before slipping herself onto the bench next to Hermione and giving her an awkward sideways hug.

“Potter, H- Hailey.” Professor McGonagall exaggerated her first name, making it very clear that it was not Harry.

Hailey scowled, and stepped casually out of the line to march up to the Hat, ignoring the waves of curiosity, sorrow, and even sympathy that were sweeping the suddenly silent room, making Silversong’s ongoing beacon of happiness seem all the brighter in comparison.

As she reached the stool with the Hat, she swept it dramatically off of the stool, perched it on her head, and sat down. A quick stability spell, pulled from Chrysalis’ repertoire, kept it from falling over her eyes without requiring her to shapeshift her head bigger.

After all, for as much as Silversong was convinced her problem of using unicorn magic without a horn was unique, it really wasn’t. Hailey hadn’t mentioned it, but the changelings faced that problem every time they tried to use unicorn magic while disguised as something other than a unicorn. Chrysalis just happened to be among the select few that managed that complicated technique… though she didn’t know very much magic. She had learned most of what she knew explicitly for the attack on Canterlot, after all- and everything else was geared towards Hive maintenance and defense. She had let the Hive Mages take care of any more complex spellwork she needed.

The Hat seemed to take forever to speak. Hailey had known it could speak, and even had an emotional signature. It didn’t actually produce any emotional energy, the energy that changelings lived on- but for as much as Hailey was technically a changeling herself, she also technically wasn’t. She still had to eat and drink, after all- at least, she was pretty sure. She wasn’t sure how complete the transformation really was… though she had confirmed that, unlike the changelings, her base form did not have a carapace or visible holes, only very sensitive privates and a lightning scar that seemed to always be on fire.

“Wow,” the Hat finally muttered, shocked. “I… I can’t say I’ve ever seen that before.”

Hailey smiled at the Hufflepuff table, and used the empty hivemind to answer it. “Not surprised.”

“So… Hmm. It looks like you’d do equally well in either Gryffindor or Slytherin. Preference?”

She raised an eyebrow in the hivemind- not her real one- while she smiled instead at the Ravenclaw table. “Preference?” she asked it.

“Well, Amelia was correct,” the Hat informed her. “You are a Princess, and completely above wizarding law. Even Godric Gryffindor himself didn’t have the same power- either political or magical- that you do! Besides, I usually honor choices anyways.”

She raised her other eyebrow on the hivemind as well, and made a silly face at the wall opposite her, directly between the two tables. The first-year line had trailed in across the head of the room, across the base of the staff table behind her. “You can probably guess.”

She was amused by the flash of worry, then the embarrassment, that she sensed from it. “Yes, I suppose I can, can’t I? After all, your friends are in GRYFFINDOR!”

She smiled broadly as the Gryffindor table burst into cheers, tasting their excitement as she returned the Hat to its stool and walked towards them. Even so, though, the excitement was somewhat subdued- and the reason for such indicated itself when one of the ones emitting an aura of worry- his hair matched Ginevra and Ariel’s hair, and he wore a prefect’s badge- spoke to her.

“I’m sorry about Harry,” he muttered.

She smiled, blowing off his concern with a wide, cheerful smile. “Oh, he was an idiot, and a jerk,” she informed him loudly- and only partly to be heard over the cheering. “Kept trying to claim extra authority as the ‘boy who lived’ and all, never did anything himself. Good riddance, I say.”

Then, Professor McGonagall- filled almost to bursting with sorrow- spoke the next name.

“Potter, Harry.” She gave the name a slight emphasis, separating it from Hailey’s name- and, while her voice remained fully professional, Hailey could tell she was teetering on the edge of bursting into tears, only barely keeping her voice from cracking.

The entire room fell completely silent, and nobody moved.

The silence held for nearly ten seconds before a brave Ravenclaw broke the silence. “Didn’t he die?”

“We can hope,” McGonagall answered the girl, before glancing up at Hailey- at which her mouth curved slightly in a bit of a smile. She took a deep breath before she continued. “That his legacy- what he has represented to wizardkind, not what he actually was- lives on in all of us.” She bowed her head.

There was silence for a second, as the atmosphere of mourning shifted to one of denial and confusion- then Hailey picked a moment to applaud McGonagall’s statement, clapping loudly.

She was the only one.

She looked around. “What? Harry might’ve been a jerk, but if a baby can defeat the Dark Lord Voldemort by screaming at him, we can defeat something quite a bit scarier than that. So I applaud Professor McGonagall’s wish for that kind of ability- of positivity- for us all.”

The Headmaster, Albus Dumbledore- who she recognized because of the chocolate frog card on the train- led a wave of applause across the room, which brought with it a mix of thankfulness, hope, determination… and, in McGonagall’s case, embarrassment.

“Weasley, Ronald.”

Ron was one of the very few remaining students in the line by the time his name was called, but he didn’t let that get him down. He marched purposely up to the stool, accepted the hat, put it on his head, and sat down.

“Interesting,” the Hat muttered. “Very interesting.”

Excuse me, he thought deliberately, but what’s interesting?

It answered him, sounding amused. “Why, you’re probably the most Slytherin Weasley I’ve seen yet.”

He could feel the color draining out of his face. Slytherin? He couldn’t be!

The hat chuckled softly. “No worries, you’re not one. Had you actually been one, you would’ve taken Flurry Heart’s power without a second thought, rather than refusing it. Which, by the way, was a very GRYFFINDOR thing to do!”

