“Well, that went about as well as it could,” Harry groans, sprawled across the couch.
Dudley walks heavily into the room, having just seen Aunt Marge off. “Yeah,” he sighs, flopping himself down into the recliner Vernon and Petunia had gotten him for his tenth birthday- one of the very few of Dudley’s belongings that had survived that long. It’s giving out, though, judging by the pitiful groaning of the springs. “That was… terrible.”
Vernon stops in the doorway, leaning against the frame as he lets out a huff of breath. “She might even have been worse than normal this time around,” he grumbles.
“Worse?” Harry asks, looking up at him. “I thought it was Voldemort’s soul fragment that was making everyone so nasty?”
Vernon nods. “It was. Only, she never stopped being nasty.”
Petunia steps up next to him, leaning against him. “Yeah…” She heaves a sigh. “Kinda makes me wonder if she’s found another, ah, fragment of an evil wizard’s soul.”
Silence holds for a few seconds.
“You’re going to have to teach me to cook like that too,” Dudley mutters. “That was good.”
Harry had cooked dinner tonight, rather than Dudley; he didn’t want Marge to realize anything strange was afoot either, and that was the easiest way to do that, in that particular instance. He grins half-heartedly. “Yeah, sure. But not tonight, that was exhausting.”
“I wonder how good a cook that Malfoy is?” Vernon asks mildly.
Harry blinks. “I… I have no idea,” he answers. “I suppose we can let him help if he wants tomorrow, then?”
“You know,” Petunia mutters. “There’s one other person that never changed when you went to school.”
“Oh?” Harry asks, looking up at her. “Who was that?”
“Mrs Figg.”
“Figg?” he asks, gazing at the ceiling. “Well, she was my favorite babysitter. Even though she made me look at pictures of her cats.” He shrugs. “And it’s possible she’s a squib, too.”
“How would that…?”
“Lyra tells me that the soul fragment would have affected only non-magicals… and that squibs are magical enough. So, if she is a squib, she will have been immune to it.”
Petunia looks at Vernon. “That makes sense, actually.”
Vernon looks back. “Though it begs the question,” he mutters. “If she is a squib, was she genuinely hard on Harry, or only hard on him because we were?”
“That’s… a very good question,” Petunia answers. She glances up at Harry. “I could try calling her, see if she’d like to visit tomorrow morning.”
Harry shrugs. “Sure. If she is a squib, it won’t be a problem for her to see us using magic.” He tilts his head. “I wonder if Lyra’s Whiskey Tango works on squibs…?”
“Uh… Hermione?”
Hermione looks up. “Oh, hi Dad!”
“How are you… uh, on the ceiling?”
Hermione glances down, at the ceiling she’s kneeling on, and shrugs. “I don’t know… I figured out I could do it during the battle with Quirrell at the end of the school year, and never asked Lyra.” She glances down. “And, um, a bulb burned out, so I thought I’d change it.”
“I take it the chair wasn’t tall enough?”
“It didn’t look tall enough… and this is easier than flying.”
“Your telekinetic powers not working or something?”
“Oh, they’re working just fine. I just don’t have fine enough control to be confident I can get the bulb in securely without breaking it.” She finishes screwing in the lightbulb, before rising to her feet and walking sedately to and down the wall. Once on the floor again, she glances up at the light fixture, flicking the light on telekinetically. “Oh, that reminds me- shortly after that battle, I figured out why I have my telekinesis.”
“Not how you got it?” Dan asks hopefully.
“No, that’s still a mystery. The thing is, I have telekinesis because I’m not a pegasus.”
He sighs. “So, first you’re a pegasus, then you’re not a pegasus? What now, a hippopotamus?”
Hermione lets out a snort of laughter. “Yeah, no, I’m not a hippo. I was originally a pegasus- and I still look like one, mostly. Just one small difference.” She crouches briefly, hopping upwards- and shrinks considerably as she goes, her clothes disappearing into nowhere.
