“Scootaloo, get down!”
“Why?”
He was lying on his back with his head turned to the right, Harry realized.
“You’ll get us in trouble!”
“Neigh. No one’ll care. See, the guard over there hasn’t even blinked.”
The voices were familiar, as was the name.
“Doctor Heart certainly will! Now, get down.”
“No.”
Oh. He slowly remembered, these were the voices of the ones that had found him and taken him to the hospital. Considering he wasn’t feeling hard ground, or even grass, underneath him, he was probably back in the hospital. In the background he faintly could hear sawing and hammering. He wondered what they were building.
“I’ll make you!”
“Just try!”
There was the sound of hooves on a wooden floor, a moment of silence, and then the bed shook slightly as if someone had jumped on it.
Harry’s head felt fuzzy, almost like he had a cold. And there was an unusual pressure on his forehead. He assumed it was a bandage.
Hooves! That’s right! They were horses! He was a horse! For a moment he almost succumbed to panic and started breathing heavily. He realized immediately the danger in doing that. Any sudden moves or changes in what he was already doing would alert everyone that he was awake. Especially if they had any kind of electrical monitors on him. Fortunately, the squabbling girls masked any noise he made.
Scootaloo said, “Hey! Quit shoving, Apple Bloom!”
“Then get down,” came the growled response.
Harry knew he had to remain calm, he had to delay them realizing he was awake while he tried to understand what was happening. He had years of experience doing that with the Dursleys, listening around a corner to see what kind of mood his Aunt and Uncle were in before they saw him. It had saved him many a beating to know he should make himself scarce for the day or evening, or at least as unobtrusive as possible.
There was some grunting sounds, then Scootaloo saying, “Woah!”
“Hey, le’ go!” said Apple Bloom, followed by a thud.
“Ow,” Apple Bloom moaned softly.
“Ha! Serves you right for pushing me off,” Scootaloo said.
“Geroff me, you blockhead!” was the angry reply.
Who am I kidding? Harry thought. He hadn’t a clue as to what was going on! The only thing he knew for sure was that the three voices he had heard, these three girls, had been trying to help him. And his reaction the other day was silly. Why would someone bring him to a hospital just to let a monster eat him? And who called a monster Princess?
There came a heartfelt sigh from his left, startling him. “And there they go, again.”
It was the third girl of the triad.
“Ow,” “Hey!” “Le’ go!” and the sounds of the other two scuffling came to him.
“Oh, you’re awake!” said the one behind him. He heard the clip-clop of her hooves as she went down the length of the bed, across the bottom, and then back up to face his head. Darn it! He hadn’t managed to fool her. How had she known?
He remained absolutely still, an easy task after years of training from the Dursleys.
“You can’t fool me,” she said. “I know you’re awake, I can see your ear swivelling around listening to those two idiots brawling again.”
His ears. Now that she mentioned it he could feel his left ear twitch every once in a while. Right. He was a horse, now, wasn’t he? His ears weren’t stuck to the sides of his head, they could move. He would have to learn to control them. He would worry about how he ended up here later, for now he needed to survive. The same for why he was a horse. At least they didn’t think he was a monster!
“And . . . now it’s lying down, so admit it, you’re awake!”
He sighed softly and opened his eyes to a small slit to look at her. She had a white coat with a two-tone purple mane. Unusually, though, her eyes were huge, taking up most of her face! She also had a small horn with a spiral cut in it sticking out of her forehead. Did that make her a unicorn?
She pumped one hoof into the air, exclaiming softly, “YES, I knew it!” in response to his tacit admission. Behind her he could see a soldier horse standing beside the door and pretending to be a statue like the Queen’s Guards at Buckingham Palace always did. He also had a horn, but much bigger as fit his larger size. His eyes were a bit smaller in proportion to his head, but still were at least as big as a large apple!
Oddly, the door he was standing beside was different from Harry’s other room. The wall that one would normally expect to see above a door was gone, with new, unpainted moulding now framing it up to the ceiling. The door itself looked like someone had glued an extra piece onto it to make it fit the newly enlarged doorway. The monster . . . Princess . . . wouldn’t have to crawl through the door the next time she came to see him. If he was still here.
The girl horse stared at him intently, “What’s your name? Mine’s Sweetie Belle.”
After a moment considering the benefits of playing mute — there really didn’t appear to be any — he said “Harry Potter.”
