//------------------------------//
// Chapter 62 
// Story: The Gate 
// by computerneek 
//------------------------------//

Minister for Magic Cornelius Fudge carefully hides his nervousness as he knocks on the massive front doors of Hogwarts Castle.  He and his cabinet spent the last year, with the help of the Office of Foreign Relations, trying to find out who to contact to formally open relations with the Equestrians.  They hadn’t been able to find anything- and then, out of the blue, Rita’s article came out…  and pointed out a single liaison.  The girl isn’t an Equestrian, but that doesn’t seem to have stopped them- and now, especially in light of this morning’s newspaper, his entire cabinet agrees that they need to establish friendly contact as soon as possible…  and take an alarmed stance on the issue of Lockhart and Heartstrings.
Which is why he’s here, with two aurors, a representative from St. Mungo’s, and one of his aides- the one that’s fastest with a quill.  No doubt he and his staff will spend the next hour or so, once they get back to the Ministry, preparing a press release for the general public tonight.
The great oak doors open, to reveal Professor McGonagall.  “Minister,” McGonagall greets.
“Uh- Good afternoon,” Fudge begins, internally berating himself for stumbling already.  “Is the Equestrian liaison, Ginny Weasley, available?”
Behind McGonagall, he spots a girl with hair that reminds him of hay whirl to look towards the doors, then start speaking into her ‘radio’ device.
“Ahh,” Professor McGonagall begins.  “I’m sure that can be arranged.”  She stands back, gesturing them inside.
“Thank you,” Fudge continues.  “We can wait here while you get her, please.”
“Actually,” the hay-haired girl states, trotting closer.  “She’s ready for you now.”  She looks up at McGonagall.  “In the Hospital Wing.”
McGonagall smiles thinly, nodding slowly.  “Ahh…  I see.”  She turns back to Fudge and his party.  “If you would follow me?”
“Ah, yes,” Fudge nods, distinctly nervous.  In the Hospital Wing?  Isn’t that where Heartstrings is?  He prays to himself that she hasn’t died, or something.
Professor McGonagall leads him up the familiar passageways to the Hospital Wing…  where he is at once overwhelmed by the woman with the sunlit hair, glaring at a floundering Lockhart.
Ginny Weasley, standing near the door, bows slightly to him as he enters.  “Meet Princess Celestia, Princess of the Sun and Diarch of Equestria,” she intones, holding a hand out towards the sunlit woman.
At her words, Celestia’s attention shifts from Lockhart to him.  She doesn’t fix him with the glare she’d pointed at Lockhart, thankfully- but her disappointed gaze is bad enough.
“Minister for Magic Cornelius Fudge,” Weasley introduces, bowing fully to Celestia and holding her hand out towards him.
He bows to the Princess- and notices that his aide is bowing as well…  and the two aurors, after exchanging looks with the armored men standing respectfully by the door, simply nod their heads to the Princess.  “Princess,” he greets, before rising carefully.  This is his country, technically- it wouldn’t do to appear subservient to her here.  “I take it you’ve seen the news?”
She nods slightly.  “I have.  Professor Lockhart here,” she turns to scowl at Lockhart again, who is frantically reading the news article in front of him, “irresponsibly caused very nearly irreparable damage to one of my loyal subjects.”
“Ahh, yes,” Fudge mutters, looking down slightly and trying to recollect his thoughts.  “She’s…  She’ll recover, right?”
The blue-and-white-haired girl sitting on the next bed over lets out a laugh, wand in hand.  “Oh, yeah, I’ll recover, eventually.  He only damaged my innate magic so badly it won’t fully recover for almost a full year, and vanished:  One, the bones out of my right arm.  Two, my right lung.  Three, an entire limb.  And four, a sizable chunk out of my right side, mostly towards my back.”  She shudders.  “It’s only thanks to Madam Pomfrey and Doctor Horse here that I survived at all.”  She shoots a glare at Lockhart, who yelps as if he’d been burned.  “And before my apparent good health makes you wonder, the only reason I’m not in magical stasis right now is because Silversong happened to be nearby- and thanks to her combination of skill and raw power, she was able to replace my side with magic until it can grow back.”
Fudge blinks.
“You regrow?” Lockhart yelps.
Lyra shakes her head.  “Not without magical support.”  She shudders.  “And I won’t be able to fly again for a good three years at least.”  Scowl.  “Or eat normally for a year and a half or so.”
“Ahh…”  Fudge glances up at Madam Pomfrey.
The nurse sighs.  “That’s only the beginning of it.”  She lifts the clipboard hanging on the end of the girl’s bed, and makes a show of flipping through six pages of diagnosis, before returning it to its place.  “And Miss Heartstrings is mistaken- if not for Silversong, she’d be dead right now.  Magical stasis wouldn’t have worked.”
Heartstrings blinks.  “Wait, really?”
She nods sagely.  “You were in far too critical of condition.  Stasis would have shattered your magical core.”
She winces.  “Oh…  I knew I recognized Silver’s signature, but I didn’t realize her contribution was that important.”
