⁂

Contrary to the impression given off by its morbid and sometimes grisly products, Slug & Jiggers Apothecary turned out to be a fairly normal-looking shop, with a cozy, homey feel.

Indeed, if Sunset hadn't already been prepared and didn't look too closely at a few of the more identifiable items, then she would have assumed it to be a seller of potpourri if not for the smell—or possibly even with it. The apothecary didn't quite smell bad, exactly, just... distinct. Contrarily, no potpourri shop that Sunset had been dragged to had ever smelled quite good to her thanks to every supposedly-pleasant fragrance being concentrated, commingled and magnified in the setting of a shop, so the fact that the apothecary was in any way bearable when dealing with a much more questionable stock of items was actually shining praise.

The apothecary, however, seemed to have an entirely less friendly view of its visitors.

One of them, anyway.

It was Sunset, just to be clear.

"Oi!" shouted the somewhat short and stocky man with a curled mustache that was behind the counter. "No animals in the shop!"

Professor McGonagall was taken aback at the vehement statement, looking at Sunset as if she had forgotten entirely that Sunset was, in fact, a small colorful alicorn.

While the professor was still processing her mistake and deciding what to do about it, the adult Grangers were looking out of their depth and Hermione was just aimlessly offended. It was Luna who actually responded in a timely manner.

"This is Sunset Shimmer, my crumple-horned snorkack familiar, and she is quite intelligent enough not to nibble on your products," she stated. "As long as there are no mangos."

Sunset facehoofed. It was times like this that she wondered if Luna wasn't carrying a grudge about things after all, no matter how blasé she seemed about it most of the time.

"I don't care if it's a seeing-eye-crup that does arithmancy!" the man responded vociferously. "No animals in the shop—**especially** if it's magical—and that goes double if it sheds! It's bad enough dealing with actual people getting their hairs tangled up in the jumping cockleburs!"

"Alright, alright," Sunset said, rolling her eyes at the man's intensity. "Calm the buck down. I'll wait outside, sheesh." Frankly, she'd be glad to not have to deal with the strong smells or any kind of cockleburs that could get into her fur of their own volition, but she wasn't going to actually say that if he was going to be so unpleasant.

Professor McGonagall still looked displeased at letting someone she clearly considered one of her younger charges out of her sight in the busy alley, but she didn't object, so it was only slightly insulting. "Very well," she said, letting out a sigh of acceptance. "But stay close by; we shan't be long."

⁂

Ginny wouldn't have said that she was oblivious, exactly. In fact, if you asked her, she'd say that she had a pretty good handle on things. Nothing specific; just... things. She was used to getting the drop on all her brothers and was only rarely caught out by her parents when she was doing things that she ought not to be doing, according to them.

She'd be embarrassed, then, to find out that she made it all the way to Luna's house, completely oblivious of what it was that was following her, and she might never have found out if she hadn't made one small mistake.

Ginny hopped up to the front door of Luna's house, curiously noted the faint imprint of hooves in the wood, and opened the—the door didn't open.

Strange. The Lovegoods didn't usually cast locking spells on their door, and with her father lost in Faerie, it wasn't as if there was anyone in the house with a wand to cast the spell anyway.

It took Ginny a moment to remember that Luna had been in the alley with Professor McGonagall. Maybe she'd cast it when she'd come to pick Luna up? Ginny didn't think that people should go around casting locking spells on other people's houses, but adults tended to be like that.

Shrugging and wishing that she'd brought Ron's wand along with her, she banged on the sturdy wooden door and yelled for Luna to no avail.

Huh, was Luna not back from the alley, yet?

Strange.

Of course, Ginny hadn't actually gotten any proper idea where Luna had been in her shopping trip, so it was entirely possible that they'd only just arrived. In hindsight, she couldn't quite recall if she'd seen Luna with any of the usual things that her brothers took with them to Hogwarts, but she hadn't actually looked, either.

Well, that was a nuisance. Normally Ginny would have just let herself into the house anyway, but she'd already tried that, and going in through a window or something was more than she was willing to do, especially since she didn't know what kinds of spells Mr. Lovegood might have cast on them to keep the bugs out.

That was the kind of mistake you don't make twice.

Well, not three or maybe four times, anyway—not counting the times when it was worth it.

It was only then, when Ginny swung herself around in search of something to do while she was waiting for Luna that she realized she wasn't alone and eeped.

⁂

Even with how little time Sunset had spent just inside the door of the apothecary, stepping back out again into the relatively clear air was a surprising relief... for several reasons, actually. The fresh air was enjoyable, yes, but it was also nice just to have a moment to herself, for certain definitions of the word that applied to standing on the edge of a moderately busy street.

Sadly, even that small amount of peace was quickly taken from her.

"Ugh, what is that?" asked the voice of a whiny young girl. "Did someone animate a ratty old stuffed toy?"

Sunset was in the process of turning to see who had such a lack of wit to make such a bog-standard insult, when she realized that they'd gotten much closer than she'd expected. Reacting out of reflex, she pulled her head back and slapped away the hand that was reaching for her horn.

The impact of her very solid hoof made it immediately clear that Sunset was in no way stuffed.

"Hooves off," Sunset warned, getting a good look at just who had decided to be obnoxious out of the blue; a round-faced girl around Luna and Hermione's age with short black hair done up in pigtails who Sunset guessed from her silk robes was probably part of some privileged social strata or another.

The girl balked, cradling her hand. "You... you hit me!" she exclaimed in disbelief. "And—how dare you! I do not have hooves!"

Sunset rolled her eyes. "One: That's what you get for trying to grab me," she said. "And two: It's a figure of speech or whatever. You snuck up on me so it's not like I knew what the preferred nouns are for... whatever you are." Sunset glanced down at the girl's rather long, painted nails and smirked. "Should have I said claws instead? What are you, some kind of diamond dog?"

Sunset was not, of course, under the impression that the girl was anything but human; she was just intentionally being a bitch. It was kind of an automatic reflex.

The girl self-consciously hid her nails before she realized what she was doing and straightened her back, fisting her hands at her sides. "You—you—apologize!" she insisted, doing a rather good job of looming over Sunset, though she needn't have tried so hard, being twice as tall as Sunset to begin with, even with her not-so-impressive stature.

Sunset, of course, was quite used to being loomed over, and the girl's attempt at an imperious stare was nothing compared to that of a disappointed Princess Celestia. Unimpressed, Sunset made a show of thinking about it, then said, "Nah. Maybe it'll teach you to keep your hooves to yourself."

"I—you—!" the girl stammered, her rounded cheeks growing red.

"Definitely not a diamond dog," Sunset decided out loud. "They have better vocabulary. Not by much, mind you, but they can usually string a few words together, at least."

"I will not be talked down to by a—a fake unicorn with a malformed horn!" the girl yelled, and began digging around in her robe for something.

The reminder about the state of her horn actually made Sunset wince, not that the girl saw it, and by the time the girl had retrieved her wand from some hidden pocket, Sunset had decided she was just about ready to be done listening to... whoever this was.