Dan stares. She’s bronze-colored and tiny, her even smaller bronze wings flapping lazily to hold her steady at about head height. The old lightbulb looks a little funny, sticking to her flat forehoof as if it were glued to it.
He’d have to concede with her; she does look like a pegasus, albeit a strange one, save only the spiral horn sticking out of her forehead. “You’re…” He begins.
“An alicorn,” she answers. “No clue how I was turned into one, but I actually do know when. It would have been when I found myself transported to a world of clouds for a few seconds, right after the first time I went supersonic.”
“So, you went supersonic, and became an alicorn.”
“Um… Kinda, I guess. It wasn’t the going supersonic that did it, though- Rainbow goes supersonic all the time, but she’s still a pegasus- and besides, neither Harry nor Draco were pegasi, yet they still became alicorns after that battle with Quirrell. Speaking of which, Harry’s house was finally recognized by the Ministry as a wizarding home, so Draco invited me over to celebrate tomorrow. Is that okay?”
“Um… I take it he’s going to be coming for a teleport?”
“Yeah.”
“Then…” He sighs. “Be safe, alright?”
Mrs. Figg, as it turned out, had not been interested in visiting.
But none of the Dursleys seem to care. They’re all decked out in dinner jackets and so on.
Harry pauses at the bottom of the stairs, raising his eyebrow at Dudley and Uncle Vernon, waiting in the foyer. Aunt Petunia is visible in the kitchen “We expecting someone?” he asks.
“Ah, yes,” Vernon answers him. “Your ‘Draco’ could be along anytime.”
“So… why the, um, formal clothes?”
“We wouldn’t want to make a bad first impression, now would we?”
“Ahh… those clothes are more likely to make him uncomfortable than anything else.”
“Really?”
He nods. “Yeah. I don’t think Draco’s ever seen a muggle dinner jacket before. Besides, it’s an informal visit- his dad won’t be coming.”
Some five minutes pass, before, while the Dursleys are still changing back into their normal day wear, Harry notices Hermione’s aura approaching on the other side of the door. There’s another with her, though not the one he was expecting. It only takes him a second to remember the connection, though- Silversong is Draco. The two auras approach the door, and pause.
Harry waits eagerly, sitting on the lowest stair of the staircase, staring at the door. “Come on,” he mutters.
Eventually, finally, the knock sounds from the door.
Harry explodes up from the stairs, reaching the door in seconds. He nearly forgets to unlock the door, but he remembers just in time- and finally pulls the door open.
There they are. Hermione, standing next to Draco, both looking surprised.
He fairly leaps on Hermione, hugging her for all he’s worth.
Hermione squeaks, stumbling back as he hits her at full tilt.
Draco lets out a faint cry of alarm, before visibly relaxing, and chuckling.
Harry looks at him. “What?” he asks.
Hermione hugs him back, whispering in his ear. “You missed me that much, huh?”
He promptly draws back, blushing furiously, and puts his hands behind his back. She lets him go. “Uh…”
She giggles, blushing even more furiously. “Don’t worry, um… I would probably have done that to you if you didn’t first.” She glances sideways at Draco.
“It’s… Um,” Draco begins, blushing. “Shortly after my transformation, Lyra said something about Equestrian magic… and herds. Something about drawing, um, people together, regardless of age.”
“Wait,” Harry mutters, blinking and stepping back against the doorframe. “You mean Equestrian magic is why I missed Hermione so much?”
Draco shrugs. “She did say it doesn’t create those connections, only identifies and strengthens the ones that are already there…” He blushes cherry red, looking away. “She said it makes finding ‘true love’ easy.”
Hermione pulls both boys into a singular hug. “Probably why Bonbon never heard of divorce.”
“Ahh,” Harry mutters, as Hermione lets them go. “Even though me and Draco are, um, boys?”
Draco raises an eyebrow at him.
Harry’s blush renews, and he facepalms slowly. “Right. Um… Come in, I guess. Is…” He looks at Draco. “Is that something we’re going to have to worry about forever?”