He shuddered as he took the hat off and headed for the cheering Gryffindor table, face white as chalk. He could have sworn the Hat had said he could have been a Slytherin! He scanned the table, looking for a space that wasn’t between Fred and Percy. He wasn’t sure how he was going to go about proving himself- and hoped, prayed, that that wasn’t why the Hat had said that.

… There was a space next to Hailey Potter, the girl that had spoken so derisively about the famous Harry Potter, almost like she had known him. In any case, she was probably going to get at least a minor celebrity’s worth of attention, so proving himself might as well start with her. He picked the seat next to her.

She looked at him, as soon as he sat down. “Ronald Weasley?” she asked, emphasizing his surname.

He nodded. “Yes?”

“Brother of Ginevra and Ariel?”

He blinked, alarmed. “How do you know…?”

She shrugged. “I met them in Diagon Alley. So… I hear you met Flurry Heart?”

He sighed, looking down. “And refused her power- left her to die.” His sisters had already been on his case about that.

“Was it within two minutes?”

He blinked, looking up. “Is that important?” His breath caught in his throat as he realized that the three girls- Hailey, the bushy-haired girl on her other side, and the silver-haired Malfoy past her- were all watching him intently.

Hailey only nodded.

“I…” He took a deep breath. “I refused it immediately, if that means anything.”

Hailey hugged him, out of the blue; he was fairly sure he gasped in surprise.

“And in so doing, you saved her life,” she stated simply. “Which in turn makes it possible for us to resurrect the other four. Completely aside from keeping Equestria’s ruling party from being completely annihilated, and saving the nation as a whole.”

He gasped. “She was young!”

“Cadence and Shining Armor taught her well,” Hailey smiled. “She was young, but I’m sure Cadence would have trusted her to make the right decisions.”

“What about Celestia?” the girl in the middle asked, tilting her head.

“Oh, no,” Hailey informed her. “Celestia wouldn’t trust anyone. And Twilight wouldn’t even consider whether she trusted her or not, she’d just evaluate that Flurry would probably get the job done.”

“Too true,” the last girl nodded.

Author's Note

She's really throwing Harry under the bus, isn't she?

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I've reached the point where I'm not sure exactly what events throughout the first year I should touch on, and what events I should skip over. I know most fics- including my The Gate, and to a lesser extent, On the Implications of Parallel Worlds- have a tendency of packing all the action into the beginning of the year, but I'd like to avoid that here if at all possible. There's still a couple chapters coming before this becomes a problem, but still- what do you think should be covered, because of (potentially) widely differing reactions of the characters in question, and what should be overlooked?

Chapter 23: Curbstomp

“Good afternoon,” Flurry greeted the Changeling leaders, which had just been ushered in- with their honor guard- to the Congress room.

The Changeling leaders, which she was told were called ‘Broodmothers’, bowed to her. “Good afternoon, Princess,” Broodmother Nyadra greeted. She had apparently been Chrysalis’ second-in-command.

“As I’m sure you know by now, Queen Chrysalis was attacked and sent to another world during her meeting with the Princesses of Equestria. I was there.” She sighed, closing her eyes. “I am the only one left.” She looked back up again. “In any case, before we were attacked, Queen Chrysalis told us…”

She hated to recall that terrible event, but it was important to this meeting- and besides, not only had it been etched into her memory, but she had written a detailed account of it in her diary. Then of course, she and Raven Inkwell had used her diary as a reference for their planning of this meeting.

As she spoke her opening script, she briefly recalled the planning session she’d had with Gleaming Shield, in anticipation that a similar attack would occur. There were guards scattered throughout the public viewing areas, and every guardhouse in the entire building was occupied. Not only that, but there were large numbers of guards patrolling about- and checking in very regularly with the unicorn Guard just behind Gleaming Shield, who was seated next to Flurry.

Finally, she finished reciting the information Chrysalis had covered- mostly, she was sure, for the nobles’ benefit, but she didn’t know if the other changelings knew it already or not. “Princess Celestia did not seem opposed to it, and told us she did not see why we couldn’t come to an agreement, before the attack took place. This is-!” She broke off, looking over to Gleaming Shield. Her Unicorn guard had stepped forward to mutter quietly to her.

“Echo Seven is not responding,” he informed Gleaming.

Gleaming scowled.

Then the unicorn blinked. “Echo Six confirmed, Seven is down.”

Gleaming glanced up at Flurry. “They’re here.”

Flurry sighed, then looked up at the rest of the room- across which scattered murmurs had started. The murmurs died off almost instantly. “And it would seem somepony is attempting a similar attack as we speak. The Guards are fighting them right now.”

Broodmother Nyadra looked at the other broodmother she’d brought with her, then they turned towards the door. The congressional seats formed a U shape, such that Flurry was right at the base, where the two sides met, and the door was at the opposite end- something that Gleaming Shield had, rather affectionately Flurry had noticed, referred to as a ‘kill box’.

The changelings had been at the normal position for diplomats, about two thirds of the way across the floor towards Flurry. They changed that quickly, though, drones and broodmothers bolting together towards the door. They stopped at right about the midpoint of the room, then carved chunks out of the floor- Flurry could almost hear some of the nobles wincing- to start erecting a massive barricade out of stone and changeling goo.