She'd have to ask Luna about that later; it wasn't as if the odd girl wasn't one-hundred-percent aware of what was going on, after all, having a front-row seat to the whole thing through Sunset's left eye.

Maybe Sunset should talk to Luna about her tendency to just sit back and watch when things were happening...?

...Nah. It wasn't as if Sunset had actually wanted Professor McGonagall to come out and see her trading insults with a literal child. It was easy to forget, sometimes, the age of these girls, given their size.

Gripping her wand in her hand, the girl didn't say any spell or incantation like Sunset had come to expect from the humans; she just swung it aimlessly in Sunset's direction, releasing harmless sparks of magic.

Considering the time it had taken for the girl to retrieve her wand, Sunset was anything but surprised, and teleported away at the first sign of movement, reappearing with a paff of fire up on the roof of the apothecary.

The girl swung and swung at where Sunset had been, eyes closed from all the bouncing sparks. When she was done, she slowly opened her eyes, then blinked at the complete lack of colorful pony. She looked all around at street level, but eventually she seemed to have decided that she'd vanquished Sunset and stood straighter.

This lasted exactly two seconds until her head snapped to look at something inside the shop. All the color drained from her face before she turned and ran only moments before the door to the apothecary slammed open under the weight of one very ticked off proprietor who watched her run away, then went back inside, grumbling.

Oddly, neither Professor McGonagall nor the Grangers made an appearance, and Sunset wondered what Luna must have done to distract them.

When all the commotion had passed, Sunset spread her wings and glided back down to her spot in front of the apothecary. It might have been nice to stay at roof level, if just to avoid any further interactions with haughty children, but it wasn't actually a good way to avoid attention.

"That was amusing," said another haughty child, just as Sunset landed. This one, again, seemed to be the same age as the previous one, who had seemed to be the same age as Luna and Hermione. Sunset really hoped that it was actually just some kind of coincidence, and she wasn't that bad at guessing relative ages in the humans.

Sunset was pretty sure about the girl's relative age in this case, though, because aside from looking just a bit like Luna with having slightly more golden blonde hair and blue eyes rather than gray, there was a taller example to compare her to standing just behind her. Sunset presumed that this was the new girl's father, as they did seem to resemble each other on the surface, though the man's hair was a much plainer brown.

...Come to think of it, it was odd that the previous girl had been alone, wasn't it?

"I thought so," Sunset said, choosing to be polite. Antagonizing a rude, handsy child that was all on her own was one thing; she didn't need to start anything with one that was acting with a level of decorum alongside her father, even if it did remind her of talking to some of the smarmier nobility back in Canterlot. "Pardon me if I'm mistaken, but a child that age should be accompanied by an adult, shouldn't they?"

"You would think so, yes," the girl said. "Though, it's my understanding that being at Hogwarts will be all but like being on our own, so perhaps her parents are simply preparing her for that... Then again, I believe that I saw her at Fortescue's not too long ago, so it might be that they just took their eyes off of her and she has slipped her leash. If she isn't quick, they might be quite surprised to discover that she isn't quite where she's supposed to be."

Sunset gave the girl credit for the leash comment, which was amusingly on-point given the insults that had been going back and forth. Given the things she'd seen and heard so far, Sunset was under no illusions that most of the human magicals would consider her anything more than an animal, but that didn't mean that she in any way liked seeing it borne out in the behavior of a bratty child.

"We can only hope," Sunset said, though personally she didn't have any real hope that anyone raised to be that haughty at such a young age would experience anything in the way of consequences from whoever was in charge of her. "It's nice to know that at least some of those in the coming year at Hogwarts know how to behave themselves, miss...?"

"Daphne Greengrass," she instantly introduced herself, and the slight pleased look she'd gotten at being complimented quickly froze when she realized that she'd just presented her hand to a quadruped for her to shake it.

"Sunset Shimmer," Sunset responded in kind, and, making a snap decision, lit her horn to shake Daphne's hand with her magic. It irked her a bit—her hooves were perfectly clean, thank you very much, and it wasn't the done thing—but she thought it would make a better impression and impress upon the two of them that she was perfectly capable of using magic.

By the slight delay in Daphne's reaction while she subtly rubbed her fingers together, making note of the feeling of Sunset's magic, it seemed to have worked.

Quickly, though, Daphne recovered and stepped back, presenting the man behind her. "And this is my father, Cyrus Greengrass," she introduced, allowing Sunset to step forward and repeat her not-a-handshake with the tall man.

"Curious," the man mused looking Sunset over. "By the way you spoke about the upcoming year at Hogwarts... Do you mean to say that you will be going?" he asked, sounding politely dubious, clearly not giving the idea much credit, but just as clearly not going to say as much.

"Going? Yes," Sunset confirmed with some amusement, though she quickly clarified, "Attending, no—or, not formally, anyway. I'm sure I'll make good use of the library, though." She paused for effect, then said, "I suppose I should have introduced myself more formally, but I'm not honestly sure which of my titles are still valid."

That got her another skeptical look, because of course they wouldn't put much stock in the supposed titles of a non-human. She really hated being right sometimes, and the novelty of the pair's politeness was wearing thin.

"Here and now, though, I suppose it's relevant that I'm Sunset Shimmer, the familiar of Luna Lovegood," she said, making a slight bow, and with the perfect timing of someone who could see through her eyes, Luna exited the apothecary to stand next to her.

That said, the gaggle of Grangers and one Professor of Hogwarts that succeeded her a moment later ruined the effect somewhat, and the mess of introductions that followed pretty much put an end to their little conversation, for whatever it was worth, and soon the two groups parted ways.

Sunset frowned. During the commotion, she had tried to keep an eye on the Greengrasses to see what their reaction might have been to the muggle and muggleborn Grangers, but faced with such a large group, they were both perfectly polite and not a bit more.

Of the two interactions, that ambiguity honestly concerned Sunset more than having made an enemy of the previous brat.

In fact, now that she thought about it, Sunset was actively looking forward to the moment the bratty girl realized that Sunset was perfectly fine and entirely un-smote, and that cheered her up significantly.

⁂

At first glance, Ginny thought that the thing that had followed her was an adolescent unicorn; she was a young girl, after all, and young girls were known for at least two things: Liking unicorns and being liked by unicorns.

On second glance, Ginny thought that it was a bug; the hard carapace and dragonfly-like wings were difficult to miss, as were the faceted golden eyes that were on a level with her own.

The truth was somewhere in between the two, and she couldn't help her reaction. She stepped back, feeling just a little bit trapped with her back pressed up against the locked door, defensively holding her mother's copy of Moste Potente Potions against her chest for protection.

On further inspection, which she was getting whether she liked it or not, the bug-unicorn thing was rather pretty, actually, with how her white shell was shining all sorts of different colors.

On the other hand, getting any kind of bug when you were expecting a unicorn was always going to be a significant let-down at the very least, probably a source of panic, and not even the crown on the creature's head really made up for it in any sort of way.

What Ginny didn't expect was for the bug unicorn creature thing to just stand there and wait patiently, then stand there and wait slightly less patiently, then give her a look and say, "Well?"