“Hahry Potter,” she repeated slowly, sounding out his name. “You’re looking much better than yesterday.” She said critically, turning her head a bit sideways. “That’s the second time you almost died. You had us really worried.”
Suddenly there were two more horses propping themselves up against the bed by their forelegs. “Ooooh, he’s awake!” said the orange one with a very ruffled purple mane.
“I’m fine,” Harry said reflexively, despite the evidence to the contrary.
After a moment’s study, a yellow one with a red mane and pink bow — the bow now askew and her mane as ruffled as the other girl’s — said, “Yer pretty tough, ya know. Ah’ve never heard of a pony making a dent in the walls like ya did.”
“His name’s Hahry Potter,” Sweetie Belle informed the others.
Then came a barrage of questions: “What happened to ya in the Everfree?” “Who beat you up?” “Did you fight a manticore?” “Why’d you run away?” “Was anyone with ya in the forest?” Did you fight a timber wolf?” “Whar do ya live” “Who taught you to teleport?” “Do ya have yer Cutie Mark yet?” “Was it a chimera you fought?” “What’s your cutie mark?” “What grade are you in?” “How’d you get into the forest?” “Can you teach me to teleport?”
The other two stopped and looked at Sweetie Belle.
“Really?” said Apple Bloom.
Sweetie shrugged her shoulders.
They all looked back at Harry.
“Um,” He said. “I, uh, I was alone in the forest. And, um, I was trying to get home.”
After an uncomfortable pause, he added, “What’s teleport?”
“Horseapples!” muttered Sweetie Belle under her breath.
The girls didn’t notice but Harry did as the soldier standing beside the door behind them opened it a crack and said something to someone outside, then quietly closed the door and pretended to be a statue again.
“Do you have a cutie mark? Doctor Well Heart and Nurse Redheart wouldn’t tell us. They just looked at each other funny and said we’d find out later.”
Harry looked at the three horses and frowned.
“What’s a cutie mark?”
They were aghast at his ignorance. And quickly told him that a Cutie Mark on your butt told everyone what your talent was. The thing that you would be best and happiest at doing.
Really? What was his talent, then? Cooking, cleaning, and gardening? It was what he was good at — but he hated doing it.
Harry had to wonder if he had died in the forest or if he was in a coma at a hospital.
However, he had heard that you can’t dream pain and he had certainly felt the pain when he had reappeared in the forest escaping that monster/princess.
He tried to move his arm and discovered it wouldn’t. He turned his head and looked, afraid he would see straps or chains restraining him, holding him down, and stopping him from escaping again. What he did see was a cast reaching from his shoulder half-way to his elbow, with his arm . . . leg . . . held suspended by a set of bars, ropes, and weights over the bed. His other arm was similarly constrained.
Seeing where he was looking, Scootaloo said, “Oh, yeah, your withers are broken on both sides. You hit those walls pretty hard.” She looked impressed. “The doctor said you’ll be wearing them casts for a week or so as the bones heal.” The other two nodded in agreement.
Apple Bloom frowned and mumbled, “Ain’t never heard of bones healing that fast, though.”
He thought he might as well be chained to the bed, he certainly wasn’t going anywhere like this.
Harry stared at them. Even his limited knowledge of hospitals, mainly from listening in his cupboard while the Dursleys watched Casualty on Saturday evenings, told him that they don’t usually let three unrelated, as in non-family, girls . . . fillies . . . into a patient’s room. Especially not if there’s a constable guarding the door! Finally he said, “Why? Why are you here?” He glanced at the constable worriedly.
“Oh, the Princess said that if’n we were here when ya woke up maybe ya wouldn’t panic and try to run through a wall again, seeing as how we’re the ones that found ya to begin with. And that since we’re only a bit older than you, ya won’t think we’re out to hurt ya,” Apple Bloom explained.
Clearly, neither they nor the Princess had ever had a run-in with Dudley, his gang, or other bastards of that ilk. He envied them for that naivety.
Apple Bloom added darkly, “Although ma sister did say something about us causing co-lateral damage.”
He shrunk in on himself slightly at remembering the rest of the events from yesterday. Maybe that was what the hammering was about, they were fixing the damage he did. His uncle would be most displeased about the bill for that!
“Yeah,” added Apple Bloom, “The Princess was real worried about ya.”
Hesitantly, he asked, “She’s not gonna eat me is she?”