Massive, unidirectional magical barriers went up all along the front edge of the seating, separating the nobles- including Flurry and the spectators- from the floor with a barrier that they could shoot out through, but could not be shot at through.

And then, there was a feeling of magic humming in the air, as unicorns throughout the room, from Guards to nobles to even Flurry herself, charged their magic for the coming attack.

Right on schedule, as soon as everypony was ready, the door exploded inwards. Spellbolts lanced inwards. More than half of them were stopped by the changelings’ wall, and all of the rest were stopped by the unicorn shields.

Then, everypony fired.

It was a cacophony. Fire, ice, lightning, and pure magical force all blasted in at the same point, creating explosions, slashes, crashes, flares, splashes of the soap that the floor by the door had just been turned into, and in the changelings’ case, pods.

When the smoke cleared almost a full minute later, the massive, fire-breathing stone golems that had sprung out of the floor could be seen marching across the cratered soap, searching for targets. There was even a soap golem.

Gleaming Shield raised an eyebrow at the scene.

Flurry nodded, trying to visually estimate how many hundreds of feet of stone her blast had gone through after it had erased a large chunk of the attacking army. It was, by far, the deepest crater.

Then Discord floated up out of the hole left by the soap golem. “... Well, that was interesting,” he mused. Then he shrugged. “I guess I didn’t need to have the stone basilisks waiting to chew on incoming spells, did I?”

“All in favor of Changeling integration?” Prince Blueblood called, as loud as it was sudden.

The nobles about the room shook themselves out- then hooves raised all throughout the room. Several cries of “Aye!” were also heard.

Even Discord raised a paw.

Flurry smiled- it was a distinct majority, roughly ninety percent. “Then all that remains is to decide how we are going to do it,” she announced, as the ruined entryway magically repaired itself to the beat of Discord’s tailsnaps.

“Raven?” Flurry asked, interrupting Raven Inkwell’s description of the next day’s schedule.

The mare looked up. “Yes, Princess?”

“I think I just had a… vision, of some sort, from the other side.”

“The…? You mean where the Princesses are?”

She nodded. “Yeah, I think. Bunch of those people standing in a field, all holding wooden sticks of some kind, for a second. I think… Yes, I think it was from Ronald’s perspective, he was grumbling about something. Do you think Blueblood was successful?”

Raven scowled. “Pretty sure he’s having dinner right now, but… possible, I suppose. Shall we check on his progress tonight?”

Flurry made a quick decision. “Yes, I think I’d like to. Only a quick check, though- and definitely make sure he knows what happened. Speaking of which, what time is it?”

Raven was seconds away from resuming her list when Flurry let out a small gasp. “It’s happening again!” she announced, closing her eyes. “Someone… Can’t be Ronald, pretty sure it’s a girl. She keeps looking down at her black robes. She has brown hair, and…” She scowled. “She must be crying silently- her eyes are full of tears, but I can only hear her footsteps. She’s… following another person. Another girl, I think- significantly taller, and…” She let out a second gasp. “I think she’s a child! Anyways, this taller girl… I can only see her back, but she still looks… severe, almost.

“There’s a door, she’s opening it…” She paused for a moment, then spoke oddly, like she was imitating something. “Excuse me, Professor Flitwick, could I borrow wood for a moment?” She scowled. “That’s what she said, but… Is she going to beat her? Or maybe… No, ‘wood’ is apparently a person. Also bigger than… uh, my perspective, and muscular, but I think it’s a boy, and he looks confused. Um… The bigger girl told them to follow her, and continued leading. The boy- Wood- is looking curiously at, er, me, I’ll call her, for now.”

Raven waited for a couple of seconds of silence before speaking. “Where are they?”

“Oh,” Flurry blinked. “They’re walking down stone corridors. Torchlit, all wearing black robes, with pointed black hats, I think. What-! The pictures are moving!”

“Any windows?”

Flurry shook her head. “Haven’t seen any. They’re going into another room… Looks like a classroom. There’s a boy floating in the air, writing… ugh, why is he writing that on the blackboard? Anyways, the woman said ‘Out, Peeves’, so he discarded his chalk and left. She’s slammed the door behind him. And…” She trailed off for a second.

“She’s introducing them to each other. I’m ‘Granger’, and the boy is Oliver Wood. She told Wood she found him a seeker… he seems excited? Apparently, Granger is a natural…” She giggled softly. “Wait, no-!” She reached out a hoof for a second, then let out a sigh. “It’s gone.” She took a deep breath, opening her eyes. “And I want to say ‘Granger’ was her name in the same way that Weasley was Ronald’s name, rather than the way Ronald was his name.”

“... Interesting,” Raven muttered. “Was there any suggestion of the Princesses?”

She shook her head. “No. Unless me seeing from Granger’s perspective is a clue…”

Raven scowled. “Suggests that she might be one of them,” she stated. “Specifically might, though.”

“Princess?” Blueblood asked, his head snapping up in surprise, when Flurry opened the door. His room was now gilded in drawings and diagrams more than it was in gold and jewels, and his eyes were bloodshot, a quill held in his magic, poised over another piece of parchment.

Flurry looked around. “You know, you don’t have to work yourself into the ground,” she informed him. “I doubt even I am working this hard.” She gestured around the room. Then she looked at him again. “Anyways, I had a couple of visions from the other side earlier- thought you might like to know about them. And…” She looked around again. “I’m curious if you’ve made any solid progress on the matter.”

