Fantastic Beasts, Harry Potter, and Little Ponies · 2:42pm Nov 22nd, 2018
In honor of Thanksgiving and the new Fantastic Beasts movie, which I'm going to see on Saturday regardless of the whining reviews, I'm including below the break the first chapter of Harry Potter and the Little Pony Problem. After all, one little pony in Harry's room won't be that much of a problem for such a bright boy. Or even two ponies. Or four. Or eight...
Harry Potter and the Little Pony Problem
One Little Unicorn
Most wizarding students spend their summers divided between doing holiday homework and doing very little at all. In most regards, Harry Potter was most certainly not any ordinary wizarding student, and this summer certainly proved it.
For starters, since Uncle Vernon’s sister Aunt Marge had made plans to visit, the spare bedroom needed to be brought up to her exacting standards. That meant all of the things in it that might disturb, disorient, or other bother the bothersome old woman needed to be moved somewhere out of the way. And that meant into Harry’s new room, which was crowded enough already with Dudley’s discarded rubbish. In Harry’s opinion, which bore no weight, of course.
To make matters worse, the woodwork in the spare bedroom needed a good scrubbing, and Harry was designated as the scrubber. Several summer days of wearing oversized rubber gloves and applying a watery brown liquid to anything that looked wooden left Harry barely enough strength to crawl into bed at the end of the day, and his nose constantly ran. Then there was wallpaper, and paint, and cleaning the windows until they almost looked as if there was no glass in them at all.
None of it was what a young boy about to reach thirteen years of age would like to spend their daytime hours doing, which left his near-teenage activities at night even more inexplicable.
He was studying.
A few weeks after returning from Hogwarts for the summer, Harry had opened his first packet of holiday assignments. It seemed that the instructors had been worried that their students would be at a loss for useful activities to keep them active during the peaceful summer months, and as a show of support, they sent along no end of essays, problems, quizzes, and assignments to help fill those lonely teenage leisure hours.
So by day, Harry hung wallpaper or struggled with curtains, while at night he stayed bent over his cousin Dudley’s old broken desk, despite the way it tilted to one side. It only left a few hours for sleeping, and then Aunt Marge would wake him up and send him to make breakfast again, in a tight daily cycle of drudgery. He could imagine his friends from school flying broomsticks in the Weasley’s back yard or staying up all hours playing Exploding Snap or Gobstones, but imagining was all he had time for.
Harry supposed he could blame Hermione for most of his scholastic woes. She had lectured to no end that homework had to be completed as soon as possible, because waiting until the last minute inevitably led to ‘just a few changes’ being requested by a professor. Turning it in first before the changes came out confused them, or so it seemed. Plus, the date of his return to Hogwarts was creeping closer, and the last thing Harry wanted to distract him from that blessed day of freedom was to fill the days just before it filling pages with frantic scribbling.
Thankfully, Fred and George Weasley had provided him with a going-away present at the end of last school year. Harry did not believe it at first. Ron Weasley was his best friend and would never pull a prank like sending him ink that would explode or turn into worms or some other humourous transformation. His two brothers, however…
After overcoming his perfectly rational reluctance to opening it, he found a dozen bottles of Weasley’s Wizarding Wheezes Muggle-Repellent No-Blotch No-Snoop Spell Ink, guaranteed to leave wizarding homework totally unreadable by Muggles. Supposedly, any non-wizard who spotted any writing done with the lavender ink would regard them as some sort of humorless governmental speeches, while drawings were taken as childish cartoons.
Harry did not particularly believe the label. Then again, it was ink, and he had a lot of homework to do.
Then came the evening after he had completed a two page essay on Dragon Bloodslugs, a particularly nasty parasite that liked to burrow under scales and could cause dragon colonies to suddenly collapse if not controlled The next morning, his Aunt Petunia came across the roll of parchment while jabbing Harry awake with one long sharp finger.
