For Sunset Shimmer, stepping out of the floo at platform nine and three quarters was almost like stepping onto the train platform back in Canterlot, and the unexpected nostalgia struck with such suddenness that she forgot to clear the floo and had to stumble aside when Luna came up behind her.

It was the architecture most of all that did it. Rather than the crooked whimsy of Diagon Alley or the modern Manehattan-like architecture of muggle London, there was a certain stately manner to the train platform that felt familiar, as did the bright red steam engine that sat patiently in the middle of the space, slowly filling with soon-to-be students who were milling about and saying goodbye to their families.

Sunset wondered at that as she took in the scene. As a once-orphan who had been adopted by the crown, she was torn between understanding and disbelief. On one hoof, the idea of leaving what had once been her home to live in a school-like environment was a very familiar one, which drew out a certain nostalgia in her. On the other hoof, though, unlike her, these children all had families. They were barely old enough to be let out of the sight of their parents, and it just seemed wrong to separate them for no real reason as far as she could see.

By the time Sunset realized how long she'd been standing there, it had been long enough to be decidedly awkward—or, at least, it would have been if Luna hadn't been doing much the same thing, looking out over all the small family groups with slightly misty eyes for reasons that were all too obvious to anyone who knew the slightest thing about her situation. It had been a month and a half since the two of them had returned from Faerie without her parents, and while Luna remained adamant that they would return, it would forever be true that they hadn't been here to see Luna off to Hogwarts for the very first time.

Eventually, Sunset nudged Luna to get her moving. They had plenty of time and weren't in any hurry, but it was best not to dwell too much on things and the sooner they found themselves some seats, the more options they would have.

Besides, they were starting to attract attention. Admittedly, that was to be expected when one was a colorful Equestrian pony in the middle of a crowd of tall, gangly humans who all looked like they had had the same idea for a Nightmare Night costume, but a good deal of them were eyeing up Luna like they weren't sure if she was in possession of all of her marbles, which was not only rude, but also just terribly naïve. After living with her for a month and a half, Sunset was confident in saying that Luna had all of her marbles and then some. Luna just had so many marbles that she just didn't have the time to polish them all and... okay, that metaphor got away from her.

Anyway, it was ridiculous, the kinds of looks that Luna was getting. Sunset knew that the Wizarding World was a small community, and, yes, Luna was in charge of one of its few publications, but still, they were acting as if the eleven-year-old girl was about to come at them with a—

Sunset facehoofed, then hip-checked Luna in the knee. "Luna," she said with exasperation. "Put the knife away."

Because yes, Luna's cursed knife was in her hand, and at that particular moment she was using it to scratch behind her ear. Considering they hadn't yet found anything that the knife couldn't cut, the action was simultaneously both impressive and terrifying.

Luna let out a beleaguered sigh, but vanished the knife as instructed, standing a little straighter as she did so. That was to be expected; the knife, which had come from an ill-advised deal with Titania, the queen of the seelie, could not be put down. Luna either had to handle it constantly—which she was getting progressively better at every day—or she could store it in that vague conceptual way that the two of them had learned to do in Faerie. The choice seemed obvious—only, according to Luna, keeping it that way felt to her like the knife was pressed tip-first against her spine, ready to reenact the method by which she'd acquired it. It was not only uncomfortable, but a very unpleasant reminder of a very unpleasant day.

Luna's reluctance was understandable, but all the same, that was going to be one heck of a first impression for Future-Luna to deal with.

Hm.

Perhaps the next issue of The Quibbler could have a few articles speculating on all the different ways its editor might have come across such a knife? That could be fun.

The small voice inside of her representing her journalistic integrity said not to do it.

Of course, the Wizarding World had not invented journalistic integrity yet, so that voice was ignored.

"Have you spotted Ginny yet?" Luna asked out of the blue as the crowd parted before them.

Sunset blinked, startled out of her musings. She caught herself looking around a bit before she realized what she was doing. "You can see through my eyes," Sunset dryly reminded her. "Also, she's a bright orange pony—"

"—Tuft-winged Snorkack," Luna corrected. "Yes, I know."

Sunset was momentarily speechless, then double-checked the platform just to confirm that, no, she hadn't missed the obvious. "...No, Luna. I haven't spotted Ginny yet. Or Harry Potter, for that matter."

Later, when they were about to board the train, Luna wondered out loud, "I wonder how they're going to get a tuft-winged snorkack through the muggle side of the platform?"

⁂

"You know, the whole driving-away laughing thing would probably be a bit more alarming if I actually didn't know where to go," Harry Potter observed.

No one responded, though, because there was no one there to respond. He was an eleven-year-old boy, completely alone on the curb at King's Cross station, and only his owl, Hedwig, was listening. Technically, the owl wasn't even his except in a roundabout way as his familiar's familiar, but he'd convinced Ginny to let him name it after he'd had to veto half a dozen of the worst names imaginable.

If Harry managed one thing in his position as technically being Ginny's owner, it was going to be to never let her name anything. Fortunately, she'd agreed that Hedwig was a good and appropriate name for the grandfamiliar of Harry Potter, the orphan hero and Boy Who Lived.

Kneeling next to his trunk, Harry lifted the blackout cover of Hedwig's cage and made a show of checking on her, then proceeded to pop the latch on the trunk and crack it open.

"I regret everything," Ginny groaned from inside the trunk.

"Are you okay?'" Harry asked.

"No!" Ginny hissed, excessively irate. "I am never doing this again. I should have just flown. Next time, I'm going to fly."

Harry looked around at the busy train station, doubtful. "I really don't think that's going to work," he said. "There's no way you could make it to the platform without being seen."

"I'll hide in a cloud,'" Ginny confidently declared.

Harry thunked his forehead against the lid of the trunk. "Clouds in the muggle world don't swoop out of the sky and hover next to the platform any more than bright orange ponies do," he reminded her.

"Yeah," Ginny agreed, unconcerned. "But they wouldn't see me, so it'd be fine."

