This story is a sequel to Harry Potter and the Crystal Empire
Hogwarts castle has landed in Equestria—and the foundations of the Crystal Empire with it. The stir this caused in both worlds resulted in an exodus of magic and magic-users to Equestria as the precious crystals that were the source of Earth's magic were now all gone.
When the portals slammed closed, the landscapes were once again set in stone. The wizards of Earth, descendants of the crystal ponies who'd been stranded there thousands of years ago, were doomed to a world bereft of a magic source. In Equestria, however, several nations now had to contend with a new species taking up residence within their borders.
And finally, the students and teachers of Hogwarts who'd slipped through to Equestria before the portal closed have a little bit of breathing space. Time to settle into this strange new world and establish themselves before the start of the new school year.
Note: bump in rating to T is to cover my butt for a bit of swearing.
Art commissioned from the amazing Dilarus.
See This Blog for licensing.
Tried to sneak a new story past me. For shame.
10451677 Maybe...
>.>
<.<
Ooh, as new story!
Red's acting sus.
Any story that contains this sentence is probably going to be good.
Huh. I'd never considered how humanity's min-maxed Constitution could make us incredibly high-capacity lovesacks for changelings. Very nice touch.
A most promising opening to this anthology, and a great way to sprinkle in a bit of the main plot. Definitely looking forward to more.
Nice, long chapter. Very satisfying.
But a question. When you referred to "squelching" as the consequences of a bad Apparition, did you mean splinching?
Yo new story!
Sweet.
Say Mandible, are changelings expert tunnellers in this world? Should the group be reinforcing the walls?
10451782 Ack! Yes I did. Fixed now, thanks!
Nice. Did you do your oneshots?
10451830 These are the one-shots. Note the anthology tag.
The idea changeling venom is ecstasy makes sense, drug the crap outta prey so they are all loving and compliant. Wonder if Mandible and his brood mates will start passively feeding like Thorax did. Just one day completely forget to feed and don't feel at all hungry, frist step from parasitic to symbiotic.
Got me thinking more about Changelings, if drones are all female but still fertile and Queen Chrysalis was trying to rebuild numbers fast then she might have forced drones to mate with soldiers as she can only lay so many eggs herself. That would allow Ocelleus to not be one of the Queen's children yet still know about her, and explain why Ocelleus is smarter than the drones we see before her, she much more diffrent because she had a unique mother and father, not just yet another child of the Queen and a poor solider(one of her own sons yet) she forced to mate with her. Which makes me think the reformation saved Phyrax from having to have sever "mommy issues" as Chrysalis would have clearly mated with him eventually.
Ooooh, I love the premise and what you've done with this so far. I love the idea of muggles and wizards and changelings teaming up to survive, meanwhile Rodney is sharing intel with Princess Luna. Maybe it's just a hunch, but I feel like Azalea is going to get over drained at one point, forcing Rodney to share love to save her and reform. No more Oldling, and he gets a skittlebug makeover. I just feel like changelings have to be the answer here. Maybe they'll find a way to escape or get things from the surface via the stream.
yay more also soooo cute buggy pones
It's great that these humans have managed to escape with the help of some friendly changelings. The wizards from the Ministry of Magic will be forced to get their ideas past the Vogons, which will take forever. I hope that they can quickly escape from the caves even if they can stay there for a reasonably long time.
O this story is going to be awesome.
Off to a strong start.
Rod seems like a cool guy. Sometimes all it takes to be a hero is to get frustrated with a lack of direction and take charge.
Azalea Bloom kinda sounds like a pony name to begin with. I wonder if any ponies she meets in the future will be surprised she's a humanoid.
Careful now, Damaged. At the rate you're going, we're going to run out of memory for all the characters we love and have to start deleting memories. I still have to complete my degree first!
10454992 I could cheat and just release the spreadsheet (yes, I use spreadsheets to track story info) for everyone to peruse.
Once you've read Homestuck, this isn't too bad at all for characters. :-).
Nicely done. And since this is a one-shot, we won't be seeing more of this group, unfortunately.
So, we have some overfed, happy, co-operating changelings inside the hive with the people, ponies, and half-ponies. It does seem like they might become Technicolor lings at this rate.
And it is nice to see more of The Equestrian Branch of The Ministry of Magic in operation here.
Ahh, the moment when you realize you're not fighting off a zombie horde, or a bunch of monsters, but people. Strangely shaped people, with a strange appearance, but still people.
Suddenly, you realize that killing to survive means killing other intelligent, sentient beings that are just trying to survive, like you.
The moment of being drafted into a war, that you didn't realize was a war.
What gets me is the whole "Magic on the changeling poison causes the person to start transforming" bit. I can't think of anything from the main story to foreshadow that. Equally, for the first limb, it took bite poison + magic; after that, it just took more bite poison, and it kept spreading even after magic usage stopped.
This worries me. Nothing comes of it -- yet -- yet I have to wonder how much influence Chrysalis actually has on them.