When he saw the essay in her hand, Harry was expecting the worst. His aunt and uncle had kept Harry under their thumbs as much as possible over the years as if they could squish the magic out of him. It seemed inevitable that her next action would be to shriek at him until he was securely locked in his cupboard under the stairs again, which had not been large enough for him before his latest growing spurt.
To his surprise, she merely scowled at the precious essay for entirely too long, then tossed it into the rubbish bin with a lecture to Harry about keeping his room clean. Since nearly all of the clutter was Dudley’s broken toys or outgrown possessions, and he would have gotten into far more trouble for throwing any of it away, Harry merely took his lumps silently while making breakfast.
His situation was a mixed blessing. Obviously, the possibility of Harry becoming some sort of Muggle politician speechwriter had not crossed their minds, because after all it had not ever crossed Harry’s mind either. And also obviously, the ink worked just as Ron’s troublesome brothers had advertised. Without his aunt and uncle bothering him about ‘that blasted wizard nonsense’ in the evenings, he had the opportunity to get his wizarding homework done. The problem was that his pile of homework seemed to be growing whenever Harry turned his back. He would no more than send Hedwig out the window as night with three or four scrolls tied to her leg than there would be a pecking at the window from one of the school owls, bringing five assignments to him.
Detailed potions setups with all of the ingredients and instructions laid out in sequential steps, including estimated times. Seventeen paragraphs on the use of Shrivelfig Extract in the treatment of magical maladies. Star charts for the next and last five years needing all of the planetary movements plotted out, along with a monthly paragraph on each one detailing the influence their phases would have on the weather. A seven scroll of parchment assignment requesting an prediction of what would have happened in the Goblin Revolutions if Gorflog the Gross had not choked on a piece of dumpling and fallen down a set of stairs, stabbing himself twelve times in the process.
The weeks and days seemed to hang in place, differentiated only by the scratching of a quill at night or scraping of sandpaper during the day. Hedwig noticed his distress also and refused to carry more than two assignments a night back to school, which left a pile of parchments heaped up behind the desk, growing more and more scribbled with every evening of study.
Until…
The latest assignment was to draw wand movements for every spell Harry had learned in his first two years at Hogwarts, which was actually a little bit of a break compared to his normal workload. Since students were forbidden to use their magic outside of Hogwarts, he had left his wand in the desk and checked his work by waving a yellow pencil. He did not speak the words that went with the spells, because he did not want to attract his aunt and uncle’s attention. However, one thing he did not consider was that a wand was merely a focus for a wizard’s magic, and that a pencil could under some circumstances be considered a cedar wand with a graphite core, seven and a half inches long.
And more important for reasons that would become obvious later, a writing implement.
To be fair, the accident was really Hermione's fault. And Malfoy, too. They could share the blame in a few weeks when Harry went back to school. Maybe a little of the blame on Fred and George too. And the teachers who had assigned him the wand-working homework really deserved some of it too.
He had been waving the pencil rather thoughtfully while trying to remember just exactly how Malfoy had used his own wand to summon a snake during their duel last year, when the pencil hit the inkwell. It was not a hard impact, just enough to make it skid down the tilted desk and slosh upside-down over the back. The purple mess of dripping ink would have been bad enough except it mostly poured into the hidden pile of backlogged homework that Hedwig had not delivered to the school yet.
Harry said a word.
It was not by nature a magical word. However, rough experience had taught him that uttering the word in the Dursley household caused his aunt to appear moments later as if by magic. Perhaps Petunia had some tiny family similarity to Harry’s witch mother, but whatever it was made Harry dive for his bed and yank the paperclip chain on his makeshift lamp. In a matter of seconds, he was beneath the covers and feigning slumber, and a bare second after that, his bedroom door opened.
There were several sharp footsteps that echoed around the room, slightly erratic as Petunia had to make her way through the narrow path between Dudley’s discards and the piles of guest bedroom furnishings. She made a brief stop at the desk to sweep all of Harry’s recent work into the dustbin with a sniff, then paused at the side of his bed.