Draco shrugs, following him and Hermione in the door. “Probably on this side, yeah. The kind of closeness it makes is considered normal in Equestria, but… Well, my father would probably throw a fit if he realized it was happening.”
Harry raises an eyebrow at him. “He would?”
He nods. “Yeah. He still calls the Granger family ‘mudbloods’, and he’s not a fan of same-sex marriage.”
“You haven’t, ah, shown him, have you?”
He shakes his head. “Absolutely not! He’d probably throw me out for being transformed, extra magical powers or not. I’ve managed to pass off the hair as an originally-temporary side effect of a prank, that was made permanent because it bypasses a particularly nasty house curse… which, I haven’t told him, isn’t actually being bypassed but completely ignored- we’re immune to that kind of thing.” He sighs. “I haven’t shown him my wings, he’d probably chop those off.”
“Or, at least,” Hermione adds, “try.”
“Really?”
Hermione nods. “Yeah. I rather doubt you’d let him.”
He blinks. “... That is true.”
“That. Sounds. Horrible,” Aunt Petunia inserts, making her way down the stairs.
Draco glances up at her, before looking at Harry. “Uhh…”
Harry shrugs. “Not yet.”
Petunia reaches the bottom of the stairs. “They’re a part of you, right? Not some spell construct?”
“Ahh…” Malfoy mutters, looking indecisive.
“Spell construct?” Harry asks. “They can make wings with those?”
She shrugs. “Is there a reason they can’t?”
“Ahh…” Hermione inserts. “I’d assume they can’t, on this side at least- there’s no books on the topic. And if you go to the other side, there’s also no books telling how to make feathered wings as a spell construct.”
Petunia blinks. “Wha- huh?”
Harry smirks, before resting an arm across Hermione’s shoulders. “Aunt Petunia, meet Hermione Granger, the girl with the magical ability to know exactly in which book to look for whatever she wants to learn about.” He looks at Hermione. “I take it you’ve found a way to leverage that to find out what’s possible or not?”
She nods, fresh blush fading. “If something doesn’t exist, there won’t be books about it, and the magic will come back empty-handed.” Then she scowls. “It’s not proof, though- simply absence of evidence. Which is not the same as evidence of absence.”
“In any case, if they’re a part of you, nobody should be cutting them off, least of all your own parents! I mean, we did have to have Dudley’s tail removed after… that happened- but if one of my boys decides to come home with wings one day, they’re his to keep! … Was it something I said?”
Both Hermione and Draco are both snickering into their hands.
Harry raises his eyebrows. “Ahh,” he begins. “Does that mean Dudley has a brother?”
She scowls. “Just because you’re not my biological child doesn’t mean you’re not my child,” she informs him.
Harry grins, letting out a chuckle.
Draco stops snickering first. “Uh, what was ‘that’?” He looks at Harry. “And isn’t Dudley human?”
Harry nods. “Hagrid tried to turn him into a pig when he delivered my Hogwarts letter. Wasn’t too successful- only gave him a pig’s tail.” He sighs. “And if I remember my Transfiguration classes correctly, anything else it may have done to him will have reverted itself by now.” He glances up at Petunia. “Another perk of being magical.”
“Anyways,” Hermione mutters, lifting her arm up underneath Harry’s to rest it across his shoulders, wand in hand. “We were here to celebrate magic being allowed here, right?”
“Ah, yes,” Uncle Vernon nods, plodding down the steps. “I do believe that was the plan.”
Ok. This version of the Dursleys is a bit wierd.
I love the smell of Mary Sue (or napalm) in the morning.
Keep it up.
out in the multiverse a thousand night lovers glare into the middle distance. the day lovers would too but they're too busy eating cake proving his point.
Back for another wave of chapters?
9743090
At least one, yes. Don't know for sure about more, just yet.
My life is a bit of a (financial) struggle right now, so I won't be writing very much.
...part of me is waiting for Draco and Harry to get caught snogging in the halls at Hogwarts.