Ginny was perfectly composed, and did not stand there going, "I—buh—wha?" for rather longer than was expected, and anyone who said that she did was clearly must have forgotten all the threats and blackmail that one acquires growing up with six older brothers. Instead, being entirely mature for her age as she, of course, was, Ginny calmly introduced herself.

"Y—you can talk?"

No, no, stupid brain. That's not an introduction. Think. Think. What would Harry Potter do in this situation?

Hm. She didn't have any heretofore unseen magical powers other than the usual ones that required a wand she didn't have, and the only damsel that needed saving was herself so that was not helpful.

"Why, of course!" the uni-bug-queen cheerily confirmed, and Ginny's internal narration skipped a beat.

Wait, uni-bug-queen? Well, with the crown and all, she did look pretty regal, and... come to think of it, hadn't there been a small colorful unicorn with Luna at the ice cream parlor? She'd barely gotten a few words on what had happened to Luna; did the toy unicorn creature have something to do with what had happened?

Ginny tilted her head, getting a better look at the uni-bug-queen's horn, which, it had to be said, was anything but straight. Luna had said that she had followed a Crumple-Horned Snorkack into Faerie... She wasn't sure if the logic really fit together, but the awkward silence was dragging on, and she gave into pressure to say something to ask, "Are you... Queen Titania?"

"I am indeed!" Queen Titania said, her golden eyes sparkling with eminent glee at being recognized. "Titania, Seelie Queen of the Summer Court," she introduced herself.

Seelie? Summer court? Ginny suddenly wished that she'd paid more attention to Luna's old fairy stories. This was fine, though. Everything was fine. Sure, both of Luna's parents had, to some extent, been trapped in Faerie in some way involved with this creature—BUT!—Luna had herself said that Titania had been reasonable. That wasn't really something that was up to interpretation, right?

Ginny tried to relax and not press herself into the Lovegood's front door quite so hard. Queens probably considered that rude. What else did queens consider rude? Not introducing herself, probably.

"I—ah—I'm Ginny Weasley..." she said, her voice trailing off as she tried to think of something else to add that might make her sound not so ordinary. "Seventh child of the Weasley family."

Ginny blushed, thinking that sounded pretty lame, but to Ginny's surprise, Queen Titania actually seemed to perk up at her self-coined title. "Well met, Ginny Weasley," the queen said.

Ginny thought and thought about what else she could say, but came up pretty much empty. "I—I would invite you in for some... tea or something..." she said, glancing back behind her at the Lovegood home. "But this isn't my house, and I think someone must have locked the door. Someone other than Luna."

The Queen's eyes shined brighter at that. "Luna, you say?" she asked in a way that made Ginny uneasy for some reason. "I thought so..."

"She... mentioned you," Ginny told her, not sure entirely why, but it was better than staying silent.

"We parted on amicable terms," the Queen said, confirming what Luna had said. Odd, maybe, that they had both used the term 'amicable', but it was a curiosity that Ginny didn't really have time to consider here and now with a fairy queen in front of her. "Was she well?"

"Yes," Ginny said, feeling that was a safe enough thing to say. "She seemed fine to me—but she's kind of like that."

"She's certainly unique," the queen allowed. "It's good to know that she is safe and sound and... uninjured. We made a deal, her and I, you see, so you could say that I have an interest in her continued health."

Ginny blinked. "A deal?" she asked. "Is that how she's going to Hogwarts this year instead of next?"

Queen Titania chuckled and shook her head. "Oh, no, not hardly," she said. "In fact, this is news to me; tell me more about what it is the girl has gotten herself into since I last saw her."

Ginny squirmed in place, but was hardly going to refuse. Besides, what could it possibly hurt to tell the fairy queen what was going on, and get a few things off of her chest?

But where to start? What did a fairy queen know about wizarding society, let alone Hogwarts?

She supposed there was nothing to it but to start at the beginning. "Well, you see, Hogwarts is a magic school..."

⁂

Sunset was about ready to be done with the shopping trip, so it was good that the wand shop was the last stop on their list.

Curiously, as they approached the quaint little shop with a single wand on a purple velvet pillow in the dusty window, Professor McGonagall held back rather than entering ahead to present things to the group as she had done at every previous store. Luna, too, walked just a little slower than the Grangers, so guessing that something was going on, Sunset made sure to fall in beside her at something closer to her own natural gait.

What exactly it was that was going on Sunset discovered when the Grangers pushed open the creaky glass-windowed door and stepped inside to be impressed by rows upon rows of shelves lined with small boxes stretching back into the space, almost like a library.

It wasn't for the impressive sight of thousands of dusty boxes that they had held back for, though. No, the thing that Professor McGonagall and Luna were expecting and possibly avoiding was the small, white-haired old man that slipped in behind the Grangers from an alcove off to the side of the door, and startled them with his introduction.

"Good afternoon."

All of the Grangers startled, but Hermione in particular jumped, stumbled over a small stool and nearly fell.

"Oh my," Heather Granger said, holding her hand over her chest. "That was a fright." Her husband was less vocal, but the glare he shot the eponymous Ollivander seemed to imply that he had taken the surprise with quite a bit less equanimity. Hermione, though, was too busy staying on her feet and righting the stool she'd knocked over in order to really give any thought to the proprietor of the shop.

"Welcome to my shop, it's always good to see new faces in the alley," Ollivander said, and Sunset thought that he might actually mean it. Sighing, he sent a forlorn look back into the shop's crowded shelves. "So many of my creations have gone unclaimed by their intended—but they will find matches eventually."

Well, that was an interesting thing to say. Was there something that was preventing children from getting their wands? They sounded almost like cutie marks, the way he phrased it, as if there was a kind of destiny involved, though she'd seen nothing of that kind of belief in the humans so far.

Ollivander did not wait for Sunset to consider the matter, though; he barely waited for the Grangers to introduce themselves before he pulled out a well-used tape measure with silver markings on it, took one or two measurements of Hermione on his own, then walked away while the thing continued on, much to the young girl's chagrin, very much put out at the man's behavior.

Sunset raised her eyebrow at the tape measure, not because she'd never seen one floating around taking measurements—that was pretty much just a normal part of getting fitted for dresses by a unicorn back in Equestria—but because as far as she could tell, it was doing it all on its own without any attention paid by Ollivander. Doing it with levitation was the usual way, and she could imagine enchanting it to move on its own, of course, but how was it collecting information if the man wasn't giving the matter any thought or concentration?

Well, that was assuming that it was collecting information, she supposed, and not just acting as a mysterious magical distraction while Ollivander disappeared into the back of the shop to do who-knows-what. Sunset had been born with her magical focus, so for all she knew, maybe the size of the space between Hermione's nostrils did actually make a difference in what kind of wand she needed, but Sunset was skeptical.

The idea that it might have been all for show was intensified when, seemingly at random, Ollivander snapped his fingers and the tape measure dropped out of the air, hitting the ground with an artless, floppy splat before slithering away like a snake to store itself somewhere behind the sales desk. If the dubiously enchanted tape measure had actually been taking measurements that mattered, then surely it would know when it was done rather than require it to be interrupted in whatever it was doing, and surely it would have needed to return to Ollivander so that he could retrieve the information somehow?