The unseen inspection seemed to take his aunt a very long time, but after another disapproving sniff, she tugged one corner of his sheets up over an exposed elbow, then picked her way back out of the bedroom and closed the door. Harry held himself very still to ensure Petunia was not still watching before taking a brief peek out from under the edge of the sheets, thankful that he only saw the cluttered bedroom with no sign of his aunt.
“That was close,” he whispered, easing himself out of bed and over to the desk, where he stopped cold.
A proper wizard only needs a wand to cast spells. Even a Second Year wizarding student like Harry could recognize the effects of a spell in the process of casting itself. Dripping and dribbling bits of lilac ink carried brilliant sparks around the back of his desk, and Harry managed to hit his head when he ducked underneath it to do… whatever one does when ones pile of homework was in the process of unmaking itself. If Harry had been a much more experienced wizard, he might have been able to identify and stop whatever was fizzing to completion before it exploded and brought his aunt and uncle storming into the room.
Then there was a small popping noise, no louder than a soap bubble, and the lights inside the rumpled pile of paper abruptly went out. It was far from what Harry expected. Most spell failures in school involved whizzing pieces of experiment all over, and a quick trip to Madame Pomfrey’s hospital wing. Far worse was the expectation of a letter from the Ministry of Magic at any second, also whizzing in the window by way of an overstressed owl.
There was no whizzing, only some rustling deep inside the pile of papers. Harry scrambled for the desk drawer, but did not actually grab his wand because his previous experience with the Ministry of Magic rules forbidding students the use of magic outside of the school. Also, whatever was making the noise was small, about the size of a rat or an Eeeping Whimbugger, both of which were relatively harmless. He picked up his pencil instead, and used it to move aside sheets of dripping parchment until he found the source of the noise.
It was a tiny little purple unicorn, small enough it could have sat on his hand.
At first, he thought it was some sort of stuffed toy, perhaps something left by Aunt Marge’s dog on her last trip. Then the tiny unicorn looked up at him with big eyes, smiled, and spoke in a pleasant, high-pitched voice.
“Hello. My name is Twilight Sparkle. Who are you?”
Definitely want see more of this one.
In case you're worried I really enjoyed the movie. It wasn't perfect but I never found it awful or boring and neither did the people I went with.
*Raises hand*
Um, seeing that I've never read any of the HP books, or the movies, or the plays, or anything HP-related, really, how much do I need to know about HP before reading this story?
I await the publication of this story, chapter by chapter, with keen interest.
4971578 Oh, I'm not too worried. I enjoy movies for what they are, after all, even though one of the HP movies had me so upset that I actually hissed at my wife during the show, "That's not how it goes!" We still bought the DVD, and I've probably watched it three times now and enjoyed it more each time. Just don't get me started on Starship Troopers.
4971590 Writing it is pretty fun too, even though it's only going to reach the events in the first chapter or two of the third book.
4971584 So... when did you get out of prison?
Seriously, though. You can enjoy the story even if you've never read any of the books. I would encourage you to read them, though. They're wonderful examples of children's literature that adults enjoy too, and the reading level goes up as the series continues. If nothing else, go rent the first movie. They put a lot of money at risk on the three main child actors, and got it back tenfold. Then add the fantastic acting by Dame Maggie Smith, Alan Rickman, and all the rest. They're going to mint money off this thing for a century. Alan Rickman did such a perfect Snape that even J.K. Rowling said she never knew she wrote the role for him until she saw him play it.
I find myself to be unreasonably agitated by the actions of Harry's instructors. Under what sort of social arrangement do they feel that they have the right to burden him with such a course load? A) It is his summer vacation, thus he is not attending school. B) He is away from the resources to which they seem to expect he would have access. C) He is in a place where he is legally prohibited from practising magic.