9742785
Think about how poor Harry feels? Filly must be going through mood whiplash...on the one hand these are the people that made his formative years hell...on the other he's getting what he always wanted from them, acceptance. Add in the fact that he knows now that it was outside influence causing the abuse and the Dursly's can't be blamed...and the fact that he/she has recently gone through a Race and Gender change(remember that technically they are shape-shifting into their old forms), yeah he is messed up mentally. Puberty is gonna be a Bitch to Harry and Draco.
Moodbloods?
9743849
*Mudbloods, yes. The derogatory term purebloods use to refer to muggleborn in cannon- not unlike "nigger" in the real world. I know it was the Slytherin common room password in one of the books.
... Sorry, I seem to have misspelled it. Nice catch.
9743857
I assumed it was a way for Draco to say it but not. Kinda like use of the term "nibba" as a replacement.
9744723
The way I see it, using a different, related term as a stand in for the known derogatory is no different from using the derogatory itself. So long as he's not actually using the word (here, he's referring to it, not using it), it's okay. Just like with an F-bomb- censoring all but the first letter is no different from writing out every letter. Though that has produced some amusing "alternatives", including things like "fork"...
The way I see it, it's not so much the word itself that makes it bad (Did you know, "bitch" is not just a derogatory term towards a woman, but a perfectly normal and acceptable term for a female dog?), it's how it's used. Some words, such as "mudblood" and the F-bomb, are only obsceneties- and it's very, very difficult to properly use them without making it an obscenity. As such, I avoid using those terms at all.
9746425
The jargon itself isn't the problem. It's how it pushes over the top the sense of "Lyra's only purpose in this story is to serve as a deus ex machina whenever the author wants to hurry past something, no matter how implausible it is for one character to be this hyper-competent in so many different ways relative to canon".
It's the same problem I had with parts of If Wishes Were Ponies in that it makes it feel difficult to enjoy what is working well in the story because the author's headcanon is dancing in front of "the stage" with a big "Hey, Look at me!" sign and insufficient reason to find it captivating.
EDIT: Actually, now that I think about it, it's not even really your headcanon that's the problem. I find that fascinating. It's more a case of "Get that damn deus ex machina out of the way. I'm trying to watch the headcanon."
9747815
I am sorry about that. Lyra, at least, gets out of the way eventually. She doesn't disappear completely, but she does get relegated down to supporting character level presence.
9747995
On the one hand, I did keep reading (I've caught up by now), so it wasn't deal-breaking. On the other hand, I've developed quite the high tolerance for this sort of thing when there's other interesting stuff going on at the same time.
(I've walked quite far down the curve of diminishing returns on a lot of fandoms and I'm really overdue for tracking down the tropes and atmospheres I'm looking for in professionally published fiction.)
It's more something for you to keep in mind for future writing, since it's the kind of thing that can't really be fixed by adding more chapters later and I wouldn't expect you to rewrite the whole story.
9748307
Duly noted.
Probably doesn't help that most of my stories center around one overpowered (usually Bolo or related) character...
9748488
*nod* It can be tricky to get the hang of writing overpowered characters, but the essence of novel-length fiction is the story of the main character(s) overcoming some challenge. The more of a challenge it is, the more satisfying it is when they overcome it. (As long as you don't resort to ways to make it more challenging that chip away at the atmosphere, mood, or tone you're trying to build, or use the "boot of author" to randomly kick the character when they're down, or give the villain surprise boosts.)
That's why it's so satisfying when you get to the end of a Dresden Files novel. Harry really had to work for that triumph.
When it comes to overpowered characters, it really comes down to making sure that, to the greatest extent possible, events fall into one of two categories:
(The #1 mistake authors make in this field is doing the opposite and distracting from what the readers want to be more immersive and more common in favour of drawing attention to things readers would have been willing to gloss over for the sake of keeping the good stuff concentrated and flowing smoothly. In-line author's notes are the most glaring example of that.)
With the way you were using Lyra, it came across as akin to scenes that serve as hollow boilerplate, meant only to bridge together two other scenes, rather than to do something in and of themselves, like exploring characters, building tension, using comic relief to release tension, or advancing the aspects of the narrative that the readers are properly invested in.