The fact that Harry couldn't come up with an immediate response to that was not a good sign.

"Anyway," Ginny said, moving on without his response. "I could come in the middle of the night, or wait and follow the train. The Hogwarts Express sticks out like a sore thumb and landing on it would be a cinch."

Harry raised an eyebrow at that. "Landing on a moving train would be a cinch?" he asked.

"Sure," Ginny said, not a single doubt in her mind. "The thing that makes landing so hard is that the ground's not moving, so you've got to slow way down to match it. Landing on a moving train is just flying closer and closer until you're there."

"...I suppose you're the expert," Harry eventually admitted.

His sarcasm went entirely unnoticed.

"You're damn right I am," Ginny agreed. The trunk then shook with a jolt, as if from a kick. "Now hurry up and get going to the platform. I really need to get out of this damn thing and stretch my wings."

Harry glanced over at the supposed entrance to platform nine and three-quarters. "You're sure I just go at the barrier between nine and ten?" he asked, rather uncertain. "You do realize that if I crash into the wall, you're the one that's going to feel it most."

"Yes, yes, I'm sure," Ginny said, rolling her eyes at him through the cracked lid of the trunk. "I've been through here dozens of times dropping off and picking up my brothers; dad loves seeing the muggle side of the station and mum always makes sure we know which platform it is in case we get lost. Every. Single. Time."

"Alright, alright," Harry said, rolling his eyes right back at her. "I get it. You're sure."

In spite of Ginny's urging, Harry took a moment to latch the trunk again and make sure that Hedwig's cage wasn't going to move before wrangling the trolley over in the direction of the barrier. With two trunks stacked up behind a large cage, it was almost comical to look at, but fortunately no one actually decided to stop and question why a barely-eleven-year-old boy was struggling with two trunks and an owl all on his own, and soon enough, he had himself in the right position to enter the barrier.

Harry stopped, then, and felt like there was something he was missing, but after double checking everything, he casually pushed the trolley at a slow walk towards the barrier because, really, no matter how many assurances he had from Ginny, it looked very solid and she had a fondness for pranks. This wasn't one of them, though, and he slipped into the barrier casually and without issue.

⁂

Checking every compartment they passed for anyone they knew without being obnoxious was all but impossible. It was good, then, that neither Sunset nor Luna were bothered all that much about being obnoxious. "Sticking your nose into other people's business is the essence of being a reporter," Luna reassured her as she poked her head into another door.

It was also, apparently, the essence of being a Hogwarts student, as it was only the rare few who weren't doing the exact same thing looking for their own friends. Luna, of course, was on the lookout for Ginny and Harry for obvious reasons, but Sunset was keeping an eye out for Hermione, the muggleborn girl that they had gone to Diagon Alley with.

Her reasons were a little less altruistic, though the girl did seem like the kind of person that needed more Luna in her life.

No, the reason that Sunset wanted to meet up with Hermione was that, for all the research she'd done in the last month doing articles for the Quibbler, essentially none of it had covered the muggle world.

And Sunset needed to know about the muggle world.

She had time—years—until the portal would open so she could return to Equestria, it was true, but finding a single statue in an entire industrialized world was a similarly large task, and she'd been feeling her lack of progress like an itch that had gone unscratched in the days leading up to the beginning of term.

Luna knew about the muggle world, of course, but it was bits and pieces from an outsider's perspective, and very little of it useful for the kind of information she needed. Xenophilius also had piles and piles of books on the subject, every one of them with whole chapters scratched out and annotated with notes like, 'This hasn't been true since the 1930's,' or 'pureblood propaganda.'

Frankly, regardless of her need, paging through them all looking for the occasional passage that wasn't redacted or contradicted would have been a waste of her time, as even then there was no guarantee that it wasn't just something that Xenophilius hadn't yet disproven.

No, Sunset needed a primary source, and Hermione seemed like a good and proper one that wouldn't mind her questions and wouldn't require her to go about making friends with more people.

If Sunset could just find her.

Briefly, she kind of wished that she and Luna had actually taken the Grangers up on their offer of hospitality for at least a day or two over the summer, but they had been busy with The Quibbler, hadn't had a solution for the whole 'muggle neighborhood' issue and, if she was being honest with herself, hadn't wanted to accept what had been a rather condescending offer in the first place. Sunset and Luna had done just fine on their own—and they still would have even if Mrs. Weasley hadn't been offloading pies and casseroles to them every other day.

Unfortunately, along with not having contacted the Grangers also came not knowing when they had planned to arrive, so there was a good chance that searching the train twenty minutes before departure as they were doing was pointless.

Evidently, Luna had come to the same conclusion about Ginny and Harry at some point, and the next time they chanced across an empty compartment they decided to just stake their claim by filling the baggage rack with a pair of trunks that they were definitely carrying with them that whole time no matter what anyone else would claim.

⁂

Ginny burst out of Harry's trunk the moment he stopped on the other side of the barrier. After a month and a half of living with her, this didn't entirely surprise him, though he would have preferred not to start things off having his smallclothes scattered across the platform.

Ginny, though, was shameless, stretching and fluffing her bright orange wings in so carefree a manner that it might as well have been semaphore, signaling everyone on the platform to look at her while Harry dashed this way and that grabbing clothes and books so he could chuck them back into his trunk.

"I realize that it must be physically painful for you not to be the center of attention for five minutes," Harry said, injecting the statement with all the sarcasm he could muster while snapping his trunk back closed again. "But must you?"

"Yes, I must," Ginny declared, going so far as to hover in place. Ever since the Dursleys had found out about Ginny and their inability to actually get rid of her, she had been much freer about practicing with her wings indoor and had become quite nimble in the air. "Besides, you're Harry Potter, however that works; if they weren't looking at me, they'd be looking at you. You're going to have to get used to that."