The girls looked shocked at the thought. The soldier by the door broke his impassive expression enough to give Harry a look of sheer disbelief.
“What in Equestria gave you that idea?” exclaimed Sweetie Belle. “She’s a pony, we don’t eat meat!”
Biggest damn pony he had ever seen! And horses did too eat meat! He’d seen a magazine article about how the Tibetans fed their horses blood-soaked hay to get them protein during the long winters, that Alexander the Great’s horse, Bucephalus, was a notorious man-eater, and many other terrifying examples.
“Except maybe fish every once in a while,” added Scootaloo. “Pegasi need to ’cause of all their flying.”
Ha! He knew it!
Scootaloo hopped up onto the bed. He stared at her small wings that buzzed like a large hummingbird to help her. Was she a Pegasus? First unicorns, and now a Pegasus? What was next? A hippocampus? A centaur? How about a dragon or two?
The girls stared at him as he returned the favour.
Before they could say anything else there was a knock on the door. The soldier faced the door and lowered his head slightly to point his horn at whomever-it-was that was coming in as the door slowly opened. It was the doctor that Harry had seen before. The soldier stepped back, but still kept a close eye on the new horse . . . pony.
He smiled broadly at Harry, “Ah, good afternoon! How are you feeling today? I’m Doctor Well Heart. I saw you when you first came in, although I doubt you remember me.”
“I’m fine.”
Scootaloo quickly jumped down as the other two fillies dropped their hooves to the floor and shuffled out of his way.
Like the soldier, he had a horn. Harry was amazed to see a slight glow surround it as the blanket covering him was pulled down to his hips, but not so far as to be immodest. The stethoscope around the doctor’s neck floated up to his ears and the other end glided into position against Harry’s chest. At the same time a clipboard floated up beside the doctor’s head where he could easily see it as he worked. For the next several minutes the doctor moved the stethoscope around Harry with the occasional comments of “take a deep breath” and “breathe normally.”
Harry felt more than a bit self-conscious at realizing he wasn’t wearing any clothes as the little fillies watched, but then he realized neither were they wearing any clothes — they all had fur, including himself. In any case, he saw that while his fore-shoulders had casts covering them down to his elbows, everything else below that seemed to be perfectly fine. He spent the time studying his new form. His coat was red and gold — which was more predominant was hard to tell. His hair . . . his mane . . . was a solid black. He remembered his tail was also black, but as the blanket currently covered it he couldn’t tell for sure if that memory was correct.
The girls had moved to the other side of the bed and were whispering to each other.
Finally, the doctor stepped back. “Well, everything seems to be healing up nicely. In fact you’re doing much better than I expected, your cuts have all healed up with almost no scarring. The casts will need to remain for two weeks, maybe less, if things progress the way they have for the last two days. Your weight is distressingly low, so we’re going to be working on that!”
The doctor sighed.
“Now then, for the other stuff.” He gave Harry a sympathetic look. “First, what’s your name? I can’t just call you ‘the colt in Room Eighteen!’” He gave a nervous laugh.
“Harry Potter.”
The doctor made a note on his clipboard. “Excellent! And how old are you?”
“Nine. I’ll be ten in two months.”
The doctor, and the girls, stared at Harry. He was far older than they had suspected. In fact, he was older than any of the fillies by a year at least despite being so small.
“Now then, Hahry Potter,” the doctor paused uncertainly, “do you know where your parents are?”
“They’re dead. Died when I was only a year old.”
Apple Bloom suddenly looked sad and propped herself against the bed again while putting her right hoof against his side as if she were trying to console him. The other two simply sat at either side of Apple Bloom and leaned against her.
The doctor nodded slowly. “I’m sorry to hear that,” he said although he didn’t look sorry in the slightest. In fact he almost looked relieved. “And who has been taking care of you?”
“I wouldn’t say they’re taking care of me, but I live with my aunt, uncle, and cousin,” Harry said in a flat tone that said ‘don’t ask more.’ The doctor winced at his tone. The fillies looked curious.
“Can you tell me their names?”
Reluctantly, Harry said, “Petunia, Vernon, and Dudley Dursley.”
“Petunia and . . . Ver-none . . . are your aunt and uncle?” the doctor said hesitantly, unused to the foreign sounding name.
Harry nodded.
The doctor frowned darkly and made another note.
“Do you know where they are?”