“... Ah,” he muttered, glancing down at his page and putting the quill down. “I have managed to unravel the outer layer of the spell, but all it really does is keep it on target and penetrate the target’s defenses. Quite a bit of useful stuff in it, though- not much can penetrate the natural wards of an Alicorn, and this thing makes it look easy.” He sighed. “I’m nowhere near figuring out what exactly it did, why it bounced off of you the second time instead of repeating the experience… and especially nowhere near figuring out how to get them back.” He sounded apologetic.

“Hey,” Flurry muttered softly. “That’s no problem. If it takes a dozen years, that works for me. So long as they come back, risk free. Which means you need to not be making any fatigue-induced mistakes- so make sure you get your sleep!”

Author's Note

IT'S ALIVE!

Patreon, Discord.

At least two more coming, on the next two weeks.

Chapter 24: Flying Lessons

“This is just what I’ve always wanted,” Hailey mused, as they walked out the massive front doors with the rest of the first-year gryffindors. She gestured towards where the Slytherin first years had already gathered on the lawns. “To make a fool of myself on a broomstick in front of the snakes.” She giggled.

Silver rolled her eyes, but it was Ron that spoke first. “You don’t know that you’ll make a fool of yourself,” he told her.

She shrugged. “Well yeah, I suppose, but what else should I expect? I mean…” She grinned at Silver.

“It means that any surprises will be pleasant surprises,” Silver answered. “Speaking of which, Dad taught me to fly years ago, so I’m not expecting much of anything to happen for me.” Except, she didn’t say, the difference in how it felt to fly as a girl than as a boy- but she hadn’t told the other two girls that she hadn’t always been a girl, so they didn’t need to know that.

“I’m more worried about the limits of our strength,” Hermione muttered. “I mean, what if I lose control and manage to fling myself a hundred feet in the air without my broom?”

“You won’t,” Silver assured her immediately. “They’ve been teaching students like us for decades, they know exactly how to keep that from happening. Hay, they’ve never even had any deaths during Quidditch games, even when players got knocked off their brooms a couple hundred feet in the air!”

Hermione took a deep breath. “Oh, alright,” she muttered.

“Up!”

Hailey’s broom leaped straight up into her hand as soon as she gave the command.

Hermione’s broom snapped up into her hand so hard Hailey heard one of the twigs snap from the force, even though Hermione hadn’t closed her hand yet.

And Silver’s was much more sedate, jumping almost casually up into her hand.

Lots of other students didn’t have nearly as good of results, though. Neville Longbottom’s broom, for example, did absolutely nothing whatsoever.

Finally, Madam Hooch showed them how to mount their brooms without sliding off the end. Silver, as it turned out, had been doing it wrong for years.

“Come back, boy!”

Neville had kicked off before the whistle, and was in an uncontrolled climb, rocketing straight up.

They watched as he climbed… then fell off his broom, and landed with a sickening crack.

“Um,” Hermione muttered, as Madam Hooch bent down to examine Neville.

“... Er, I… I guess I was wrong,” Silver answered her. She looked at Hermione. “But you still shouldn’t need to worry about that.”

Madam Hooch eventually helped Neville to his feet again, after mentioning a broken wrist. “None of you is to move while I take this boy to the Hospital Wing,” she ordered the rest of the class. “You leave those brooms where they are, or you’ll be out of Hogwarts before you can say ‘Quidditch’!”

Hailey looked down at her broom, still held in her hand- then sideways at Hermione, who was also still holding hers.

No sooner had Madam Hooch gone out of earshot than Theodore Nott, a Slytherin that had verbally abused Hailey and Silver at every opportunity, snatched something out of the grass. “Oh, it’s that thing he had at breakfast!”

Hailey looked. It was Neville’s Remembrall, which he had excitedly shown to the Gryffindors around him at breakfast. Theodore had happened past while he was doing so.

Hermione stepped forwards, broom still in her hand, and held out her other hand. “Hand it over,” she commanded. “That’s not yours.”

Theodore raised an eyebrow. “Oh yeah?” He snatched his broom off the ground and kicked off, rocketing up to fly level with a nearby treetop. “Why don’t I just hide it in this tree for him to find?”

“I said hand it over,” Hermione ordered.

He let out a snort of laughter. “Well then come and get it, sissy!”

“Oh, you-!” Hermione began- before she kicked off herself, almost before mounting her broom. He hadn’t targeted her as much as he had the other two, but he had realized that she didn’t respond well to insults.

Hermione shot into the air, looking almost exactly like a homesick meteor, before coming to a dead stop hardly ten feet in front of Theodore, facing him. “Hand it over,” she ordered.

He let out a gasp of surprise.

Down below, Hailey raised an eyebrow at the sudden flood of fear going through his form… then cupped her hands to call up to him. “Do it, coward, before she knocks you out of the air!”

He gave a forced laugh. “Like a sissy could-!”

Hermione leaned forwards, and shot straight at him.

He only barely dodged in time.

Hermione came to a stop and turned sharply to face him again.

He took one look at her, squeaked in fright, and steadied his broom. “Well then, catch it if you can!” He threw the remembrall straight up in the air, and shot for the ground- where he crashed into it fairly gently, but still hard enough to hurt.