"Yes, but the important part is that they wouldn't be looking at me chasing my unmentionables drifting off on a surprisingly blustery breeze," he said, giving her a sour look. "And I still feel off about that whole Harry Potter thing. You really had me convinced I wasn't the real one, and that's not something that's easy to just walk back."

"Hey, I'm as traumatized as you are!" Ginny insisted entirely unconvincingly. "Just, you know, try to act like Harry Potter. It'll be fine."

"Oh, aye," Harry said, rolling his eyes. "I'll just act like Harry Potter, the grand adventuring Boy Who Lived that slew a dragon when he was five."

"He rode a dragon when he was five," Ginny corrected him. "He didn't slay any dragons until he was at least eight or so."

"The point is, he—I—didn't do any of that!" Harry reminded her. "I can't just pretend I'm a storybook hero; people are going to notice that I don't know one end of a dragon from the other."

Ginny cocked her head and blinked. "The end with the teeth is the head," she pointed out, feeling that that should have been obvious. "Usually."

Harry buried his face in his hands. "You know what I mean!"

"Look," Ginny said, swooping over to land on Harry's trunk and look him over. "I don't mean you need to pretend to be that Harry Potter. That would be dumb; no one would actually pretend to be an adventuring hero when they can't even cast a Protego. Just, you know, start from the beginning. Act like the sad orphan boy who just found out he's destined to be a hero."

"So, do exactly what I'm doing?" Harry dryly inquired, looking down at his ratty muggle clothes. He definitely had the 'poor, aggrieved orphan' look down, at least.

"No, no," Ginny insisted, crossing her forehooves in an 'x' shape. "You look more like a street rat who's absolutely done with this shit. It's entirely the wrong impression. There needs to be more awe and wonder—determination and bravery—that sort of thing."

Harry awkwardly tried to straighten his oversized jumper. "Yeah, well, it's hard to be roguishly handsome or whatever when I'm tripping over the hems of my trousers. I wish I'd thought to get clothes that aren't school uniforms when we went to Diagon Alley."

"That's hardly the only thing we missed going to Diagon," Ginny sourly agreed, and Harry guessed that she wasn't talking about school supplies. They had found out through letters that Ginny's mother, Mrs. Weasley, had been at the alley on the lookout for them that day, but something had prevented her from meeting up with them.

After a month and a half, Ginny was clearly beginning to feel the separation from her family.

"Do you want to wait here on the platform for when they show up?" Harry suggested. He didn't really know what it was like to actually have family he could miss, but that seemed like something they could do.

Ginny did want to, he could tell, but even as she looked back over at the portal to the muggle side of King's Cross Station, she shook her head. "No, I don't think so," she said. "It probably won't work, and they're always the absolute last ones on the platform, too. If something goes wrong that prevents them from meeting us, they might actually miss the train."

That was true, Harry supposed. There was definitely something messing with events around them; that much was blatantly obvious after a month of watching the Dursleys fail to get rid of Ginny. The obvious answer was that it was Titania's doing, but Harry wasn't entirely convinced.

"We're lucky the letters worked, if you can even call it that," Ginny continued, crossing her forelegs over her chest and thinking. "They were too short for letters from mum, and the howlers were... weird, even if they were the nicest howlers I've ever heard."

"Howlers are weird," Harry insisted, feeling rather strongly about that. "You have a way to send literal voice-mail to kids that you haven't seen for the better part of a year and the only thing you use it for is to yell at them? That's insane, isn't it? This isn't a me being an orphan thing, right?"

"Um." Ginny had to think about it. "I think it's this thing where the emotion is what actually fuels the spell or something?" she suggested, not sounding at all sure about it.

Harry was entirely unconvinced. "The ones we got from your mum weren't angry, though?"

"Oh, no," Ginny reassured him. "She might not have really shown it, but I'm pretty sure she was absolutely livid about something when she sent those. Probably Titania's spell."

"I still think it might not be Titania," Harry said. "I mean, it would explain why they never got rid of me, either."

"Harry," Ginny said, leveling a flat look at him. "That odious man brought home a cat carrier to put me in and only realized after he'd brought it inside that it had a bobcat in it. It's either fae or house elves, which apparently isn't as much of a distinction as I'd like."

Harry shook his head, deciding not to argue. "Well, if you're sure you don't want to wait, then I guess we should find a compartment. Do you think your friend is already here?"

"Well, it's Luna, so... I have no idea."

⁂

Of course, the problem with giving in and settling down in a compartment was the fact that they then had to deal with everyone else stopping by and opening the door to check who was inside, and unlike all the rest, when someone peeked in and found a colorful animal, they often had questions.

Fortunately for Sunset, Luna enjoyed providing answers, which was usually enough to either satisfy or confuse their visitors enough to get them to leave. Still, even that was technically progress, and Sunset hoped that eventually someone they actually knew would show up. It wasn't long before she got her wish, either, though not in the way that she actually wanted.

Sunset was perusing Luna's A History of Magic textbook when the door slid open after a perfunctory knock to reveal a vaguely familiar blonde girl that took Sunset a few moments to place.

"Oh, you're... Daphne Greengrass, right?" she said, lowering the book that she had levitating in front of her, but not setting it down. "From just outside the apothecary."

"Indeed," said the blonde, coming off as cool and composed, though her eye was drawn to the glow of Sunset's magic. She looked at Luna instead. "Lovegood."

"Greengrass," Luna greeted in return. There was a short pause, and she tilted her head to the side ever so slightly before she eventually asked, "Would you like to join us?"

Daphne considered the offer for a moment, but shook her head and declined. "Sorry, but no. I look forward to seeing how... interesting things get with you around," she said, though she was clearly talking about Sunset as much as Luna, "...But I think I'd rather enjoy the show from afar. You could say that I'm allergic to excitement."

Luna hmmed, and tilted her head the other way, following something with her good eye. "Fair enough," she said.

"Besides, I already have one peculiar moon-themed girl," she said. Stepping back from the door, she introduced a black-haired girl that might have had some Asian ancestry as, "Lily Moon."