“Number Four Privet Drive, Little Whinging, Surrey, although Uncle Vernon is probably at work at Grunnings Drills in London right now.”
Every pony stared at him. “What?” managed the doctor after writing that all down as best he could.
Harry frowned and said, again, slower, “Number Four Privet Drive, Little Whinging, Surrey.” The doctor made some adjustments to his notes.
At their continued blank looks, he added, “You know, in England.” Their expressions remained the same, so he added, a bit sarcastically, “Right beside the continent Europe and above Africa? In the Atlantic Ocean? The Eastern Hemisphere? Earth?” Incredibly, none of those answers seemed to ring any bells of recognition. Harry rolled his eyes.
Doctor Well Heart looked at his clipboard for a moment, made a few more notes, and then shook his head slightly.
“And that’s where you live as well?”
“Yeah,” Harry said, unhappily. “In the cupboard under the stairs.” He felt his eyes widen. He hadn't meant to say that. If he had had his hands free he would have clapped them over his mouth.
Doctor Well Heart’s eye’s narrowed as he slowly repeated, “In the cupboard under the stairs,” while writing that information down. He paused, staring at what he had just written. He took a deep breath and said, “Well, do you know how you ended up in the Everfree Forest?”
Harry was getting cold chills now — and not because he wasn’t under the blanket anymore — and started shivering. “I was in the woods beside the Little Whinging Playpark. I wasn’t sure exactly where I was, but it was late afternoon and I knew I needed to get back to the house or Uncle Vernon would be mad. They really don’t like it when I’m out after dark. They say it makes them look bad to the neighbours.
“Anyway, I started walking towards the west because the park is a few minutes to the east of where my relatives live. I walked for a long time, and fell down a few times, but then I walked into a field and fell down again. I was way too tired to get up. Then girls found me. You know the rest.”
“And how did you get your injuries?”
Harry looked away. He didn’t want to say anymore, but he knew they wouldn’t stop asking questions. Not that it really mattered. Every time he had told an adult about his relatives, they always asked questions, got angry, and then the next day forgot all about him.
“I fell off the playpark climbing bars,” he said.
Harry had read once that the definition of insanity was doing the exact same thing over and over again and yet being surprised that the results were always exactly the same each time.
He was not insane. This time would be the same as the rest, he knew.
The doctor gave him a disbelieving look. “Climbing bars?” he said incredulously.
“Several times,” Harry added reluctantly.
The doctor added an arched an eyebrow to his expression.
Harry just looked at him. And then he realized that the doctor’s expression wasn’t because he didn’t believe Harry fell off the climbing bars, it was because horses wouldn’t have climbing bars at their playparks. If it weren’t for the casts, Harry would have face-palmed himself.
But then again, these weren’t people, were they? They were horses . . . ponies. Maybe this time it would be different. He sighed heavily.
“My cousin and his gang were playing Harry Hunting and this time they caught me,” Harry mumbled quietly. Unfortunately, the room was so quiet that all could hear him clearly.
The doctor stared at him, both eyebrows raised in shock. “You mean to tell me that your cousin did all that to you?”
Harry looked away nervously. “Him and his friends.”
“And they’ve done this before?” he asked darkly.
Harry looked away, but when he looked back the Doctor was just staring at him.
Harry sighed and said in a low voice, “Yes, but only when they could trap me or I wasn’t quick enough in running away. I should have been faster. It’s my fault they trapped me.”
The doctor narrowed his eyes as he stared at Harry. After a minute of silence, the doctor shook his head again. “Well, that’s all for now.” He looked at his clipboard again. “Okay, I’ll have the nurse bring you something to eat. I want you to eat as much as possible. You need to gain a lot of weight before you’re at where you should be.” He turned to the three fillies. “Fillies, I want you to make sure he eats. I know you just got out of school and want a snack, so there’ll be a little extra for you three as well. Don’t filch any off his plate, okay?”
They nodded earnestly.
He pulled the blanket back up to Harry’s shoulders with that weird glow around his horn. With a last look at Harry, and a shake of his head, the doctor turned and left the room, closing the door carefully behind himself.
Harry could hear some yelling outside in the corridor, but not the words. It sounded like the doctor was very mad at someone. Harry thought it wasn’t him the doctor was mad at — he had seemed quite pleasant when talking with Harry — but you never can tell with adults. Harry shrank as far down into the blanket as his casts would let him get, just in case.
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