NaPoWriMo is over. Sample chapter of Harry Potter and the Little Pony Problem · 5:02am Dec 1st, 2018
NaNoWriMo is over, 10,500 words total for me. It's a little low, but I had some real world stuff. I'm going to keep writing on my two Harry Potter crossovers, editing for a few other authors, and get ready for Christmas. And I got you something early. Below the break, part of the third chapter of Harry Potter and the Little Pony Problem. Unwrap and enjoy.
Harry Potter and the Little Pony Problem
And Then There Were Three
“Excuse me, darling. Could you lift your arm please?”
Harry obediently lifted his arm while blinking away the sleep. It took a lot of blinking in the dim light of dawn, although all the blinking he was doing did not make what he saw in his bed look any more believable. It was another magical unicorn, small and graceful enough to have sat on his hand, only this one had her horn lit up and was floating a cloth tape with some sort of numbers on it around his forearm.
“Oh, yes,” she said as she moved the measuring tape, taking large steps across the sheets to keep from falling. “You have done some growing since you purchased those robes in your trunk. I’m not sure if I’ll be able to let them out enough to make them fit correctly.” The small white unicorn made a few notes on a scrap of parchment, then nudged Harry with one hoof. “Stand up, please.”
“Why?” Harry’s eyes darted to his clock, then to the bedroom door. “My aunt will be here to wake me up in a few minutes. You need to hide.”
“Oh, tich, tich,” said the small creature with a dismissive wave of one hoof. “Spikie told me all about your distasteful relatives. Now stand up straight.”
“They’ll kick me out of my room,” he hissed while standing up as directed. “I’ll be back in the cupboard for the whole summer. They hate magic.”
“Hate?” The small unicorn stopped draping the measuring tape around his shoulders and looked up at him with puzzled blue eyes. “How can anypony hate magic? It’s so useful, and dashing and—”
“And they can’t use it,” explained Harry, although he put his arm out when prompted so the unicorn could run the measuring tape along it. “Most people here can’t use magic. The ones who can have to keep it a secret, or… bad things will happen,” he finished rather hesitatingly, since ‘bad things’ was such an understatement compared to the events in his magical history book, or even his own personal recent history. After all, the basilisk fang wound in his arm still twinged at times, a not so subtle reminder of his own role in the conflict between Voldemort and any who would oppose him.
The bedroom door behind him banged open, and Petunia stormed in, looking more perturbed than usual. “Get up, you lazy boy! We’ve got…” His aunt stopped and looked at Harry, who still had the measuring tape draped across his arm. “What on earth are you doing with my sewing things?”
“Curtains,” blurted out Harry, since it was the first and only thing that came to mind. “I thought that when Aunt Marge came to visit, it would be nice if her room had nice curtains. Because that would be… nice.”
“Curtains?” Petunia sniffed, then her eyes darted down to his rumpled bedcovers where the white unicorn had been just moments before.
“And maybe a new bedspread,” added Harry while he tried to make his lumpy bed, putting his pillow quickly over the largest unicorn-sized lump. “Something with tassels like you like. You know. In case my career as a bureaucrat fails, I could become a… tailor.”
“Something that would let you sit on your rear all day, I suppose.” Petunia hustled Harry out the door and downstairs, complaining all the way about his choice in alternative careers. He went along without any complaints because at least it got his aunt out of his bedroom, even if it meant spending the entire day with her picking out fabric, carrying packages from the stores, and learning how to sew. Well, it was more fumbling with the warm sewing machine, which seemed to have been used while the two of them were out shopping. And he had a sneaking suspicion about who it was.
If Harry learned anything today, it was that he did not ever want a career that involved any sewing. The hideous burnt orange curtains bunched where they should have hung, and the pale plastic lace looked more like it had been glued on when he was done, although Petunia judged the result tolerable. Harry’s experience led him to believe it was due to the number of trips she had made to the liquor cabinet, which left him struggling to hang up the resulting lopsided curtains while she greeted Uncle Vernon downstairs when he came back from work.
“You know, even Ah can tell them curtains is right ugly.”
Harry looked down to see yet another little pony sitting by his left foot, small enough that she could have sat in his shoe without leaking out the sides very much. This one was not a unicorn, or at least if she was, her horn was not visible above the very American cowboy hat she was wearing. Since Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia were very audible downstairs, talking about the events of the day, Harry did not immediately panic at seeing one of the magical creatures outside of his room. He did lower his voice before getting down on one knee to examine the creature more closely and said, “Hello, there. My name is—”
“Harry Potter,” said the little pony, grabbing onto his extended hand and shaking it vigorously with far more strength than he expected. “Spike done told me all about you and your family. Reckon they ain’t the best a’ kinfolk, but you can’t pick who you get, can you? Name’s Applejack, of Sweet Apple Acres in Ponyville, the finest apple orchard in durned well everywhere.”
“That’s all well and good,” said Harry, ignoring the way the curtains had begun to sag on the bent curtain rod. “But why are you here?”
“Twilight brung us to help you. Well, she did some unicorn hocus-pocus that I didn’t understand one whit of, and that put Rares and me here, only we ain’t really here if’n I understand her right. More like a shadow of ourselves, just a pinch of our regular magic that we won’t miss over there, like’n borrowing one apple off a whole tree.”
“That makes sense,” said Harry, relieved that he did not have to retrieve any of his spell books from downstairs in order to look up the terminology. If more of the teachers at Hogwarts explained things in such a down-to-earth fashion, his classes would have been far easier. “So when you go back, or that is your magic goes back to where you came from, will you remember any of my world?”
Applejack took off her hat and scratched behind one ear. “Well, tell the truth, Ah didn’t quite follow Twi when she got goin’ real good. She’s my best friend, but she’s got a way of thinkin’ everypony is just as bright as her.”