A third girl, "Tracy Davis!" chimed in to introduce herself as the upbeat brunette next to her and suddenly Sunset was glad that Daphne had turned Luna down. Two girls and an extrovert would be a bit much to add to their compartment.

Daphne's group was just excusing themselves when a bright orange pony showed up behind them. They all watched, amused, as the pony nearly walked past the compartment, then glanced inside and spotted Luna.

Anyone with a kindergartener's skill in pattern matching could have guessed that the violently orange pony would join the only compartment with another pony in it. What came as a surprise was the shout of "Luna!" and the sheer speed at which the pegasus launched herself inside to hug the daylights out of her friend, nearly bowling over everyone involved.

In comparison, the boy who slipped inside with her in the midst of all the commotion went almost unnoticed.

"Oh, Merlin, Luna, this last month has been so... so... augh! I can't even describe it!"

This, Sunset gathered from the process of elimination and the fact that she was the only other pony on Earth, was Luna's friend, Ginny. That, perhaps, went without saying, but honestly she'd met the girl two times for less than five minutes a month and a half ago. She looked much better without the muddy dress that she'd left behind on Luna's doorstep, but the particular nearly-neon shade of copper-orange was... noteworthy.

And this was coming from a mare with a red and gold mane, though at least Sunset's coat was more of a pastel.

Of course, with Daphne and her friends still there, they all had to go through another round of introductions. Daphne clearly did not expect for the pony to be introduced as, "Ginny Weasley," but what surprised her even more was the boy in rags who Luna casually introduced as "Harry Potter," as if they had actually met before for more than half a second through a portal.

Sunset rather enjoyed the look of torn resignation on Daphne's face as she considered whether or not she could change her mind about Luna's invitation without looking too opportunistic and came up negative. The three of them hung around while Sunset helped Ginny and Harry with their trunks, levitating them up to the luggage rack, but eventually they had to make good on their earlier declaration and excuse themselves with poorly masked reluctance.

Once the door was closed, Ginny wasted no time at all focusing on Sunset. "You!" she shouted.

"Me?" Sunset answered, pointing at her chest with her hoof in question.

"Yes, you!" Ginny said, jumping up to hover right in front of Sunset. "What the heck are you, where do you come from, what does that make me and how come you get a flipping magic horn and I got bupkis?"

Sunset opened her mouth to respond, paused, then said, "...If Princess Celestia heard you talking that way about pegasi, you'd be doing essays on tribal equality for months."

"That's great, but who the heck is Princess Celestia? Ginny shouted, throwing her hooves up in the air in frustration.

Sunset rolled her eyes, but decided she may as well start with the basics. "I am a—"

"Crumple-horned Snorkack," Luna interjected.

"...From Equestria. That makes you a—"

"Tuft-winged Snorkack."

"...And I have, horns, wings and some nebulous third quality because I ascended to a special kind of—"

"Snorkack."

"...with the qualities of all three primary—"

"Snorkack."

"Tribes."

Ginny was not amused. "...Okay, try that again, but without the bullshit."

⁂

"Oh Merlin!" Ginny gasped, horrified at the story that Luna had just told her. "She really—? You spent a year—?! A knife in the back! That's the knife she was talking about?!" The final straw came only when she thought about the whole ordeal in hindsight and compared it to what she'd known before. "Luna! You told me that Titania was amicable!"

Luna blinked, not seeing the problem. "Yes."

"Stabbing you in the back is not amicable!" Ginny insisted, hardly believing that this was something she had to explain.

"It was, though," Luna said, undeterred in her reasoning. "She was entirely pleasant about it at the time. Now, haranguing me about carrying it—that I could have done without. Fortunately, I can't see that ever happening again."

"...Because you waited until she was gone and chucked it in the woods?" Ginny guessed.

"Because I can't actually put it down," Luna corrected her, suddenly flipping the wicked-looking knife that Ginny hadn't realized she'd been holding.

Ginny gaped.

Luna caught the knife in her other hand, just as the door opened.

"Sorry, do you have room—" the boy started to say, then froze. It was Ginny's brother, Ron. He looked at the knife. He looked at Luna. He looked at Ginny and Sunset, and then he looked at the knife again. He opened his mouth, but nothing came out. He tried again to the same result, then clapped his mouth shut with a snap of his teeth. He took one long look at Ginny, then slowly backed out of the compartment and shut the door.

"...That was weird, right?" Harry asked no one in particular.

"That was my brother, Ron," Ginny paraphrased. "And yes."

"More evidence about the spell, do you think?" He asked, not entirely sure.

"...Maybe?" Ginny said, no more certain than he was. "That's probably how he would react to any compartment full of girls though."

"Also, the knife," Harry pointed out.

"Yes," Ginny agreed, nodding. "Also the—the knife!" Now reminded of what they'd been doing before her brother had showed up, Ginny rounded on Luna again and shouted, "Luna!"

Luna gave Ginny her attention, which wasn't so reassuring because she had also gone back to casually flipping the knife from one hand to the other. "Yes, Ginny?"

Ginny tried to convey her absolute horrified exasperation with her friend, but whatever small-horse powers she might have had, reverse-legitimacy wasn't one of them, so she just buried her head in her hooves and repeated herself. "Luna."

"You know what's worse?" Sunset shimmer said, keeping a wary eye on Luna's knife. "That's not even the most horrifying part."

Ginny blinked. "...What."

Harry was more polite about it, but also felt that he needed to ask, "What's the most horrifying part?"

"The most horrifying part," Sunset said, drawing it out for maximum effect. "Is that after Titania got Luna to claim the knife, we came home later that day to find that the shirt hasn't changed at all."

...Yep, that was the horrifying part alright.

"You mean, if someone else put it on they'd still get stabbed in the back and then they'd have their own knife...?" Harry guessed, working it out.