Up above, Hermione watched the tiny glass ball soar up, then start to fall. She shot down after it, caught it, and leveled off- just in time to slam headlong into Ron at full speed.

Several Gryffindors dodged out of the way as the two tumbled- but Silver didn’t, instead crouching down to catch them both.

“Ow,” Ron muttered, while Hermione scrambled off of him.

“You okay?” Hailey asked, crouching next to him.

Ron sat up out of Silver’s arms. “I think so,” he muttered. “Nothing feels broken, at least.”

“Hermione Granger!”

It was Professor McGonagall, marching rapidly across the grounds.

“Uh oh,” Silver muttered.

“Well, at least you didn’t fall off your broom and…” Hailey muttered, then scowled as she remembered something.

After all, she, Hermione, and Silversong were technically princesses… and so had the authority to demand she not be expelled, in theory. But would the instructors let her use that authority without telling people about it? Especially Dumbledore?

Hermione shuddered, finally dropping her broom on the ground.

“Never, in all my time at Hogwarts-! How dare you! Might have broken your neck!”

“Maybe Ron’s,” Silver muttered, low enough McGonagall wouldn’t hear it, “but not her own, no.”

Hailey went completely silent as she noticed McGonagall’s emotional spectrum. She was filled to overflowing with shock, anger, worry, and… pride? Like she was somehow glad Hermione had done that, despite being absolutely furious at her for it?

“Follow me,” McGonagall commanded Hermione. “Now.”

“Having a last meal, sissy?” It was Theodore Nott again, talking to the back of Hermione’s head at dinner. She had just finished telling Hailey, Silver, and Ron that she had instead been promoted to Quidditch seeker.

Hailey put a hand on her shoulder and turned to look at Theodore. “You’re a lot braver now that you’re on the ground with your little friends,” she told him. Vincent Crabbe and Gregory Goyle, who had been supposed to be Silver’s bodyguards in Slytherin, had instead become Theodore’s.

The two ‘brainless gits’, as Silver liked calling them, cracked their knuckles threateningly.

Theodore swelled with indignation. “I’d take you on alone anytime,” he spat. “How about tonight, wizards’ duel- wands only, no contact.”

“Uhh,” Hailey muttered indecisively. She certainly didn’t want to participate in any such duel, but wasn’t sure if it would be worth getting Theodore in trouble over it.

“What’s the matter? Never heard of a wizards’ duel?” Theodore asked.

“Of course she has,” Ron spat, turning right around in his seat, which happened to be at the end of one of the benches. “I’m her second. Who’s yours?”

“Huh?” Theodore asked briefly, glancing between Ron and the girls; he had evidently considered Ron a non-entity. Then he looked at Crabbe and Goyle, sizing them up. “... Goyle,” he said slowly. “Midnight in the trophy room, then, that’s always unlocked.”

Hermione waited for the Slytherins to get out of earshot before she looked up at Ron. “What is a wizards’ duel?”

“And what do you mean by ‘you’re my second’?” Hailey asked.

Ron shrugged. “Well, the ‘second’ is there to take over if you die,” he informed them. “Which won’t happen, none of us knows enough magic to do more than throw sparks at each other.”

Hailey let out a snort. “And why is that important?”

Ron looked at her. “Well…” Then he blinked, looked at his food, and looked back up. “Wait, you were going to refuse?”

Hailey shrugged. “Wasn’t sure if I wanted to accept it or not,” she told him. “But I certainly won’t be attending. I’m sure it’d be fun, but it’d also be just asking for trouble.”

Author's Note

Patreon, Discord.

Sorry for the lack of blurb, I've been having a bad week.

Chapter 25: Battle

For as much as she had told Blueblood to get the sleep that he needed, Flurry couldn’t sleep that night. When Discord had come to Day Court a few days before, he’d told her that they had found a magic-dense area, but not enough of them had reached it for him to facilitate communications.

Except, those visions suggested the existence of a prior communications link- and all she had to do was figure out how to work it.

She was just too excited to sleep.

Then, she froze. She had been pacing back and forth across the foot of her mother’s bed- she still slept in the same room- but she’d heard one of the two guards outside speak.

“What-?”

It had been a fledgling alarmed question… and had cut off with the sharpness of a knife.

She slipped over to the balcony doors, pushed one ajar, and peeked outside. She couldn’t see anypony out there- not even the guards on the towers.

There were supposed to be guards there at all times, with searchlights and everything. Gleaming Shield had seen to it.

She pulled the door closed once again, turned the latch, and turned to face the main entrance to the room, horn priming. She was sure she could evade a few attacks outside, as she fled the area, but she wasn’t sure there would be only a few made- and she wanted to be sure that at least the Guards knew where she was.

The door crept open… and a bolt of scarlet light shot in, to where it struck her pillow. As it was flying, Flurry used her pre-charged horn to cast a quick magesight spell- the one Twilight usually used whenever she was teaching her magic, in fact- and memorized the magic matrix in the spell bolt. Then she focused on the door again.

“There, I think that got her,” she heard somepony mutter. “Bed’s empty.”

“Hangon,” another muttered. “That bed’s still made. She wasn’t in it.”

She ran over the spells she knew in her head. She knew she knew more than most unicorns, but she also knew that she didn’t know enough to be a spellsmith to any real degree.