Meanwhile, at the start of the story, the changelings are trying to attack the humans. It switches to "siege tactics" -- wait for them to starve or try to run the lines. How did Mandible determine the change in plans?
The cave at the end ... it's not defensible, long term. Being big means they cannot keep all of it under observation. A changeling can turn into something small, like maybe a blue beetle or something, fly in, and take observation. Constant vigilance at the narrow choke point might be an option, but as soon as you move the defense point to the main room you lose your 100% intrusion stopping.
The stream is the most interesting. If it's fast moving, then it has to drain. Fast moving implies a downward slope; not backing up/flooding the room implies drainage. It's a way out. You'd just need enough magic to give everyone a suitable breath and form, and first a changeling could ... hmm, might be risky, sending a changeling down in a small fish form to scout out the exit. Depending on the stream, it might be hard to have a fish form that could swim back upstream, and if there's drops -- very possible -- the waterfall might not be reverse navigatable.
But, if you do take it out, and wind up outside somewhere, then you find Luna (who has been contacted and alerted to the plan), show her where the water exit is, and start figuring out how to get into the hive from the drain side.
Ask Rodney: How goes your ability to change form? Did you change enough to gain that ability?
Ask Claw: Ok, what did you scout out down the stream?
I know wizards and ponies sometimes have goofy or entirely too on-the-nose names, but come on! :P
10458186 🙃
Well....someone could always conjoint a patronus, have it find the surface, then apparate with the patronus like others have done...
Rod: What’re your deeper thoughts on becoming a changeling? On having access to a type of magic?
Pfft, that is not the proper use of an 'eh'. Trust me, I'm Canadian.
Ponies are racist, lol
10509074 Yeah, I know typically it's tacked onto a statement to make it into a question, but he got performance anxiety.
Ask any Kirin
What happened to the stream of silence?
New chapter!
Why did you make the chapters so long?
Ask X --- Twilight Sparkle: Did you check about the humans learn in 'Hogwarts'? While it seems that ponies have a advantage in the humans knowing about magic as it was originally from Equestria, the humans seem to be advances in many branches... They have something called 'Patronus Charm' to repel dark creatures and send messages, they study herbology and magical plants, they study potions, divination, charms, defense against dark arts, Runes, Arithmancy and Alchemy... As the student of Princess Celestia, are you not curious about some of those things?
Always good to see some proper draconic ethics in play.
Well done with the nesting site, I was thinking bludgers shaped like Zendicar hedrons and bespelled to attack anything that wasn't a dragon, but that sand trap was even better. Quite vicious really, I'm impressed.
Lovely chapter length by the way, I enjoyed being able to really get up to speed and invested without running out of text two minutes later.
10556874 Because each chapter of the intermission is its own story.
Rake: What would you do if you and your horde found more humans who want to have a home for themselves and want to have some big protector making sure they are safe?
Oh, that was just a lovely chapter.
Yep, I can totally see that. I mean, I certainly want to read more about them, but it left me with warm fuzzies and no lingering questions.
I would think the fact that they also created a safe (or at least safer) nesting area would also buy them some protection from other dragons once word gets around. In fact, since Charlie is the only one who knows the spell (to their knowledge), they may pay Rake to help create other nesting areas, increasing Charlie's "value", increasing her hoard, increasing her size, etc.
Good chapter. Glad to see it update. I wonder how Charlie and Rake will have children?
10556874
Why are you complaining about a long chapter? The longer the better!
10557354
Inorite?
This was an interesting chapter. It's good that Charlie knows his family is save and in Equestria. I wonder what the next chapter will be about.
Ask any Kirin
What happened to the stream of silence?
this chapter is grate i love the good look at how Charlie and crew are doing.
this is just amazing.
Them long horse necks
10556874
True the chapters are extremly long, but aside from the fact that they are their own story, their was no point where he could have split them for a good reason.
Alternatively, the human body is a sponge for magical energies regardless of bloodline. Though it's not like a lot of Muggles went through the portals to test that theory...
In any case, lovely tale of Charlie doing what he does best: Adventures with dragons. And the mind hacks with Rake are fascinating to see. The draconic psyche is a curious thing, and exploiting can lead to all kinds of interesting outcomes.
Also, it'll be interesting to see how Ember's outreach attempts challenge this society's definition of draconic adulthood... assuming anything even resembling that stage of canon happens after the massive shift that is Crystal Hogwarts. We'll see in time.
10557054
Trained attack hedrons? No, no, no, they haven't done anything like that since Dragonlord Ugin.
Hmm...
Nice one. We need more dragon based stories here : )
Woo hoo this is gonna be fun
I really love how you started this story with two big chapters about what happened to the other places.
Looking forward to seeing more adventures with the wizards turned pony.
I think that's the only time I've seen that used like that.
Shoddy workmanship that, a proper scrying glass should have protections built into it for exactly that circumstance.
She's Batman.
10664677
Well of course the proper scrying glasses are still at the Ministry. As is proper.