"That... or it's just a shirt with a picture on it now," Sunset said, shrugging. "Someone would have to put it on to find out. I certainly can't tell, even with a horn so sensitive I can feel The Burrow's wards from The Rookery."

Ginny shook her head and filed all that away in her head under, 'Don't borrow clothes from Luna ever again.' The implications of murderous muggle wear were hardly the most important part of Luna's story.

"So..." Ginny said, getting everyone's attention. "You think Titania was looking for any excuse to turn me into a—" she glanced at Luna, "...tuft-winged snorkack... so that sometime down the line she could get more 'snorkack physicality' from me?"

"That's what makes the most sense," Sunset said. "She really seemed to enjoy it because... well, obviously, it's pretty great."

Ginny looked at her hooves, then gave Sunset a flat look that said everything it needed to. Sighing and not wanting to get into an argument over it, she instead said, "That explains a lot, really. Great. Just... great."

"On the bright side," Luna said, chiming in in her charmingly dotty tone. "The deal you ended up making sent you somewhere that she couldn't get to you, and now we're off to Hogwarts where the wards are legendary."

Ginny shared a look with Harry. "Really," she said. "You think she couldn't get to us there."

Sunset perked up and Luna looked genuinely confused. "...Yes? You were..." she paused at that point in a very non-Luna way. "...In the muggle world, weren't you?"

"That," Ginny said. "Apparently doesn't mean as much as you'd think if they really, really want something."

Sunset looked particularly interested when she asked, "Titania actually entered the property when you were with Harry's relatives?"

Ginny was about to regale the two with all the problems they had had when she stopped to think about the phrasing that Sunset had used. "No—and no," she said. "That would have been preferable. It was Mab."

Luna's knife sunk into the floor of the compartment with a hearty thunk. The girl in question was staring at Ginny through haunted eyes, her fingers tangled in the air before her where she'd fumbled her knifeplay. "Mab was there?" she asked, almost whispering. "In the muggle world? At Harry's?"

"Well," Ginny said, shuffling uncomfortably under Luna's gaze. "Not exactly. We didn't actually see Mab, but there were unseelie that attacked us."

Luna relaxed just a tiny bit, though she was still peculiarly tense when she prompted, "But they were at Harry's?"

"...No—well—kind of..." Ginny said, trying to guess what exactly Luna was looking for in an answer. "They certainly made themselves known, but they only actually attacked us when the Dursleys freaked out about all the letters from Hogwarts and took Harry off to stay at some hotels."

For some reason, that made Luna relax the rest of the way. "Oh," she said rather mildly, as if Ginny wasn't still talking about being attacked by the vilest of fae.

There had to be more to it.

Ginny eyed her friend and said, "You know something."

"I know lots of things," Luna agreed in her most Luna-like way.

Harry immediately picked up on what Ginny was implying, but he directed his question at Sunset instead, hoping that she would be more direct. "You know something about the spell?"

Sunset rolled her eyes at Harry, though she was clearly looking distressed. "I know over a dozen spells just for setting things on fire; you're going to have to be a bit more specific than that."

Ginny was about to double down and tell the both of them to stop playing around when the door to the compartment opened and a bushy-haired brunette stuck her head in. "Has anyone seen a toad?" she asked, earning Ginny's ire, though her eyebrows rose the instant she actually saw who all was in the compartment.

"Luna!" the new said, smiling brightly as she invited herself the rest of the way into the compartment. Sunset also received a friendly glance, but more than either of the apparently known quantities, the girl's eyes lingered on Ginny and she immediately planted herself next to her. "I'm Hermione—Hermione Granger," she said, twisting herself in her seat to hold her hand out.

Poleaxed and more than a little frustrated, Ginny absently shook the hand that was being offered to her.

Somehow, that alone made the girl brighten up even more like a brilliant lumos. "You have grippy hooves!" Hermione beamed, turning Ginny's hoof this way and that as if she was looking for the mechanism behind it. "That's amazing! How does it work? Is it because you don't have a horn? Do you—"

Fed up, Ginny snatched her hoof back and pointed dramatically at the girl that had just barged her way in, interrupting their first chance to actually find out what was going on with the spell that was on them. "No!" she shouted, pointing her hoof right up against the girl's nose. "You—be quiet!"

"Wh—what?" Hermione said, crossing her eyes at the hoof that had only just come short of hitting her in the face. "I—I—" She began to tear up.

Ginny ignored her, then moved her hoof to point violently at Luna and Sunset. "You two! Talk! What do you know?!"

It would have had a bit more impact if Harry hadn't then immediately picked Ginny up like a child and said, "Stop that, you," dropping her on the other side of him while he scooted over to take her place next to Hermione. "I'm sorry about Ginny, she was... very invested in the conversation we were having."

"I—but I just—" Hermione blubbered, scrubbing the sleeves of her brand new robes across her eyes and making a mess of herself.

Harry panicked, looking around the compartment. "Oh, err—I suppose this is where I'm supposed to give you a handkerchief, but I don't really—sorry."

Hermione shook her head and tried to compose herself. "It's—it's okay. I'm sorry but I just—I thought that Hogwarts... that it would be different."

"Oh for—" Ginny grit her teeth and held herself back from saying anything and making things worse. This was exactly what she'd been trying to avoid. Luna knew something—and her little pony, too—but now everyone was giving her the stink-eye and she still wasn't any closer to finding out what was going on.

It was almost as if it was intentional.

Eventually, Luna managed to produce a fluffy yellow hand towel out of nowhere that Ginny could identify and Hermione was able to dry her face and collect herself while Harry bumbled himself through comforting her and reassuring her that things would be okay and Hogwarts would be different.

Things were looking just calm enough that Ginny was about ready to push Luna and Sunset for answers again when Hermione looked up at the boy who was being so nice to her, got startled by his astonishingly green eyes, then saw the scar on his forehead and gasped. "You—you're—um—Harry Potter?"

Harry visibly winced, then tried to hide it by scratching at the back of his neck. "Oh, well, yes, I suppose."

