Oliver pulled out a bag of golf balls, to Harry’s surprise.
Seeing the puzzled looks on their faces, Oliver hefted the bag and explained, “The only position that needs filling at the try-outs today is the Seeker.”
What followed was a series of hard-diving catches. Oliver would launch a golf-ball out with his wand, two prospective Seekers would race each other to catch it. He launched them at different speeds, directions, and angles. And did a round-robin match where each of the five prospective Seekers raced against each other. Then the highest three scorers repeated the tests.
The final ranking was Scootaloo, Harry, and Ginny. Apple Bloom, Sweetie Belle, and Ron, while good, just couldn’t quite match the two pegasi. And Harry just seemed to be a prodigy.
“You all did just great!” Oliver said. “I’ve seen you all play at the Weasleys’ so I know you’re all pretty good at spotting the Snitch, itself, so we can dispense with that part of the drill.” He had grinned at Scootaloo, and said, “You’ll be the best Seeker we’ve ever had!”
Scootaloo looked down at the ground for a moment, then sheepishly said, “I’m really not that interested in playing Quidditch on a broom, it’s far more fun as a pegasus.”
Oliver looked as if he was about to cry, but then he closed his eyes for a moment and sighed heavily. “Yeah,” he said, “I can understand that completely.”
He turned to the others, and frowned slightly. Harry and Ginny had been neck-and-neck for most of the trials, but Harry just seemed to have a better instinctive control of his broom that Ginny couldn’t quite match. Oliver finally said, “Okay, Harry you’ll be our Seeker, Ginny will be the substitute Seeker in case Harry gets laid-up.” He looked over at the others. “Scootaloo, Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle, would you mind being substitutes for Chasers? And Ron, substitute Keeper? All four of you are far better than any of the older Gryffies, and no one else was interested in those positions, anyway.”
Ron had been ecstatic at being on the team, even if it was as a Keeper substitute. He immediately started peppering Oliver with questions and the two of them became quickly engrossed in the details of properly defending the three goal rings.
With that settled, Harry and the girls headed for the lake to join the other students taking advantage of the Trebuchet. The rest of the cohort, still embarrassed over yesterday’s incident trailed after them or found something else to do.
Harry and the five girls carved their names, and the names of the rest of the Gryffindor cohort, into the Trebuchet while they awaited their turns.
The giant squid that lived in the lake had started to get involved, fishing the students out of the water and tossing them closer to shore. Then it started trying to catch the pegasi as they flew low over the water at high speeds.
At dinner, there was a professor seated at the Head Table whom Harry had never before seen. Partway through the meal, though, Headmaster Dumbledore stood and tapped his crystal goblet. The ringing tones soon quieted the hall.
“I hope you all have had a relaxing and joyful day, a wonderful day for such an event-filled week.” He had swept his gaze across the hall, smiling with his eyes twinkling happily. “This evening it is my pleasure to introduce your new History of Magic Professor . . . ,”
The students in the hall groaned or sighed at the thought of returning to that boring class.
The Headmaster looked over to the unfamiliar wizard, who stood and smiled, waving. “. . . Remus Lupin, Hogwarts’ class of 1978.” He started clapping, with the rest of the hall joining in unenthusiastically. Now they had to start going to that class. And they couldn’t sleep late or nap in it anymore.
Harry noticed, however, that Professor Snape did not seem nearly as enthused about the new professor’s presence as the other professors. He sat with his arms folded over his chest, and glared at the wizard, his expression completely blank. Harry wondered if they had attended Hogwarts together at some point, and hadn’t gotten along very well.
Still, even if they had been hated enemies, for Professor Snape to deny Professor Lupin the normal professional curtesy for his introduction to the school seemed very childish. Then again, Professor Snape’s actions towards the Gryffindors in general, and Harry in particular, didn’t seem very mature at all.
Things with Dean, Seamus, Ron, and Neville were still awkward, until later that evening, after curfew. It started with Dean making fun of Ron, then Ron threw a pillow. By the time they were done, pillows and feathers were everywhere. And they were back to the way things had been the day before yesterday, to Harry’s vast relief.
۸- ̫ -۸
John Major once more walked into the meeting room at Number Ten shortly after the dinner hour. He stopped for a moment at seeing a purple alicorn standing on the conference table, then he bowed his head slightly. “Princess Sparkle,” he said. He continued on to his chair.
She blushed. “Sorry, just checking to see if there was any magic in use,” she said, turning to face him. “As far as I can tell this building seems okay, except for a grouping down that way.” She pointed down and to one side with a fore-hoof.
He smiled. “That should be the storage room where we put all of the paintings and photographs after our last meeting.”
She grinned at him, then jumped to the floor before returning to her human form. “Excellent. I’ll have ten unicorns ready on Monday to help you check those things. They will be waiting in Little Whinging at eight o’clock. We’ll leave it to your experts as to their schedules and where they go first.”
She nodded to Foreign Secretary Hurd and Home Secretary Baker, as well as Sir McColl and Sir Walker seated on either side of the table. Castor was seated beside Sir Walker.
“Based on the ones we’ve experimented with, we can now detect them easily. The spell makes the frames glow, so you can easily separate them out from the stacks. And the ones that can’t be moved, such as the one in your office, just be careful of what you say.”