Fudge tilts his head.  “Shattered the magical core…?  Wouldn’t that…?”
Bonbon shakes her head.  “That’s how the Killing Curse does its job.”
“Ahh…”  Fudge glances around the room.  “Does this Silversong happen to be-?”
Bonbon shakes her head again.  “She has asked to remain anonymous.”
“...  Huh.  Well…”  He looks towards Lockhart.  “I daresay this calls for a reevaluation of Mr. Lockhart’s magical abilities at the very least,” he states.  “We can’t have him injuring anyone else like this.”  He looks at the St. Mungo’s representative that had come in with him.  “And we should probably extend that into a program to make sure all celebrities- and holders of an Order of Merlin- can cast basic magics correctly.”
“To be fair, I did have some active spells that might have interfered with it when I allowed him to,” Heartstrings inserts.
“Allowed!?” Madam Pomfrey promptly explodes, infuriated.  “He was allowed to hurt you like that?”
Everyone else in the room goes instantly silent, watching the nurse.
Lyra shakes her head vehemently- and winces in pain.  “Ow!  Um, no, I didn’t allow him to hurt me.  He offered to heal the broken bone, and I said okay.”  She scowls.  “Probably should have warned him of those spells… or cancelled them first.”
The St. Mungo’s representative then speaks up angrily.  “Any competent wizard should know to check for interference before casting any kind of medical magic!”
Madam Pomfrey nods vehemently, but Dumbledore beats her to speaking.  “Completely aside from how he shouldn’t have offered in the first place.  The Equestrians are different from the rest of us, and so respond differently to medical magics.  Only Madam Pomfrey here understands that difference well enough to work through it; all the rest of the staff- including myself- are supposed to take any injured Equestrians straight here, no matter how simple the ailment!”
“I believe that’s been posted in the staffroom for over a year,” Professor McGonagall scowls.  “And mentioned at every staff meeting this year, too.”
Celestia turns her gaze on Lockhart once again, causing an instant resurgence of the cat-and-mouse appearance.
“Ahh…”  Fudge mutters, also glaring at Lockhart.  “It would seem this also calls for an investigation.  Any holder of an Order of Merlin, no matter the class, should know better than to disregard safety instructions.  And shouldn’t need them, to begin with!”
“Hold on,” one of the Aurors mutters, looking up at McGonagall.  “That post tells why they come straight here, right?”
McGonagall shakes her head.
He sighs, and shakes his head.  “Then there’s nothing we can do.”  He gestures at his partner.  “In terms of law enforcement.”
Celestia’s eyebrows nearly disappear into her hairline.  “By his negligence, he nearly killed a foreign envoy, including sentencing her to a minimum of three years of pain and disability, yet you do nothing against him?”
The Auror flinches back from her glare.  “I’m sorry, Princess- he hasn’t violated any standing laws, so our hands are tied.”  He looks at Fudge.
Princess Celestia also turns to Fudge.
“That, ah, definitely needs looking into,” Fudge declares immediately.  “I expect it is simply a matter not covered by our current laws.  Rest assured we will see to it that any such deficiency is corrected…  and that he then sees justice.”  He glances at Dumbledore, who nods, before looking back at Celestia.  “Ahh… Would you like to know when we have a trial date?”
“Can you promise me that he will not lay one finger on any of my subjects before his trial?” Celestia demands.
“Ahh…”  Fudge looks between Lockhart and Celestia.  “I…  Um…”
The red-and-gold-haired girl that had hitherto sat silently rises, trotting up next to Celestia.  “Just issue a restraining order,” she instructs him, “to keep him from touching any Equestrian, either physically or by magic.”  She then turns to look up at Celestia.  “That way, if he does touch one of us again…”  She looks sideways at the aurors.  “It’d be a criminal offense, even if he didn’t cause harm.”
“Ahh…  Those have to be requested by the victim, though…”
Celestia gives him an unimpressed deadpan set to make a man like Dumbledore cower in fear.  The red-and-gold-haired girl facepalms.  Rita’s quill breaks, but Granger’s already got a fresh one waiting for her.
Fudge doesn’t stand a chance, backing involuntarily into the closed infirmary door.
“You know,” Heartstrings supplies, in the perfect deadpan, “that Princess Celestia represents every last one of us, right?”
Everyone nods…  then Bonbon, Heartstrings, Granger, Weasley, and the red-and-gold-haired girl stiffen suddenly.
Bonbon puts her hands up to her face, leaning back in her chair.  “Oh Lord…”
Granger simply facepalms.  Heartstrings groans, flopping back down flat on her bed.  The fiery-haired girl sighs, shaking her head and turning to return to her seat.
Weasley rolls her eyes and mutters something into one of her two radios.
Dumbledore looks at them.  “What happened this time?” he asks tiredly.
“Muggles,” Weasley answers shortly.  “They’ve been spotted driving their cars onto the grounds.”
“C-Cars?” Fudge asks.  “Isn’t the ground too bumpy for those?”
She shrugs.  “Somebody should have told these that.  They’re not even inconvenienced.”