"You suppose?" Hermione asked, perplexed at the non-answer. "Is there something uncertain about it? I rather would have thought that the scar was definitive. I mean, I only got a few extra books for background reading and someone—" she glanced over at Sunset and Luna, "—didn't mention that one of them was on the book list... but he's in Modern Magical History, The Rise and Fall of the Dark Arts and Great Wizarding Events of the Twentieth Century. I'd have found out everything about it if it was me."

"No, no, it is me," Harry reassured her, though he did a rather poor job of it. "It's just also news to me. I didn't know anything about the magical world until a tiny angry pony fell out of a portal on top of me a month and a half ago."

Hermione cocked her head to the side in curiosity. "A month and a half ago?" she mused, recognizing the date. "That was your visit from Hogwarts, then, I take it? My magical pony just came in the front door with the Deputy Headmistress—though she was invisible at the time."

"Actually," Harry said, rather embarrassed to say, "It had nothing to do with Hogwarts. We didn't get our letters until two weeks later. It was a right mess keeping her hidden from my relatives."

"We?" Hermione said, noticing the unexpected pronoun. "Letters, plural? Did you have a cousin that's also going to Hogwarts?"

Harry blanched, and Ginny fancied he was imagining Dudley going to Hogwarts with them. Ginny thought that that would have been grand, actually. Not only would it have infuriated Vernon, but with as little supervision as there was at Hogwarts, she and Harry would have been able to enlist the twins to do just about anything to him.

"God, no," Harry said. "No—sorry, I don't think we really did all the introductions right," he gestured at Ginny. "I guess you know Luna and Sunset, and the sulking pony is Ginny Weasley. She's also going to Hogwarts."

Ginny stomped over Harry's legs and reached out to shake Hermione's hand. "Charmed," she sarcastically bit out, visibly resisting the ongoing distraction. She was not going to let this go.

Hermione gingerly shook Ginny's hoof while still looking inquiringly at Harry. "She's going?" she asked. "Isn't she, like, five? And a pony?"

Ginny's jaw dropped. "I am not five," she shouted stomping her hoof where she was standing. "And I—"

Unfortunately for Harry, she was standing on his lap, and he was a boy.

"...Ow," Harry whimpered.

⁂

She might not have looked it, but Sunset was rather irate. True, there was some amusement to be had in watching things turn against Ginny, but it was buried beneath the immense frustration of not being able to tell Ginny and Harry what she knew about the wards.

It was almost, but not quite similar to having her name used against her. Her name was... a blind spot. Her name was part of her identity, so when Titania had stolen it and used it against her, there was no sense of struggle or frustration; things were just obviously true, whether or not they entirely made sense.

With the ward on Harry Potter's home, though, it was more of a haze that came and went. It was a fog that was unobtrusive most of the time, hiding certain ideas away to keep them from being considered, but absolutely impenetrable if you barreled straight into it intentionally.

Clearly, Luna having her name was the bigger issue even if the quirky girl was very good at avoiding using it against her, but somehow it was just easier to be angry at the wards on Harry's home.

Harry probably would have agreed, given this most recent unkindness visited upon his person.

Little fillies could stomp harder than one might think.

"Ginny is actually eleven," Luna informed Hermione. "Barely. Titania only needed to take eleven days of life from her to make her eleven in time to get her Hogwarts letter."

"Oh," Hermione said, clearly reconsidering some assumptions she'd made. "So you were a human?" she asked.

"Yes," Ginny grumbled from back on the other side of Harry, arms crossed over her chest and looking very, very grumpy.

"...Who has been turned into a five-year-old pony?" Hermione concluded uncertainly.

"No, I'm not!" Ginny shouted, standing back up, though she then looked to Sunset. "I'm not, right?"

"No, you're not," Sunset said. "You're the age you should be."

Ginny eyed Sunset up and down, then. "Wait—then how old does that make—"

"No comment," Sunset interrupted.

"What do you mean, 'No comment'?" Ginny said, offended at being denied. "You're a kid. You don't get to 'no comment' your age! ...I mean... You are a kid, right?"

"Look," Sunset said. "I'm a teenager with most of a full magical education directly from the princess of the sun, and that's all you're getting from me. Don't make it weird."

Ginny was winding up for another angry rant, saying, "Why must you be so—" when she stopped and apparently realized that this was not the hill she wanted to die on, and she already had one picked out for that. "...Fine, fine. Forget the age thing. Now that we've all met and everyone's on the same page and getting along, let's go back to you telling Harry and I—"

As expected, Ginny was interrupted by a soft tap tap tap at the door, after which it opened to reveal an old witch stooped over an ornate trolley packed with various packaged candies and snack foods. "Anything from the trolley, dears?"

"Oh, for merlin's sake—!" Ginny said, stomping the seat. Sunset thought that she might be going red with frustration, though it was hard to tell since she was already so violently orange.

Harry, though, while he certainly shared her desire to find out what Sunset and Luna knew, had no such feeling of urgency about it. "You said you liked Fizzing Whizzbees, didn't you, Ginny?"

"...Yes," Ginny quietly responded, her face buried in the upholstery.

Harry nodded, buying her a package without question, though he seemed to have a bit of trouble choosing for himself. "Actually, it's supposed to be a long trip, do you think you might like some pumpkin pasties? They're the closest thing to real food I see."

"...Yes, please," Ginny said, not having moved an inch.

Luna, meanwhile, purchased a pack of Bertie Bott's Every Flavour Beans for herself and some Apple Rings for Sunset, who took them without comment. In the month and a half since Sunset had come to Earth and the Wizarding world, she had tried most of their stranger sweets, and while chocolate frogs, ice mice and peppermint toads were amusing novelties, she'd come to the conclusion that she did not, in fact, have an inner predator inside of her yearning to chase her food under the couch when it escaped.

Harry, though, was still undecided on anything for himself, and when he realized that everyone was waiting for him, he flushed and said, "Actually... I'll just take one of everything, if that's okay. I'd like to try it all eventually, and I don't imagine there's a sweets shop just outside the history classroom."