She would be firing directly towards the heart of the Castle. She didn’t want to just vent her power at them as she’d done in the past; the beam it made was immensely destructive and was nearly impossible for even Twilight to stop (they’d tested), but that was exactly the point. If she used it, she’d very likely topple the castle and almost certainly slaughter numerous innocents.

She did know a couple of shield spells. One was a simple hardened air barrier, useless against magic bolts- but the other was a deflection barrier. It was, in fact, the only way Twilight had found to stop her beam attacks- but she knew it had its limits, even with as much power as she could feed it. And that wasn’t even considering that it was directional.

Finally, she selected a quick magic bolt spell as her attack. If she overpowered it by a couple orders of magnitude, it would go from hardly breaking a vase to shattering a hallway- and its occupants- without jeopardizing too much more of the castle.

“Now, are you sure it’s been long enough for that immunity to wear off?”

Flurry scowled. It sounded like she was vulnerable to whatever that spell was once again- and she didn’t know why she had come back.

She needed to avoid getting hit by that one as well.

“Oh yes,” the first pony muttered again. “Should have worn off almost a month ago. Now-!” The door swung open.

Flurry caught only the barest of glimpses of a small hallway of stallions, dressed up in black catsuits and masks to disguise their identities, before the first bolt had snapped across the room and fairly exploded in the front of the party. She fired three times before switching to her shield. Unlike Twilight, she had yet to learn multicasting.

Exactly as expected, the hallway just outside her room had been shattered. The stench of blood flowed into her mother’s room, but she ignored it. She couldn’t see anypony, though she had heard the panicked screams in the hallway when her first shots had hit home, and none of them sounded like the staff.

She heard somepony cuss. “She must be awake.”

“Go figure,” another grumbled.

“Ready?” A third.

“Yup.” The first. “Three. Two. One.”

She was ready for them. They leaped out, around the corner, straight into a series of deadly magic bolts.

There was another cuss word. “She’s smarter than that, you idiot. You told her when you were-!”

The hole was wide enough she could tell which way the words were coming from, so she’d fired through the wall and, presumably, hit him. The castle gave a rumble, and she saw extra debris falling from the ceiling in the scar.

She winced. She must’ve hit something structural.

Then one leaped out and shot at her.

She dodged his spell easily- his aim was too wide- and took him with her return fire.

There was a sudden boom somewhere downstairs, and the castle shook even more violently than it did from her blows.

More ponies leaped out to shoot at her. She shot most of them before they got their spells off, and dodged the last one’s shot before taking him out too.

There was another, even louder boom from downstairs, and she felt the castle definitely starting to list.

It was time to go.

She picked a brief pause in the increasing flow of attackers to fire a bolt backwards at the balcony doors, blowing them clean off their hinges. She needed an escape route, and didn’t have time to open them properly.

“Princess!”

That was Gleaming Shield’s voice, from outside. It sounded like she was flying some distance away from the castle.

Her wings flashed up and, as the next attacker emerged, she drove her wings down, and shot out into the night.

Once outside, she spotted Gleaming Shield, who was moving erratically at some distance, and moved towards her. The mare was in full battle dress, not the showy ‘guard dress’ the Guard normally used, and there was blood all down her sword and spattered on her midnight blue armor. There were even some scorched spots where powerful spells had struck.

“There’s too many,” Gleaming informed her as she drew close.

Flurry glanced back at the castle, just in time to spot three massive thaumic beams blazing simultaneously out one side of the castle, looking like they originated from the same point on the other side- and the central tower’s subsequent drop into the new abyss.

Then, she saw them. Dark shapes, rising up all around the castle, underneath them, closing in around them. She took a deep breath. Gleaming was looking at them as well, readying her blade.

“Ponyville,” Flurry muttered, before she twisted in midair and shot off in the direction of Ponyville.

Gleaming followed her. “Most are just pegasi,” she informed her. “Some are pulling chariots for unicorns.”

She glanced back at the approaching army, and swept a thaumic beam across them before deploying her shield behind her. “I’ll take them out as soon as I know where they are,” she told Gleaming. “You do what you can.”

A magic bolt slammed against her shield. She unleashed another beam attack on its source.

Gleaming, meanwhile, was already gone. Flurry wasn’t a very fast flier, and the attacking pegasi were getting close. She fired a couple of beams at some of the attack parties, but the pegasi were pretty good at dodging her attacks when they weren’t towing unicorns.

Very suddenly, there was a shower of light from ahead. She glanced forwards, before turning to use the hardened air barrier to block an attacking pegasus.

Moments later, the lightstorm- which so happened to be the Wonderbolts, led by none other than Rainbow Dash- came thundering in at full Rainboom, in full battle dress to a mare, in what Flurry recognized as assault formation. Seconds after they arrived, Gleaming returned to Flurry’s side, completely unharmed despite the fresh blood spatters and scorch marks all over her armor and sword.

“Boost!” Gleaming barked.

Immediately, the Wonderbolts withdrew, still at Rainboom velocity, and grabbed both Flurry and Gleaming to pull them towards Ponyville with them.

When she glanced back, past Rainbow’s prismatic mane and contrail, Flurry could see why. The entire battlefield was quickly becoming overshadowed by glowing, neon blue clouds, which were teeming with green lighting and hailing chocolate anvils.

There were also bolts of bright green light zooming in on the attackers from a much larger black cloud that was floating off to the side of Ponyville. The Changelings from the Ponyville Hive, which had been mentioned during the discussions with the Changeling leaders and finally revealed to ponies just a couple days earlier.