“I know just what you mean. I’ve got a friend like that too.” Harry looked over his shoulder at the slumping curtains and turned back to his job. “I really don’t know how much you can help with as small as you are.”
“Ah ain’t really the curtain-hangin’ type, either,” admitted Applejack as she scrambled up the orange cloth just as nimbly as if she were a mouse. “That ain’t sayin’ I ain’t gonna help, it’s just that she and Spike was a little concerned about something else. You see, I lost my parents when I was just a little ‘un too.”
Harry stopped with his hands on the bent curtain rod, feeling the cool metal bend a little further as a wave of familiar anger swept over him. “I don’t want to talk about my parents,” he fumed. “I’ve been lied to about them as long as I can remember. Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia told me they died in a car crash, but they were murdered.”
“By Voldy-mart,” said Applejack, sitting on the top of the bunched-up curtain and looking down at Harry. Her green eyes glittered slightly in the shadows, making Harry uncomfortable due to the memory of his mother’s eyes in the Mirror of Erised. “Now I ain’t sayin’ my parents was killed. Truth is, it was an accident, and weren’t nuttin’ I could do about it. That didn’t keep me from beatin’ myself up on the inside every night. Eventually, it made me turn my back on my own flesh and blood. Run away to my Aunt and Uncle Orange just so the pain would go away, and shut myself off from Big Mac and little Apple Bloom. Uh, them’s my brother and my little sis.”
The silence that followed allowed Harry to slacken his grip on the curtain rod and just breathe through the pain in his chest and the throbbing ache of his scar. After several breaths, he managed, “I don’t have any brothers or sisters.”
“Ah know. Spike done told me that too. He don’t got no blood kin at all, so he was all tied up in knots about how angry you seemed. We all get mad sometimes, and he’s no exception, but since he’s a dragon, his mads are a mite worse than others. We all treat him like a child so much that we forget how dangerous he can be. Why once…”
The small orange pony perched on top of the curtains like some sort of parrot paused, took another long look at Harry, and began to smooth out the curtain so it would slide on the rod better. “Sorry,” she murmured from between the cloth in her teeth. “Sometimes Ah get all tied up in me, and there ain’t no time for my friends.”
“I know how that goes,” said Harry. “I didn’t have any friends until I went to Hogwarts.”
“An’ now that you have them, you don’t know quite what to do with them.” Applejack chuckled and braced herself on the curtain in order to try bending the rod back into shape. “Little like our Twilight Sparkle, without the point on your head.”
“I… suppose you’re right.” Harry braced himself against the other end of the rod and tried to match Applejack’s pressure. “I’ve got all this anger inside, and I don’t want to vent on my friends because I’m afraid of driving them away.”
“You sure as shooting can’t talk to your kinfolk neither. They’d just yell at at you some more.” Applejack hitched up a loop of curtain and tested to see how well it moved back and forth on the rod. “Rares and I done been watching you and your aunt this afternoon while you been sewing. Half the time she was keepin’ me from going down there and giving her a piece of my mind, and the other half it was my turn to hold her back.”
It was most certainly the same kind of give and take that Harry had with his own friends, only with Hermione or Ron taking turns encouraging or discouraging his reckless actions. And it did feel better to talk to the little orange pony about things he never would have brought up to a Muggle or fellow classmate.
They swapped stories about their families quietly, as not to disturb Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia downstairs, which made getting the drapes to hang correctly of secondary importance. They did not look that bad for a first attempt, despite Petunia’s color choice, particularly when compared to the rest of the house. Witches and wizards did not have nearly the same trouble matching colors since they mostly preferred shades of black, while Applejack almost blended into these curtains with her similar coloring and blonde mane that matched the tassels.
“I’m glad you’re here for however long your magic lasts,” said Harry impulsively. “Nobody should be alone during the summer.”
“You’ve got your aunt and uncle,” pointed out Applejack. “Even that big lug Dudley, though he ain’t much for company. It ain’t really alone. Just lonely.”
“Boy!” Uncle Vernon’s voice bellowed up the stairway like an angry foghorn. “Get down here and help your aunt with dinner. Dudley is bringing his friends over tonight and we’re grilling steaks.”
“Not as lonely as I want at times, Applejack,” muttered Harry under his breath. “Coming, Uncle Vernon,” he called out. “I just want to get Aunt Petunia’s drapes looking… good.”
“Ain’t gonna do that without a couple matches,” said Applejack under her breath. “You just go on downstairs and we’ll take care of the curtains, Harry.”
“Really?” Harry put his arms down and gave them a shake to get his circulation back.
“Of course,” said Applejack. “What are friends for?”
- - Ω - -
When Rarity is done with those drapes Petunia is going to wonder where Harry learned to sew so well.
Two HP crossovers? Man, that's some mojo.
Oh my goodness, you're giving Harry Potter an angst vent. This could change everything.
Also, I kind of want to shop at Voldy Mart, though I suspect it's just a pet store specializing in snakes.
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Now I'm picturing post-Tom Riddle Voldemort as a shopkeeper, with smiles and recommendations to his customers.
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That would have been the best twist. Spend all that time looking for Voldemort walk into a Walmart and there he is working as a greeter.
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Why is that a "though?" Snakes make fine pets.
Applejack and Rarity were great. Looking forward to more of this, whenever that happens.
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That would only make me more inclined to shop there. Especially if the employees could talk to snakes.
4975073 There's some of his merchandise that he really puts his soul into. Just don't buy any diaries from him. Or necklaces.
My biggest problem with this chapter are those curtains!
I didn't even know plastic lace was a thing, much less something you would buy! And burnt orange curtains?! That color should be an accent or only used by someone with talent! The 70s came and went, there's no excuse for this nightmare!