You know what? Sunset was putting way too much thought into this. She really didn't care if the tape measure was just a distraction; it was enough that Ollivander had returned with... three boxes?

"Every Ollivander wand has a core of a powerful magical substance, Miss Granger," he spoke, spreading the boxes out on the counter. "We use unicorn hairs, phoenix tail feathers, and the heartstrings of dragons. No two Ollivander wands are the same, just as no two unicorns, dragons or phoenixes are quite the same. And of course, you will never get such good results with another witch’s wand."

That was... hmm... weird. Sunset was going to go with weird. If she hadn't already been introduced to the kinds of things that the humans used in potions, she might have been surprised, but she was too bemused at the idea of her hair being a 'powerful magical substance' to really think too hard about dragon heartstrings.

She knew, of course, something of the differences between herself and the strangely mystical horse-creatures they had here in this world—Xenophilius had mentioned as much—so she doubted that anyone trying to use her tail hairs in a wand would be very impressed...

...Then again, she was an alicorn now, and she wouldn't have guaranteed the same thing about princess Celestia. Sunset didn't have the ethereal mane, though, and she didn't have a convenient older alicorn to ask about it, so she supposed the actual magical capacity of her hair was anyone's guess.

Frowning, Sunset deliberately shifted her attention back to what was going on because she was having feelings of one sort or another thinking about that, and she didn't want to examine them right just then.

"There, now, birch and dragon heartstring; 11-inches," Ollivander stated as he handed the whitish wand to Hermione. "Give it a wave."

Hermione did so, but aside from a few tiny purple sparks, nothing happened.

Ollivander hmmed. "No, clearly not," he said, taking the wand away from her and tucking it back in the long, slim box that it had come from. The next two didn't go much better—one of them being taken from Hermione before she could even wave it, and the other transforming a stack of papers on the sales desk into a glossy paperback that made the young girl blush for some reason.

Sunset wasn't sure exactly what Ollivander was looking for if that wasn't a proper result, but whatever it was, he found it when, "Vine and dragon heartstring—ten and three-quarters-inches—stiff, but flexible," produced a larger shower of blue and gold sparks.

Maybe the sparks were a sign that the wand wasn't unduly flavoring the magic?

Sunset hadn't thought that her impression of the brat from earlier could have gotten any worse, but apparently she'd been wrong, because she hadn't even been casting spells.

Of course, after the Grangers had paid for Hermione's wand, Ollivander's attention shifted to Luna and then immediately to Sunset who was standing beside her.

"Curious," he mused. "Related to unicorns, certainly, but I'm not sure how, or what that makes you."

"Sunset Shimmer is my crumple-horned snorkack familiar," Luna introduced her with the same abundance of pride as every previous time. The statement wasn't wrong, but it all the same it made Sunset roll her eyes a bit every time.

"A crumple-horned snorkack, you say?" he asked, though Sunset wasn't sure if he was putting any more stock in it than anyone else would. "I must admit that this is a first for me."

"Are you going to suggest that I get a wand with one of her hairs?" Luna asked.

"Hmm?" he murmured, turning to look back over to Luna. "Oh... no, no, I don't think so," he said, shaking his head dismissively. "Familiars rarely make for good wand cores. The connection means there's a little too much of yourself in them as far as magic is concerned—yours more than most, I expect. Why, it has to be the strongest one I've seen in a long time, if a little odd for some reason."

Sunset did not say that 'a little odd for some reason,' described Luna to a 'T,' but she definitely thought it. Besides, she knew where the oddness in their connection came from; the fact that Luna still had Sunset's name was something that she just... preferred not to think about too much.

"Now," Ollivander continued. "That's not to say that I wouldn't like a few of your hairs if you're willing to donate. I'd be quite interested to discover what sorts of wands they would make and who they would be matched with."

Sunset was curious too, but something about the man seemed off, and he was far too eager, very similar to the moment when Queen Titania had been leaning forward in her throne, directing Sunset to eat, drink and give her her name.

You know what? She didn't actually care what this man thought of her, so she just asked the first strange idea that had popped into her mind. "You're not fae, are you?"

Ollivander was taken aback in surprise, but it was Professor McGonagall who spoke. "Miss Shimmer, this is the second time that you've asked that," she pointed out. "It was one thing with the goblins, but I hope you know that you cannot simply go about asking after people's ancestry like that."

"Why not?" Sunset asked, being intentionally contrary. "Isn't that what the purebloods do?"

"Yes," Professor McGonagall confirmed. "And I would tell them the same if they were to behave such in my presence."

Sunset thought that was fair, if it was true. Sunset had spent most of her life tutored by Celestia, but she was very aware that plenty of other teachers were much less consistent with their practicing what they preached.

"That's one thing," Sunset defended. "But I have real, actual reasons to be concerned about the fae, and he makes me uneasy."

"Be that as it may—"

"Also, for the record," Sunset interrupted her. "I explicitly considered beforehoof whether I cared about offending him, and I don't."

The look of consternation that the professor produced at that was positively withering. "Even so, as Miss Lovegood's familiar—"

"Oh, I don't care either," Luna chimed in, positively poleaxing the woman, and Sunset thought she might have heard the tiniest giggle from Hermione, but when she looked, she only looked mortified. "Actually, I care very much inasmuch as I, too, would like to know the answer."

"Now, now," Ollivander said, seeking to restore the tranquility of his shop. "There's no need for all of that—and as a matter of fact, yes. It's not well-known, but the Ollivanders do actually have a history of fae ancestry. I suspect that most wandmakers do, as it helps with both the making and the pairing."

Well, that was interesting. Sunset had noted previously that the humans seemed to be a race that had magic rather than being magical, and now she wondered if it couldn't all be traced ultimately to the fae—or a deal with one.

Maybe she would have to reconsider her opinion of the fae if—wait, no, she didn't have a particularly charitable opinion of human magic, either. Actually, being connected to fae would explain all the horrible things the human magicals used it for, wouldn't it?

"Yeah, no," Sunset decided. "I mean, I have to admit I'm both curious and doubtful, but nope: I'm gonna keep all my body parts to myself, thanks."

"Always a good idea," someone said, bringing the conversation to a sudden halt as the meaning of the words slowly sank in.

Professor McGonagall coughed, uncomfortable in the silence.

"Oh dear," said Hermione's mother. "Did I say that out loud?"

⁂

At some point, Ginny had stopped worrying overmuch about the presence of the fairy queen and gotten entirely too caught up pacing back and forth in front of Luna's house telling her own story. "...And that's why it's so not fair that Luna gets to go to school with Harry Potter and I'm going to be stuck here for another entire year, all because I was born just eleven days after the cutoff!"

"I see," Queen Titania said, thinking about Ginny's issue. "That seems rather simple, then."

Ginny blinked, remembered just who it was that she was talking to, and immediately backed off, hackles up. She may not have paid all that much attention to Luna's fairy tales, but she remembered enough of the basics in order to be on guard.