The Wonderbolts hailed down on the pavement in front of the Castle of Friendship, though Rainbow and Lightning Dust- who had Flurry and Gleaming respectively- slowed down to allow their charges to land themselves before they did.

Once back down to a slow velocity, Flurry glided down to a quick landing and looked back at the ongoing battle. There were now bright pink cotton candy dragons swooping around, breathing white-hot fire on the rogues. A couple of them were instead breathing a steaming liquid which froze anything it touched- and made for spectacular explosions whenever a fire-breathing one picked a frozen target.

She looked around at the Wonderbolts, and at Gleaming Shield. “Thanks,” she began. “Did we lose anypony?”

“All Wonderbolts accounted for,” Rainbow announced, before looking at Gleaming.

Gleaming shook her head. “Lots of Royal Guards lost inside the Castle. Most in decorative dress. Blueblood sacrificed himself to allow me to get my battle dress.”

Flurry heaved a sigh. “Whelp. Is it okay if I move into the Castle of Friendship for the time being, or no?”

“Shouldn’t be a problem,” Rainbow informed her. “Twilight usually let ponies stay over whenever they like- and any more, it’s only Spike and Starlight living there.”

She blinked, and tilted her head. “Starlight? Wasn’t that Twilight’s student?”

“Yes,” Rainbow nodded simply.

“I’ll have to-!”

Very suddenly, the doors to the Castle of Friendship slammed open, and a light purple pony stepped out, surrounded by a multitude of charged magical weapons and primed attack spells. “Who dares break the peace?” she called.

Rainbow pointed a hoof. “Them.”

The mare looked. “Well they better not come any closer,” she growled, before she looked back down at them, taking a deep breath as her weapons stood down. “You’re right on time, Princess.”

Author's Note

Patreon, Discord.

Last one currently finished. Maybe I'll have the next ready on time... Maybe.

Chapter Closed

“You’re right on time, Princess.”

Flurry blinked. “On time?” she asked. “For what?”

“We just-!”

A small explosion of light and noise appeared right in between them- a hailstorm of thaumic discharges, a very powerful teleport. Some part of Flurry’s mind absently noted Starlight’s weapons- including spells- flashing back up again while her own horn charged for some devastation, before she even realized what had arrived.

It was Prince Blueblood, layered over with so much spell armor she was sure he was basically indestructible. He was standing on a bloodied earth stallion.

“Say that again,” he snarled.

Flurry blinked, and looked again. It wasn’t an earth stallion at all- that bloody spot on his forehead used to be a horn!

“I will not!” the stallion gasped defiantly, struggling to stop Blueblood from crushing his one good leg against him- all three of the others were already badly mangled.

Flurry raised an eyebrow.

“Interrogation Chamber,” Starlight barked, so suddenly that Flurry jumped. “Now.”

Blueblood looked up, then he looked around, apparently surprised by the number of armored ponies around him. And by just how many of them had blood on their weapons- Flurry had noticed, before she had landed, that at least half had, despite only being in the fray for a couple seconds.

As for herself, it wasn’t until a good number of them sheathed their blades that she realized they’d drawn them once again.

“Lightning, Spitfire,” Rainbow ordered, and the two mares stepped forwards, while Blueblood stepped back, off of the crippled stallion.

“He was the leader,” Blueblood informed them. “Said that once they got Flurry, it’d be impossible to bring the others back.”

Flurry tilted her head. “Once they got me? So it’s possible right now?”

Blueblood nodded. “That’s what it sounds like,” he told her. “For as long as you’re safe.”

Lightning Dust and Spitfire dragged the stallion mercilessly up the steps and into the Castle of Friendship, past Starlight, who watched them pass before she started disarming her weapons and spells once again. As she did so, Blueblood also started lowering his various spells.

Flurry took a deep breath, and let it out, before looking up at Starlight. “On time for what?”

“We caught one of the participants from the last attack,” Starlight informed her. “He talked about twenty minutes ago. He told us how to block that curse they’ve been using.”

Flurry nodded silently. “Convenient,” she stated. She then called up her own magic, using a holographic projection spell, and drew the memorized spell matrix in the air in front of them. “I memorized one of their spell bolts.”

Blueblood stepped closer. “That’ll make things easier,” he muttered.

Starlight also stepped up. She narrowed her eyes at it for a few seconds. “They’ve been sent across the dimensional barrier,” she stated. “Bound to some of the inhabitants there, who have gained their powers. If those they- their vessels- make it back to Equestria, and make physical contact with somepony that was struck by this spell but got reflected back here by their prospective host- meaning you, Princess- the other Princesses and Chrysalis will be instantly reconstituted exactly as they had been before, including their powers. Their vessels will not lose their new powers, nor will the return of our Princesses affect them, physically or magically, in any way.”

“How do you know?” Flurry asked.

Starlight pointed at a few points in the middle of the matrix. “Those are ‘notes modules’,” she stated. “They shatter the moment the spell begins its work, with no effect whatsoever. They’re usually used to document how a spell works- makes it easier for it to be improved later.” She snorted. “And a spell this large can’t be cast by hoof, only by thaumic pattern storage and recall, so they are preserved when it is used- up until it hits something.”

She blinked as Starlight named the very technique she’d used to memorize it. “Okay then.”