"There's Hogsmead," Ginny informed him, taking her Fizzing Whizzbees and Pumpkin Pasty with uncharacteristic meekness, fed up and exhausted with trying to root out what the ward wanted kept secret. "You can't go until third year, but that's Fred and George this year, which I'm sure will in no way go wrong."

Harry didn't inquire further, busy as he was stacking his armful of candy up between himself and Hermione. It was only then that he belatedly realized that she was the only person in the compartment that didn't have anything.

Suddenly self-conscious of his excess, Harry looked down at the pile and blushed. "Sorry, did you not get anything? Aside from the wizard thing, having money is new to me, too, and I don't mind sharing."

"I—ah—no, thank you," Hermione said, clearly feeling put on the spot. "My parents are dentists, so we don't really do sweets."

Harry frowned, seriously considering the pile of candy.

"Um. Not—not that you should feel bad for eating sweets or anything," she hurriedly added. "I know it's weird, and—"

"No, no," Harry said. "That's not it. I was just trying to think if I've ever had tooth problems and, I mean, the answer's obvious. It's not like the Dursleys would ever take me to the dentist, so I'm just wondering if wizards and witches just don't need to worry about that sort of thing."

"Oh, we absolutely do," Luna chimed in. "If you'd seen some of the teeth that older wizards have, you'd wonder if gum disease isn't a bigger threat than dark magic."

Rolling her eyes at the way the conversation was going, Ginny loudly cleared her throat and said, "Hey, guys, let's talk about that thing that—"

Right on schedule, the compartment door slammed open, revealing a skinny blonde boy with two more behind him in a manner not unlike Daphne Greengrass' visit. "They're saying all up and down the train that Harry Potter's in this... what."

⁂

"Am I really bigger news than the two orange equines in the compartment?" Harry asked, rather confused about that. "Just, you don't seem to have been expecting them, is all."

"To be fair," Sunset said, speaking up. "People have had a month and a half to get used to the idea. We've been to Diagon Alley several times; I guess he just didn't get the memo."

"Did we put out a memo?" Luna wondered aloud. "Should we have?"

"We published an article with pictures of me wearing a lime-green bowler hat," Sunset reminded her. "I think that counts."

"That issue has only just gone out," Luna reminded Sunset entirely reasonably. "He may not have read it yet."

"Oh, that's right," Sunset mused, visibly thinking back. "It's just that it's been weeks since we actually did that. Putting out a magazine is a lot of work, huh?"

The boy cleared his throat, electing to ignore the ongoing banter, which was fair since the banter was ignoring him, as well. Stepping forward, he held out his hand and introduced himself. "Malfoy. Draco Malfoy."

Harry raised an eyebrow at the gesture, but shrugged and stood. "Harry Potter," he said, shaking the hand. "And these are Ginny Weasley, Hermione Granger, Luna Lovegood and Sunset Shimmer."

Draco, rather than introduce either of his two friends, zeroed in on Ginny. "Weasley?" he said with a professional sneer to his voice. "My father always said that the Weasleys all had red hair, freckles and more children than they can afford. I see now that the situation is even more dire than that."

"Seven and a half," Sunset said, stealing everyone's attention.

Draco was completely lost. "What?"

"The insult," Sunset clarified. "I'm giving it a seven and a half out of ten. It shows promise, and I'm looking forward to hearing more from you in the future."

"Well, of course I show promise," Draco said, preening. "Not that the opinion of an animal matters at all to me."

Sunset's ears folded. "Oh," she said, sounding downtrodden. "Maybe that was premature. If calling me an animal is the best you can come up with, three out of ten is the best I can do—and that's being generous."

"You did catch him off guard," Luna pointed out. "Maybe he'll have something better for you next time."

Sunset shrugged. "I guess you do have a point," she admitted. "Not everyone can be quick-witted enough to banter off the cuff."

Rather than engage Sunset and Luna any further, Draco turned back to Harry and straightened his back. "You'll learn, Potter, that some families are better than others," he said, and the implication that everyone else in the compartment were some of those 'others' hardly needed to be said. "You don't want to go making friends with the wrong sort. You can do better than muggleborns, animals and the delusional insane; I can help you there."

Harry blinked, looked at Sunset, then blinked again. "...Did you seriously just repeat the 'animal' thing right after getting panned for it?" he asked, not really feeling the need to escalate because he'd flubbed it so badly that it hardly even felt like a victory.

"I'd be careful if I were you, Potter," Draco said, slowly backing off. “Unless you’re a bit politer you’ll go the same way as your parents. They didn’t know what was good for them, either."

Harry might have responded, but the door slammed shut in his face, cutting him off. Nobody else in the compartment really had anything to say after that.

Slowly, Harry sat back down in the space between Ginny and Hermione, making sure not to topple his pile of sweets any. The silence was unusual, and everyone eventually found themselves looking at Ginny, waiting for some kind of explosion.

Ginny, though, was just sitting there sulking.

"...So, what exactly is going on with her?" Hermione asked.

Harry scratched at the back of his neck. "Well, that's the thing," he said. "We don't actually know. There's something going on that makes the unlikeliest things happen."

"Like a bad luck curse of some sort?" Hermione said, openly curious about it now that she wasn't being yelled at over having interrupted the subject. "It's still hard for me to believe that things like luck potions actually exist. Out of all the things that magic can do, that has to be the most unexpected, by far. Since they do, though, I don't see why the opposite couldn't be true."

Harry shook his head. "If it was just good luck or bad luck, that would be one thing," he said. "But that's not quite right. Ginny thinks it's the fae, and I guess that makes sense if Luna knows something about it."

"What does it do, then?" Hermione asked. "If there's some commonality, then we should be able to figure it out."

Harry hesitated to answer too precisely, but a month with Ginny had gotten him used to talking about it. "Keeps my evil relatives from kicking us out, mainly," he admitted.