"Woah woah woah, hold on," she said, gripping her mother's potions book tighter. "I mean, yeah, I want to be eleven days older—maybe ideally go back in time a bit to make sure the letter gets sent out just to be sure—but that's just wishing."

"Wishes are my specialty," Queen Titania assured her.

Ginny's eyes widened. "No, no, no, that's not what I meant!"

Queen Titania seemed entirely too amused at Ginny's panic. "Relax, girl, I've never done anything anyone didn't ask for."

Ginny wasn't entirely reassured, considering Luna was still without her parents.

"Really, now," the queen said, shaking her head with mock sadness at Ginny's paranoia. "It doesn't have to be all that complicated, does it? You said it yourself; just a couple of weeks in Faerie, and your problem would be solved, wouldn't it?"

Ginny had thought that, yes, and she'd repeated it when telling her story to the Queen, but here and now, presented with the option, it seemed like a very, very bad idea, and she knew enough to listen to herself about bad ideas. Sometimes she did them anyway, but she always knew what it was she was getting into.

Well, almost always. She was only ten, after all.

Ginny violently shook her head, red hair whipping around her ears. "No, no—that's—no. I'm not going to Faerie. That's just not going to happen. I'm smarter than that."

"Are you sure?" the queen asked. "I'm certainly capable of guaranteeing you passage."

"Passage in, sure," Ginny said, raising one eyebrow. "But what about passage out?"

"That too," Queen Titania assured her as an afterthought.

Ginny shook her head again. "It's supposed to be a trade, isn't it? I don't have anything to trade."

Queen Titania grinned, and not kindly. Whatever kind of bug-unicorn-thing she was apparently had lots of teeth. "Oh, my dear, everyone has something to trade... whether they know it or not."

Ginny gave the fairy queen a flat look. "I'm ten," she stated, feeling that that should really say all it needed to.

Queen Titania dropped her gaze to the old potions book that Ginny was still holding onto almost as a security blanket "What about that?" she asked. "A family heirloom like that..."

"Uh-uh," Ginny said, and shifted from holding it in front of her for protection to holding it behind her to protect it. "I might be borrowing it, but you don't know my mom. If I lost it, there'd be hell to pay."

"Well then," Queen Titania mused, rubbing her chin with her hoof. "You're not making this easy, are you?"

"I wasn't trying to!" Ginny reminded her, because yes, while she might not know all the rules about fairies that Luna did, 'just refuse anything they offer' was a pretty simple concept.

Well, unless they got angry and killed you, but that was mostly the evil ones, she thought.

Mostly.

It wasn't a guarantee, though.

"Well, how about this?" Queen Titania said, not willing to let herself be stymied by someone simply refusing outright. "As I said, your problem really is fairly simple; you'll trade me eleven days of your life, and in exchange, I can ensure that you go to Hogwarts with Harry Potter."

Ginny... didn't say no. Well, not immediately. She thought about it, though, and—wait. "When you say, 'trade you eleven days of my life,' you don't mean, like, you'll take my place or something?"

"No," the queen said, but Ginny suspected it was more of a 'not now that you've said that.' "Just eleven days taken off of your life, making you eleven days older—old enough to go to this 'Hogwarts' school. It's as simple as that."

Ginny thought and thought and thought, but she wasn't sure what angle there could possibly be that would cause a problem with that. Like the queen had said, it really was a very simple problem, and when things were so simple, there wasn't much that could go wrong, right?

But then what was the fairy queen's angle? Because Ginny did not believe for a second that there wasn't some kind of a scam or a catch involved. Then it came to her; eleven days of her life was worth something, surely, and she wouldn't actually be getting anything in return, would she? Not in the real sense, anyway, so while in a way she'd be getting cheated, that was exactly what she wanted.

Still, she was wary. "...And in exchange, you'll make absolutely sure that I get to go to school with Harry Potter? Just like with Luna? No problems with the school saying I'm too late or anything?"

"With Harry Potter, just like with Luna, you say?" Queen Titania asked innocently, her eyes sparkling as she seemed to trace a path in the air that wasn't there. "Yes. Yes, I know someone like that. Hmm. I still don't see how that actually fits there... But I can work with that. Deal."

Ginny immediately felt the bottom drop out of her stomach at that declaration. She'd just been asking for clarification, not making an offer, and while she didn't understand any of the rest of what the fairy queen had said—well, that was the problem! "Hold on—what was all that about knowing someone? You're not going to put me in someone else's body?!"

Queen Titania waved her hoof in dismissal. "No, no, of course not, no," she said, which should have been reassuring, but it really wasn't. Ginny's feelings on that were vindicated moments later, when the fairy queen seemed to have produced a glowing mote of light from somewhere.

Ginny paled. "What—what is that?" she asked. "What are you doing?"

"Exactly what I promised," Queen Titania assured her with a look of pleased satisfaction. It wasn't malicious at all, but that didn't help the shiver that went down Ginny's spine. "You'll be going to school with Harry Potter—in exactly the same manner that Sunset Shimmer is going with Luna Lovegood."

Ginny didn't like the sound of that, because it sounded like the fairy queen didn't mean going to Hogwarts in the normal way. Damn it! She should have said she wanted to attend Hogwarts!

As the fairy queen stepped closer, there were dozens of thoughts and recriminations bouncing around in her head, but one of them in particular stood out prominently among all the rest.

"Who in Merlin's name is Sunset Shimmer?"

⁂

Unlike everything else that Luna had bought that day, her surprisingly flexible thirteen-inch Willow-and-unicorn-hair wand did not disappear into the nothingness of possibility. Maybe that was normal, though; Hermione's wand had gone right back into its box, but even so, the young muggleborn was holding onto that box rather tightly, fidgeting with it in the same sort of nervous appreciative way as Luna.

And with that, the trip to Diagon was done.

Well, mostly. It hadn't been included on the list, which seemed like an oversight to Sunset since even the ice cream shop had been, but Professor McGonagall took them back to the Leaky Cauldron in order to finish things up with a round of drinks and instructions.

For the Grangers, it was their first time actually ordering from the rustic shop, and the professor recommended they begin with pumpkin juice as the wizarding world's traditional iconic drink as a taste of something that was served every day at Hogwarts. Curious, Sunset ordered the same, while Luna went for a butterbeer and Professor McGonagall ordered a gillywater, which sounded like a diet drink to Sunset.

Sunset didn't hate cucumber water, but she had not particularly enjoyed that one week when one of the castle staff had heard something who heard from someone else and had gotten it in their head that she needed to be served it at every meal.

Sunset's opinion of the pumpkin juice was similar, to be honest. It wasn't as bad as it might have been, considering she was all but expecting a thick warm smoothie not unlike pumpkin pie in consistency; but still, it was pumpkin in juice format, which might be nice for a while in the fall, but as a staple, she'd rather have something else.

The Grangers, for their part, were rather silent on their thoughts of the drink, so the best that could be said was that Luna and Professor McGonagall at least enjoyed theirs.