Blueblood scowled. “Does it say anything about Luna?”

Starlight looked at him, one eyebrow raised.

He shrugged. “I’m a bit rusty.”

She rolled her eyes. “Nothing at all,” she stated. “We think that spell came from the Deep South, so Tempest is headed down there to find out.” She glanced at Flurry. “Discord told us he could break it and get them out, but they likely wouldn’t survive it.”

Author's Note

Patreon, Discord.

Alright. As of today, I am officially cancelling this story. I will probably rewrite it at some point- I really like the premise- but there were simply too many glaring problems for me to forgive. Flurry, for example, was just like Short Flight in Just Like Magic of Old, which was written at around the same time: Young, but acting at least twice their age.

She wasn't the only one, of course. The Potterverse peoples were also far too over-mature, and they got their powers too fast, and everything else.

Now, I have had at least one person ask for permission to write their own version. I have no objection to this- and if you're "continuing" the story as it now is, let me know and I'll link to it in this A/N.

I will do what I can for a "Chapter's End" skit if/when I publish the rewrite.

Chapter's End

Author's Note

If you've read The Gate or On the Implications of Parallel Worlds, you know what's going on here.

If you haven't... This 'chapter', Chapter's End, is a quick, "extended canon" skit intended to link to the Multiverse... and point old readers to the newly rewritten version of the story, Gift of Divinity. Not that this "rewrite" has nearly as much similarity as its predecessor as the The Gate-On the Implications of Parallel Worlds-Accidental Invasion chain did, of course. It's from the ground up, and I mean it, to the point where I'm not sure it even qualifies as a rewrite instead of a completely new story.

I do plan on having a number of the same kinds of things go down, though, albeit in different ways and much more slowly. It should be interesting.

And yes. Sunset it is involved... Somehow.

Chapter's End

"Hello and good evening, Ponies of Equestria," Silversong began, immediately upon stepping through the portal Hailey had helped her make- before promptly tripping and landing on her face. "Oof. Sorry about that."

Hailey trotted casually up next to her, completely unbothered by their change of shape. "You know, there aren't any ponies in this part of the Castle," she told them. "They're all downstairs, in the basement laboratory." She looked thoughtfully at the ceiling. "Feels like... Yeah, feels like they're interrogating someone."

Hermione, Ginny, and Ariel stepped carefully up next to them. "You're right, Silver, this is weird." She lifted one foreleg, then one wing, and looked at them both. "We all seem to be alicorns?"

"Except Ron," Hailey observed, glancing back.

Ron winced. "Well yeah, not everyone can be an immortal goddess, can they?"

"You could also say that not everyone can be bonded with a changeling," Hailey told him, before trotting casually to the door and pushing it open. "Oh hey," she muttered. "Hey, Silver? Looks like Luna's been trapped in the Storm King Icicle Prison- and if I remember right, Twilight has experience with those?"

Silver wobbled over, and looked. "Oh. Huh. Yeah... Which means that if I..." She lowered her horn, and shot a spell at it.

Within moments, the odd crystal Luna had been encased in began to melt away from her.

Seconds after that, Luna was entirely free. She leaped to her hooves and looked around wildly. "What- What happened?"

"I think you got attacked mid-negotiation with Chrysalis," Hailey told her. "Chrysalis was the first to get hit, so I don't know any more than that."

Luna turned to her. "Who are you?" she demanded.

"I'm Hailey," she told her. "We came from another world to bring Chrysalis, Celestia, Twilight, and Cadence back home." She gestured at her friends.

Luna looked between them. "Where are they?" she asked.

"Um... Inside us. According to Silver, all we need to do is touch Flurry Heart and they'll just pop back out."

"... What?"

"Come on!" Starlight snarled, casting even more spells at the panel they'd hung on the wall. The idea was, using the information they'd gotten from the enemy leader, to create a window into the world where the Princesses were.

They kept getting advertisements for something called 'The Gift of Divinity' instead.

The strange advertisement started looping.

Flurry sighed, listening to a fast-paced, rhythmic clicking behind her. It hadn't been there before, but she found it calming.

Suddenly, the clicking ended.

"In this universe, Sunset-!"

A blast of Starlight's magic completely disabled the window.

Flurry sighed.

"You have now won two thousand nine hundred and eighteen games out of the last two thousand nine hundred and eighteen," Twilight's voice said suddenly.

Flurry looked. Everyone in the room did.

Princesses Celestia, Cadence, and Twilight were playing four-player checkers with Chrysalis on a massive board.

"And with the exact same sequence of moves these last twelve times," Chrysalis observed. "Oh, and we seem to be back, too."

The princesses looked up.

"Flurry!" Cadence jumped clear over Celestia's head, without unfurling her wings, to hug her daughter. "I was so worried!"

"That 'Gift of Divinity' thing sounded like a good show," someone said. "Can we watch it?"

Everypony looked.

There was a row of strange alicorns, sitting casually about three feet behind where Flurry had been and looking very amused.

"Hi," said the one that was so dark of a blue that she was almost black. "I'm pretty sure we're the ones you were looking for."

Princess Luna, sitting next to her, put a hoof to her muzzle to stifle her laughter.

TGift of Divinity

Any mistake has consequences- and proportionally, a huge mistake has truly massive consequences in turn.

computerneek · 35k words · 75 7 · 976 views