Honestly. It is this sort of unreasoning, unthinking abuse of power that puts me right off authority.
O this is going to be fun.
4971603
From what I understand summer homework involves the use of supplies he would already have as a student and casting spells isn't required as no student is supposed to be using magic outside of Hogwarts.
4971603 Unfortunately, it's canon, and in the very first paragraph of The Prisoner of Azkaban. Darned adults.
(Bonus points for noticing that the homework he is receiving seems excessive, like some elf in the school is trying to 'help' his friend.)
4971604 I hope so.
4971609
Yes, well, the canon adults did always make me want to arm myself.
4971603
It's a British boarding school. It is a law of the genre that it must abuse its students to the greatest extent possible at all times.
4971599
Honestly, what little I do know of Harry Potter just never held any interest for me. Didn't feel like investing the time when there was so many other things I would rather have been doing.
I'd read it with extreme prejudice.
I'm looking forward to reading this when it comes out.
Multiple Harry Potter projects? This pleases me.
How is he going to hide a magical unicorn, even if it's rather small? Will she help him with his homework/house drudgery? Will her magic be detected by the Ministry?
.....I WANT SO MUCH!!!
.....but Twilight seems VERY calm about bing summoned by a (in her eyes) giant creature that she knows little to nothing about!...But I can't wait to see where this is ganna go!
4971634
It's pre-season 4 Twilight, so she doesn't immediately panic over every new experience.
On the other hand, it's pre-season 4 Twilight, so she hasn't met humans yet and has no frame of reference.
Ah, one of those deaths. To become king, Gorflog did in Blog, who did in Unkful, who did in Viddle, who did in Loll, who did in Alrok...
In any case, definitely looking forward to this one.
I’m intrigued.
You have my attention..
4971642
The worst case of suicide they'd ever seen, followed shortly by the sad shaking of heads and a careful inability to see the abundance of evidence.
I'm so down for this when it comes out! You have captured JK's playful-yet-descriptive style wonderfully, almost like I was reading her original work. If the rest of this story can be just as amazing, it'll receive a favorite from me to be sure, and I'm rather picky with my gold stars.
I've noticed this post didn't have much by way of editing. Do you require one, or are you retaining the services of your standard editor-monkeys?
4972979 The kicker is that I'm actually *not* able to duplicate her style. She has some of the most amazing shortened character descriptions with fairly long non-descriptions of scenes that go on *forever* without actually going anywhere. It's darned good practice to try, but I don't think I'll ever capture her style totally. And that's a good thing, because I've got my own. ;)
4972985
Perhaps I should clarify, then. Note I said "captured," not "copied." A copy just wouldn't do; if I had wanted to read Rowling's work, I'd just go read it (and with the abundance of supplementary material I picked up at the very real King's Cross Station a few days ago, I don't lack choice even without touching the original seven books). Instead, and at least in my reckoning, you have taken your style and modified it, merging it slightly with hers, to create something that feels simultaneously like a Rowling piece and a Georg piece, and that is what I called "wonderful." And obviously I like your normal work, lest I wouldn't be here, a follower having commented on a blog post. ;)
"no more than send Hedwig out the window as night" should be "no sooner send Hedwig". "No more than" is the start of an idiom indicating what someone will not do. And "as night" should be "at night".
4974473 Good catch. Thanks!
4974480
is this going to be story? please say yes
4974492 Yes, and much shorter than Sweetie Belle - Hogwarts Exchange Student. That's probably going to top out over 100k words, while this one may run down to 25k.
4974544
Nice. And wait, there's another one? Linke please?
4974563 Been posting snippets in my blog. Enjoy.
Huh. Not sure why you'd post this purely in a blog, but I like it! The continuous assignment of new summer homework was a bit of a stretch to the suspension-of-disbelief, but the commentary on Harry's reaction to his ridiculous workload was quite well done. Hope you'll keep it going!
Harry Potter fic #3 I like it.