After they'd had a while to get settle in, but while they were all still nursing their drinks—some of them more slowly than the others—Professor McGonagall produced two parchment envelopes not unlike the ones that the Hogwarts letters had come in. Luna and Hermione both opened them with great care to reveal slightly thicker cards with gold embossing proclaiming them to be tickets to the Hogwarts Express, which was to depart from Platform 9¾ at King's Cross Station on September 1ˢᵗ.

"Platform 9¾?" Hermione asked, sounding almost offended at the very idea.

Sunset wasn't sure what the big deal was. "At least it's a reasonably specific number," she said. "I remember a few years back, there was a whole mess over one down-on-his-luck mathematician-turned-printshop-employee in Baltimare who thought he was funny and did up a percentage of the tickets as point-nine-nine-repeating with a vinculum during a math convention. I mean, I didn't even know that mathematicians had conventions. Not many of them missed their trains, but oh man, the arguments they got into—and they brought those arguments back to Canterlot! Answering stupid mathematics trivia is not what Princess Celestia holds court for!"

Most of the table was staring at Sunset in the wake of her rant, except for Luna who was holding her butterbeer bottle over her mouth trying to get the last bit of foam out because apparently the human magicals hadn't invented straws yet.

"...Sorry," Sunset said. "Bit of a rant, I know, but seriously; they insisted on bringing it to the highest judicial forum in all of Equestria—literally, considering Canterlot's altitude, so it was a bit of a trip to make—just to be told that 0.9̅9̅ does, in fact, exactly equal one."

"...That's great and all," Hermione said, visibly holding back from commenting and concentrating on her ticket instead. "But in the real world, we number our train stations with whole numbers. There isn't a Platform 9¾!"

"0.9̅9̅ is a whole number," Sunset countered. "Believe me, after that fiasco, I know the proofs back and forth."

Hermione looked like she was contemplating throwing her Pumpkin Juice at Sunset and wondering if it wasn't, in fact, the better use for it, when Professor McGonagall chose to intervene. Clearing her throat to get everyone's attention, she explained, "Platform 9¾ does, in fact, exist. It is hidden from muggles in a way similar to but distinct from that of the Leaky Cauldron and accessed by walking through the barrier between platforms nine and ten—though only magicals may pass through, so you will have to say your goodbyes there and trust the young Miss Granger to board on her own from there.

"Luna, of course, will need to take the floo," she continued, directing this last part at Sunset, the nominal near-adult in charge of her.

And, well, speaking of being the nominal near-adult in charge of Luna. "So, uh, professor?" Sunset said after a few more details about the minutiae of Hogwarts were explained to the Grangers. "This doesn't have anything to do with Hogwarts, but since we're still waiting for Luna's parents to get back from Faerie, where should we go for, you know, groceries and things? Luna clearly has the money, so that's not a problem, but I didn't see anything in the alley selling any real food—the tea shops and ice cream parlor obviously don't count."

Professor McGonagall, for once, looked slightly abashed. "Ah, yes, I'm sorry, Miss Shimmer; I had meant to point them out, but I'm afraid I'm so used to the usual order of things that I neglected to do so. We did actually pass by a few. Pepper's Provisions for one."

Sunset furrowed her brow, thinking back. "I don't think I noticed that," she said. "Where was it, about?"

"About four doors past Wizacre's," Professor McGonagall said. "Next to Sugarplum's Sweets Shop."

Sunset thought back, but couldn't picture it at first—then the bit dropped. "Wait, that place advertising dragon liver was a grocer?"

Professor McGonagall nodded. "Yes," she confirmed. "Dragon liver is a bit of an acquired taste and not cheap, but can be nice to have as a treat. I admit, I'm probably more predisposed to organ meat than most, but I assure you they have all the usual sorts of things that are probably more suitable to your palette."

Sunset shook her head. "Well, poni—I mean, crumple-horned snorkacks—aren't completely incapable of eating meat, though my stomach will probably appreciate not needing to. Why would you be predisposed to organ meat, though? You make it sound like there's a reason for it."

Professor McGonagall got a slightly mischievous looking smirk at that, tapped the side of her nose and said, "I think I'll leave that for you to find out once you get to Hogwarts."

Sunset asked after a few specific things, being pointed to other places in the alley, and eventually they seemed to have tested the patience of the adult Grangers' sensibilities a little too much.

"Excuse me," Thomas Granger said, interrupting Sunset on the subject of what exactly passed as fresh produce in the wizarding world. "It was brushed off the last time, but I really must object; I realize that the... snorkack... is an older teen or something, but is it really okay for you to leave these two all on their own for the next month and a half? And from what I understand, Luna's parents are missing, and nothing is being done about it? If they're stranded somewhere, shouldn't someone be doing something to go after them?"

Professor McGonagall's lips tightened at the implications in play, there. "You may be under the misapprehension of the nature of the magical government," she said. "And possibly magical society as a whole.

"Many don't like to admit it, but magicals are a minority, even setting aside the recent explosion of the muggle population. There simply aren't all that many of us; only enough to support a few handfuls of dedicated settlements, with the rest of us spread out rather thinly across the world, and nowhere is that more true than here in Britain, where we have been hit hard by two wars in the last century.

"The Ministry of Magic, for the most part, exists for those things where it is needed—criminal matters, secrecy, public services and the like—and takes taxes for those few things, and, as with most governments now and throughout history, because it can. Outside of that remit, the Ministry of Magic tends not to concern itself with the minutiae of what happens. Anything that happens on a person's own land is considered to be mostly their own business, and the same goes for things that happen outside of their borders.

"The situation with the Lovegoods is both. It is... unfortunate, what the Lovegoods have gotten themselves into, but it is seen as something that they themselves have gotten themselves into, and even if it wasn't... Well, as Miss Shimmer pointed out to me in a most visceral manner just earlier today; Faerie is a place where the laws of nature and magic as we know them do not exist, and yet it manages to be terrifyingly real. You would find no auror nor hitwizard that would be willing to enter Faerie to 'go after them,' as you put it.

"As for the younger Miss Lovegood, there is simply no legal framework for anything to be done about her situation, and several to prevent it. The wizarding world does not have orphanages; most established families would sooner have their children raised by servants and portraits than see them passed outside of their circle of influence.

"That said, if Miss Shimmer has the extensive magical education that she claims, I am much less concerned. Provided the two of them keep trips into public places to a minimum, not do anything foolish and seek help when they need it, I see no reason the next month and a half shouldn't go smoothly enough. Ideally, of course, the Lovegoods will return before then; it would be a shame if they missed seeing their daughter off to Hogwarts for the first time."

Thomas Granger sat back in his chair, dumbstruck. "I can't—no—I won't accept that. Surely we could—"

"Mr. Granger," Professor McGonagall interrupted with strong disapproval. "Did or did I not say that there were laws in place to prevent just such interference? As much as I understand the fear of letting a child out to fend for themself and why you might want to open your home to a young girl in such a situation, she is nearing the age when she will be expected to manage her own life outside of meals and classes anyway, and you are not prepared to care for a magically-raised child and her... snorkack... familiar in a muggle neighborhood."