That said, ignoring or glossing over things is somewhat counter-intuitive, because, in real life, we're used to thinking that events have an inherent importance to them while, in fiction, that's not true. Events have an importance to the setting, but, as far as the reader is concerned, their importance is completely subservient to their relevance to the plot, and it's the author's responsibility to find a way to assign them screen time proportionate to their importance.
(This is why Anne McCaffrey was able to write over half a dozen novels, following the same time period on Pern from different perspectives, without it getting old. Each one focused on a given event only so much as it was relevant to the plot of that particular novel and, if she came up with an idea later, it was taken for granted when reading the earlier novels that "Oh, it wasn't mentioned because it wasn't relevant".)
Manipulating the readers' expectations and attention in this way tends to fall into one of two tactics:
Writing is a confidence game. One of the most effective tricks in a good author's toolbox is ignoring or defying details with such a sense of "nobody would ever question/dispute this" to their writing style that it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. You'd be surprised how much "canon inertia" you can disregard if your writing exudes enough conviction that something is irrelevant to "what this story is about" and, thus, would just distract from and dilute the good stuff.
For example, in Naruto, Orochimaru's invasion of Konoha is about as big a Fixed Point as you can get unless you start long before canon, which would draw things out too much. He's spent too much time planning it and building his power... but you can play with the passage of time, so most or all of your story takes place during an interval that canon passed through much more quickly, or downplay it and have it happen "in the background", so the character only has to deal with the side-effects.
Sailor Moon is an interesting example of the former. The anime pads out the early seasons of the manga quite a bit to give the characters time to actually have character but, even then, it's still a surprise when it hits you that those 200 episodes took place over the course of four years. That means that, even if you space them evenly, you've got 7.3 days of in-universe time per episode into which to cram whatever you want.
As for the latter, I'm always reminded of an exchange in Mel Brooks's The Twelve Chairs, involving Tikon, a former servant played by Mel Brooks himself, who liked things better before the Russian revolution:
Tikon's attitude toward The Revolution can be summed up by changing that last line to a disinterested "Yeah, that's what they called it."
(Great movie by the way, and a catchy theme song (set to an older tune) named "Hope For The Best, Expect The Worst". I love the line "Live while you're alive! No one will survive!" which is said by "a man" who who died on the day he planned to spend his carefully saved fortune. It reminds me of those jokes talking about life being a disease with a 100% mortality rate.)
...and boy did I get carried away. Sorry about that.
9748609
Oh, no biggie- it's actually quite educational, thank you.
9748488
Honestly, I don't think there is anything wrong with having a main character who comes across as overpowered, heck many Shounen protagonists start off as overpowered bad assess. The problem is most fanfiction never bother to take steps to make that overpowered character more than just that. Yeah watching them curb stomp every problem is fun at first (and hilarious when done well) but eventually it's gonna get boring.
Most series deal with this problem in one of two ways:
or
I don't think pushing Lyra to the side solves the problem with her, in fact, it's actually a little distracting to suddenly make her less prominent in the story in favour of someone else (especially if you're just replacing her with multiple OP characters assuming we're gonna start focusing on the Alicorn trio), it's just ignoring the problem. You need to flesh out her character in a way that shows she's not all that OP in the grander scope of things or at least put her in a position where it's realistic for her to not just solve everything all the time.
At the very least make Twilight more prominent, show she's just as capable as Lyra but in a different way instead of making Twilight seem like an incompetent dope who owes all her accomplishments to winning the destiny lottery where everything was apparently just handed to her despite the existence of ponies who are far more accomplished and capable than her.
But feel free to pretend RESS never existed, the story would be better off without the hyper-competent military service who can do anything except take down a single second rate dark wizard and have to rely on a child to handle things (yeah the child is practically invincible but that doesn't make it okay).
9748625
Agreed.
That made me laugh! (No, like, legitimately, not the "oh that might be funny" that LOL or ROFL seem to mean anymore)