Hermione was taken aback at the blunt appraisal. "Thats... good?" she guessed.

Harry shrugged. "No, not really," he said, then added, "It's prevented Ginny's mum from meeting us in Diagon, too. Whatever it's really doing, I think we'd be better off without it."

Hermione frowned. "But if it gets you kicked out, that would be a problem, wouldn't it? It's your home."

Harry thought about it—actually thought about it; growing up in a cupboard, constantly harassed by his cousin, needled and shouted at by his aunt and uncle—and shook his head. "It really isn't," he said, and just like that, something broke.

Everyone in the compartment felt it. It was like a fog around them had frozen and fell to the ground, leaving the air bright, crisp and clear.

"Wait wait wait wait," Ginny said, standing up in a shot. "That's it? That's all that we needed to do? Just say three merlin-damned words?!"

Sunset cleared her throat chidingly. "Language, Ginny."

"Screw your language!" Ginny shouted back. "A month and a half of dealing with those vile halfwits and all Harry had to do was say it wasn't his home? What the hell?!"

Sunset pursed her lips. "Now that's just wrong. Not about breaking the wards—that's basically correct—but you're a snorkack now; you have to say, 'what the hay' instead of 'what the hell.' It's tradition."

"Wait," Harry said, interrupting as much to prevent Sunset from riling Ginny up any more than she already was. "Wards? Do fae make wards?"

Luna pressed a finger against her cheek in thought. "They might?" she said. "I wouldn't say they couldn't."

"But you aren't saying they did," Hermione noted. "So they didn't."

"That makes sense," Luna agreed.

Ginny looked like she wanted to strangle her friend. "Can't you just tell us what it is?" she demanded.

Luna nodded. "I can now, yes."

"Now?" Hermione asked before the obvious follow-up could be made. "Why now?"

"Because the whole point of the wards was to keep Harry under the wards, and telling him how to break them would have contributed to him breaking them," Sunset explained.

"Not the whole point," Luna objected. "Presumably there were actual protections woven into the protections."

"You'd hope so," Sunset said. "But Dumbledore was light on the details, so I'm just working with the information I have."

"Wait, what?!" Ginny shouted. "What does Dumbledore have to do with this?"

"Everything?" Luna said. "He's the one who cast them, after all."

Harry only had one way to respond to that. He looked to Ginny and said, "...I told you it wasn't Titania."

⁂

It didn't take very much time at all for Sunset and Luna—mostly Sunset—to fill Hermione, Ginny and Harry in on what they knew about the wards because, really, what was there to say?

Harry, though, was in a bit of shock over the whole thing. "...I guess I'm homeless now?" he said.

Ginny just rolled her eyes at his theatrics. "You can stay with us, obviously."

That tickled something in Sunset's mind. "...Can he, actually?" she said. "Only, the Grangers—Hermione's parents—were making a huge stink about Luna being left alone, and the way Professor McGonagall put it, not only are there no orphanages, there are actual laws against it."

"...That can't be right," Hermione said.

Sunset raised an eyebrow. "You were there," she reminded her.

"Yes, I know," Hermione said. "But the wizarding world gives me a headache so I'm trying to pretend otherwise. Is it working?"

"No," Harry said. "I don't think it is."

"...Drat," Hermione quietly cursed. "Still, there must be more to it."

Sunset hmmed. They could probably put Harry up at The Rookery, but Ginny would probably have to come too, and then they'd never get rid of Mrs. Weasley. "Actually," Sunset said, having thought of something. "Dumbledore said that the familiar bond is as deep as any bond of blood, or something like that."

Ginny gave Sunset a suspicious look. "That was surprisingly straightforward and helpful."

"I'm generous like that," Sunset insisted.

"You are not."

The whole carriage froze instantly at the sound of someone knocking at the door. They paused, waited patiently, then knocked again. No one barged in, nothing important was interrupted and there was no magical force making it happen. It was just a regular, polite person asking for admittance.

Sunset lit her horn and opened the door with her magic.

"Oh, good," said the redhead at the door, taking in all the occupants of the compartment. "I thought for a second that I had it wrong."

Sunset took a moment to remember, but it eventually came to her. Right. This was Susan Bones, the girl that Sunset and Luna had met at Flourish and Blotts, and she quickly introduced herself as such. The reciprocal introductions, on the other hoof, followed the same pattern as it had with all of their previous visitors; Harry Potter got mild surprise, while Ginny got quite a bit more.

Not, though, quite as much more surprise as Sunset would have guessed. The reason for this discrepancy was immediately revealed when Susan gave her a compassionate look and said, "You too, huh?"

"Me, too?" Ginny said, baffled. "What do you mean, 'me, too'?"

"For the record," Sunset said with a sigh, expecting that she was going to have to repeat herself far too many times in the future. "I haven't been cursed, potioned or transfigured in any way. I was actually born looking this good."

Susan bones stared blankly at Sunset. "Um, okay," she said. "But that's not what I meant."

Luna perked up. "So... There is another?"

"Yeah," Susan said. "Millicent Bulstrode is hiding away in the last car—no wings or horn or anything, but she looks to be the same kind of adorable pony otherwise."

They all took a moment to absorb that information, and Luna was the first one to speak up.

"Broad-hoofed Snorkack."

Author's Note

Well, now, would you look at that? We finally got to the train ride! Half of it, anyway.

So, yes, the wards are broken. I have no intention of repeating the same thing each summer, and writing around something that prevents characters from saying certain things is something best done in small doses.

Thanks go out to those supporting me on Patreon and ko-fi, pomegranate horsie, Sunny, Zervon Tora, Katharine Berry, LD, Jan Sterba, senaxyva, Ersmiller, Canary In The Coal Mine, Jason Langford, Денис, J T, Andrew Pam, Southpaw, Andrew Denton, Trellmor, Kirishala, djthomp, SirHoli, IamUnknown, fused and CvBrony