Thomas Granger looked very unhappy at that. Absolutely livid, really, but eventually he said, with reluctantly contained anger at the situation, "Fine. Well, no, it's not fine, but I suppose I'll just have to accept that." Addressing Luna directly, he said, "I'll make sure you have our address, though, in case you need anything. You can always take that 'Knight Bus' if it's something urgent."

Luna nodded in wordless thanks, and Professor McGonagall volunteered, "As far as I'm aware, the Lovegoods are on good terms with several magical neighbors in the area, such as the Weasleys, who you met earlier. I'm sure that should anything come up, they will make themselves available. I really must reiterate the dangers in having a 'snorkack' in a muggle neighborhood—especially if she shows up unannounced.

"Okay, that!" Thomas Granger yelled, letting his frustration out on something that he wasn't being stonewalled on. "That right there! For god's sake, can someone at least explain to me why you keep calling her a 'crumple-horned snorkack' when she's clearly some kind of unicorn or pegasus pony?!"

⁂

After saying goodbye to Hermione and reassuring Professor McGonagall about a number of things, including that Luna knew how to floo to Platform 9¾ and that they wouldn't do anything quite so foolish as to visit Nocturn Alley or go back to Faerie in search of Luna's parents, Sunset and Luna were finally allowed to floo back home to The Rookery.

Sunset just walked far enough to reach the nearest carpet and flopped down on her face, while Luna headed over to the couch that she'd nearly bled out on and made no sign that she remembered the traumatic situation.

Of course, given that she'd acted the same way only hours ago when it had still been caked in dried blood, that didn't actually mean much.

They only got a few moments of silence before they heard noises coming from outside. Sunset's ears perked up and swiveled, but all she caught was a yell of "What are you doing?!" that sounded oddly familiar.

It was clear that Luna heard it too, because she propped herself up off the couch on her hands and said, "Was that Ginny?"

Sighing, Sunset pushed herself up off the ground and was briefly thankful that, as a quadruped, that was all she needed to do to stand up. Watching Luna swing herself up and balance on her legs looked exhausting.

Sunset made it to the door quickly enough, then—failed to open it. Tilting her head this way and that, she examined the door for a lock of some sort, but there didn't seem to be one. Trying again, Sunset twisted the knob with her magic, but it refused to budge.

Luna frowned, looking decidedly put out with her hair mussed up from collapsing into the couch. "McGonagall must have cast a locking spell," she said, and tipped up on her toes to get a look outside.

Whatever she saw made her panic, though, as she quickly dropped back down and tried the doorknob for herself. "Fiddlesticks!" she swore. Biting her lip, she looked at Sunset and said. "Ginny is out there—and so is Titania. We have to help her."

The mention of Titania put the fire back in Sunset's veins. Frustrated, she shook the door with her magic, but now that Luna had said it, she could feel the locking spell on the door. The thing was, Equestrians didn't really use spells for locking things, and she'd certainly never learned any for unlocking things, so other than blow the door off, she wasn't sure what she could do.

Really, it was like the world was going out of its way to make her regret never studying certain things. Of course, back in Equestria, any spell used to lock something would probably wear out pretty quickly, so there was a reason that this sort of thing wasn't in her repertoire other than the fact that she'd never been inclined to the subtler spells.

Wait! That was it! If she just flooded the door with magic, maybe she could overwhelm it! Finally having a chance to let loose, Sunset lit her horn and spread her magic out over the door in a surge that resulted in a great resounding thoom, followed by a distant crash.

On the one hoof, the door was no longer locked.

On the other hoof, that was because she'd failed at any sort of non-destructive entry and blown it off its hinges.

On a third hoof—which was fine because ponies did in fact have four hooves—she nearly hit Titania with it, which was a nice bonus.

Quickly, the two of them raced out the front door. Titania was there, of course—Sunset had nearly hit her with the door, so she'd have to be—but of Luna's friend Ginny, there was no sign; just a violently orange pegasus half-wearing the same dress that the girl they'd met back in Diagon Alley had been.

...

Okay, Sunset wasn't stupid, but she was pretty sure that Luna's friend had been a human the last time she'd seen her. She supposed that the presence of the Seelie Queen explained that, though.

Now if only she had an explanation for the presence of the Seelie Queen.

While Sunset was working things out, though, Luna was going for the new paperclip necklace around her neck, which seemed like an escalation after... Well, okay, admittedly, Titania had put a knife in Luna's back the last time they'd met, but like Luna had said: she'd done that amicably.

Luna was not being amicable, though, as once she'd removed the necklace, she immediately went to swinging and throwing it, wasting no time on the little details like what was going on or what had happened to Ginny.

This time, though, Titania was ready, and Luna's makeshift paperclip bolas weren't exactly a sneaky weapon, so when they went wide, Titania managed to duck the other direction.

"Rude!" the seelie queen remarked offhandedly, though her eyes never left Luna. At first, Sunset thought it was because she was wary of another attack, but it soon became clear that there was more to it than that. "Well well well; you do look healthy," she observed.

"Why are you here?" Luna demanded to know, and the reaction just seemed so... un-Luna-like that it made Sunset uncomfortable. She told herself that it was because she'd spent so much time letting Luna pet her as a method of helping her get over her imprisonment in Faerie, and here Titania was, undoing all that progress, bringing the dangers of Faerie to her.

Titania, though, didn't seem inclined to answer Luna's question, choosing instead to cock her head this way and that, examining the young girl. "...Where is your knife?" she asked, her faceted golden eyes looking almost concerned.

That caught Luna off-guard, which was a remarkable thing to do. "...My knife?" she repeated.

"The one I gave you!" Titania said, sounding as offended as a petulant child.

Luna blinked. "The one you tried to kill me with?" she clarified, quite on the back foot at the direction things had suddenly taken.

"Yes!" Titania said as if that should have been obvious. "That was a very good knife, and you earned it fair and square! You made a deal for that knife, so why aren't you using it? Why is it not even with you?"

"I don't usually carry a knife on me," Luna said, recovering some of her reasonable manner. "Especially not murder weapons."

Titania exaggeratedly rolled her eyes and threw up her hooves in frustration. "Oh, don't give me that. You don't usually carry any of those other things you've got with you, but you've still got them, haven't you? I'm fairly certain that you'd need a good knife more often than you need those brass scales. Case in point: Here and now, when you want to kill me, but you don't have a knife!"

Luna was silent for a moment, and Sunset thought she might be trying to avoid admitting that the seelie queen had a point. "I don't think that running at you with a knife would be beneficial to my continued wellbeing," she eventually pointed out.

"Well, no," Titania admitted. "But it's still a really good knife and you should keep it on you."

Sunset figured that this was going nowhere and, just like their previous meeting, decided that maybe it would be best if she was the one to interact with the seelie queen; there was just too much bad blood between Luna and the fae, and that was saying something considering Sunset had had her name stolen.

"Okay, look," Sunset said, stepping in between the two. "First, what happened here?" she asked.

It wasn't Titania that spoke up, but Ginny, who had apparently regained her wits about her.

"I'm... I'm a horse!" she wailed.

Or not.

"Pegasus pony," Sunset corrected.

"Crumple-horned snorkack," Luna countered.

"Actually, no," Sunset disagreed. "She can't be a crumple-horned snorkack if she doesn't have a horn."

"...You do have a point," admitted Luna, who was fighting between putting on an air of thoughtfulness and keeping an eye on Titania. Sunset couldn't blame her. "An un-horned snorkack, then, perhaps..."

Sunset let out a weary sigh and went over to help the young pegasus, who was struggling with the dress she was wearing. "Here," she said, lifting the bottom of the dress. "Let me get that for you; now just walk backwards."

The bright orange pegasus didn't seem to think that this was helpful and chose to blush and stammer instead. "Wha—no—hey—don't lift that!"

Sunset rolled her eyes and dropped the hem of the dress back into the dirt. "Ugh, you humans and your clothes. I don't know why I even try. Seriously, though—it doesn't even fit you, it's not doing anything for you, and you're getting it dirty. What are you going to do if the seelie queen pulls something? Trip over yourself, that's what."

"I'd do it, too," Titania pointed out, then frowned. "Wait—no—I still have to get you to this Harry Potter fellow."

Sunset had no idea who this 'Harry Potter' was, but the name seemed to mean something to Luna, because she froze on hearing it, then drooped into a sulk. "Ginny, please tell me you didn't make a deal with the fae to go to Hogwarts with Harry Potter," she said, pinching the bridge of her nose.

"...Not intentionally," Ginny defended herself.

Sighing, Luna shook her head at the response. "Of course you did. You're a snorkack of some sort. I'm not sure what else I expected. This is what you get for making deals with the fae."

"Pardon, but I think I deserve to be called more than just, 'the fae,'" the seelie queen objected. "I am the fae, after all. You should feel honored."

"About that," Luna said, looking at Titania wearily. "Why are you even here? I've never heard of a queen of the fae actually coming to our world."

"Why, to check up on you, of course!" Titania said with great enthusiasm. "And it's a good thing I did, since you apparently just left such a good knife on your bedroom table where it isn't doing you any good."

"Enough about the knife already!" Ginny snapped. "I've never even seen this knife, and I've already heard enough about it!"

"Hey now," Sunset said, placing a hoof awkwardly on Ginny's withers. "Calm your feathers, there, fluff-and-tough. I mean, you have a point, but still."

"Did you really just say, 'calm your feathers'?" Ginny asked with the concentrated sarcasm of someone who was not having a good time and was about to make it everyone else's problem. That went off the rails when she began, "I don't have—" and finished with, "—oh merlin I have feathers," because, yes, she was a pegasus, so she had wings like any other pegasus. "I have wings."

Luna pressed her lips into a line that Sunset would have guessed had come directly from Professor McGonagall. "Yes. That. Why does my friend have wings, Titania?"

"She said she wanted to go to this Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry with this Harry Potter kid, and I quote, 'just like with Luna,' and since the only one going with you is Sunset Shimmer there... well, what else could I do but make her the boy's pony familiar?"

"...That's a stretch," Luna said.

Sunset gave Luna a flat look. "Really?" she said. "This is you saying that?"

"Let's be honest, here," the seelie queen said, sitting down where she was standing and appreciating her hoof for a moment. "I could have done it with just the wish to go to Hogwarts with him; the rest is superficial. Besides, who doesn't want to be a pony? Because, honestly, it's pretty great."

Sunset couldn't help but turn to Luna and say, "She has a point."

"Quiet, you," Luna said with a mock sternness, regaining a little more of her humor.

There was nothing humorous about the way that Sunset's retort suddenly died in her throat because Luna still had Sunset's name, which still meant things.

Fortunately, Luna noticed immediately what she'd done and said, "Oh, foo. That's such a bother. Stop that."

"Ugh," Sunset groaned, massaging her throat. "I don't think I've ever been more appreciative of the way you usually talk around things."

"Wait wait wait," Ginny said, stumbling forward and barely managing not to trip over the hem of her dress. "What was that? What's going on?"

Luna rolled her eyes. "Sunset was silly and gave her name to the fae," she informed her friend. "Things happened, her name is now my eye, and that's why she's my familiar."

Ginny's head swiveled to look at Titania in horror, because the seelie queen had just said moments ago that she had connected her to Harry Potter in the same way.

"You did that to me?!" she said, eyes wide in horror. "You made me Harry Potter's slave?!" she said, and yes, it was definitely horror and not any other more questionable emotions.

"Oh, no, not at all," Titania casually answered. "I'd have needed your name to do that, and honestly, I still have no idea how that one did what she did in using it as an eye," she said, pointing at Luna. "I did my best to kinda make it look like it, though."

"...And what does that mean for me?" she asked, slightly relieved, but still waiting for the other horseshoe to drop.

"I have no idea!" Titania cheerfully replied.

"...What?" Ginny said, blinking.

The seelie queen was entirely unashamed, and quite joyful over the matter. "None whatsoever! I just know that it will count as a familiar bond to the humans. It will be so very interesting to see what happens!"

Ginny didn't have an answer to that, and neither did Sunset. Luna seemed to be pondering the question internally, which was fair; she was probably the only one of them that could make so much as an educated guess, and Sunset was curious to know what it was that her right eye could see.

"Anyway," Titania said, filling the silence. "I did make a deal, and it's really about time that I finished it."

Ginny tried to back off in panic, but as prophesized she tripped on her ill-fitting dress and ended up on her backside as the seelie queen approached her. "Wait, now, hold on a second!" she said, waving her hooves in front of her.

"Nope," she said, then followed it up with, "Boop," as she booped the young pegasus on the nose, sending her backwards into a portal that only seemed to exist for the exact length of time it took Ginny to go through it.

The other side of the portal was dark and visible only for a fraction of a second, but now Sunset was left wondering why Ginny had wanted to go to school with a scrawny, underfed boy anyway.

Author's Note

Well, I had to eventually decide what to do with Ginny, and this is where it went. Probably not what people were expecting, but that's not a bad thing, and it does several things that help, not the least of which is helping actually involve Harry in things. If anyone was hoping we'd be getting to Hogwarts in the next chapter... I'm afraid that's just not going to happen. All the expected Ginny scenes aside, someone also has to tell Mrs. Weasley what happened to their daughter, and unless they think it's a good idea to get Titania to do it, that just leaves Sunset and Luna.

In all seriousness, though, I know that fics spending way too much time pre-Hogwarts is a thing that people complain about, but as long as interesting things are happening, is it really that big of a deal? It'd be an issue if I was trying to cram everything into the original book wordcount (we're basically there already), but this is closer to serial fiction anyway. I'd be curious to know what people's thoughts are on the matter, though. I know the trip to Faerie wasn't the most popular chapter and a half, and that is one of the things I considered in deciding to bring Faerie to Ginny rather than send Ginny to Faerie.

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, J T, Nineite, Andrew Pam, Southpaw, Andrew Denton, Trellmor, Kirishala, djthomp, SirHoli, IamUnknown, fused and CvBrony.