Her grin faded and she became more serious. She shuffled awkwardly on her feet, her hands behind her back, looking for all the world like a little girl caught stealing from the cookie jar. “I’m sorry to have . . . interrupted your day . . . for this. It’s kind of . . . important.” She stopped and fidgeted for a moment. “I-I have unfortunate news for you. I’m, uh, really sorry, but, uh, early this morning, well before sunrise, one of our enemies managed to sneak through the portal into your world.” She blushed heavily.
The men all stiffened.
She swallowed. “This creature is not a pony. It’s what we call a Changeling.”
Castor had a very bad feeling about this.
Twilight pulled out a wand, which was a surprise, and tapped the table. A three-dimensional image of a creature appeared. It looked like a cross between a pony and a bug. The image slowly rotated. “This, uh, is a Changeling.” She glanced at them hesitantly.
“A characteristic of all Changelings, in their normal form, are the holes you see in its legs, horn, wings, and tail. Their colour seems to be a uniform black or very dark blue. Notice the fangs, they can inject a paralyzing/sleep inducing venom. How long it lasts depends on how much they use. It is not fatal and every victim recovers with no ill effects.” Her tone took on a lecturing quality and she became more confident.
“You’ll notice that it has both a horn and wings. Fortunately, the magic cast by the changelings isn’t nearly as powerful as that from a unicorn, neither can it fly as far or fast as pegasus, and they aren’t as strong as an earth-pony. They can lift heavier objects, compared to pegasi.”
As she paused, Castor asked, “How did something like that get past the guards without being seen?” He looked at the other men, “I mean, I’ve seen your setup over there and it looks pretty air-tight!” He looked back at her. “I can’t imagine this thing just walked in.”
She grimaced, sighed, looked down, and blushed, again. “And that’s the problem, it did.”
The Prime Minister raised his eyebrows and the other five men just stared at her.
She ducked her head down a little. “We call them Changelings because that’s what they do — they can imitate any pony they see or know. Fortunately, they can’t duplicate our strengths or our talents.”
What?” came Castor’s quick, and puzzled, response.
She shook her head and sighed. “They are the, um, ultimate imitator. They can change their appearance to make themselves look just like me, for example. If one stood beside me, you wouldn’t be able to tell us apart — not even if it spoke to you. If it claimed to be me, there’s no way you could detect the deception.
“I saw them do it when they tried to invade Canterlot last year.” She shivered. “It’s really creepy to run around a corner and see seven of you staring back at you, as well as seven of each of your friends.” She looked them all in the eyes before adding, “Or not knowing if your best friend coming around the other corner is your friend or a Changeling.”
The men exchanged worried looks.
“Can they imitate us?” came the Prime Minister’s worried question.
Twilight took a deep breath and blew it out her mouth. Reluctantly, she said, “If you had asked me yesterday, I would have said they could only copy ponies. This morning,” she tapped her wand on the table again and large dog appeared in mid-run, a slightly open door not far in front of it. The dog, while not having any really distinguishing physical features had a blue coat with orange markings! “This was found in the men’s changing room after a guard thought he saw a flash of green light from the portal hallway. As you can see, it is much smaller than the Changeling beside it on the table here.” Her confident tone was back.
“However, there is no doubt that it is a changeling. Notice the glow around door knob? That particular shade of green is a signature green of the changelings. Almost all of them cast in that colour. And none of the unicorns in the room were casting at that moment.”
She swallowed. “I checked with the guards on the other side of the portal. They saw no such animal anywhere near the portal.” She sighed, “We took apart the wooden walkway and found clear, fresh signs of a small animal, about a quarter the size of this dog, had crawled under it the entire way from where the walkway starts to the tree. It must have taken days for it to move, a little bit at a time, without being heard or seen. And the open space under the walkway that actually fronts to portal? It is smaller still.” She waved her hand at the image, again.
“Plus, studying the area carefully, there is no way a dog of any size could have made its way from Sweet Apple Acres to the portal walkway without being seen and captured.
“The only conclusion is that Changelings can imitate animals, even animals that are smaller than they are, and likely animals that are bigger. The portal area is spelled against flying animals, so the Changeling could not have simply flown over the wall or followed the path from Sweet Apple Acres.” She hesitated.
“Unless it became a bee, I suppose. They do live in a hive with a queen, and the workers are all female.” She sighed. “We didn’t want to screen out the bugs that help flowers and other plants. I suppose we’ll have to do that now — the earth-ponies won’t like all the extra work.” She worried her lower lip between her teeth. “But if it could do that, why chose a dog-form to escape on this side of the portal?”
She shook her head. “So, I don’t know. Maybe? A day ago I would have said no, but after this morning? I don’t know.” She sighed and looked at the two images still on the table-top, clearly depressed that this had happened.
“You have to understand,” Twilight said, almost pleading, “we didn’t even know these things existed, except as vague mythological rumours, until they attacked us last year. What little we know is from the few we captured after blasting them out of Canterlot and destroying their army. Thousands of them died, hundreds escaped, and we only manged to capture a handful. And, as you can imagine, they haven’t exactly been helpful. Unfortunately, our prisoners have all died because we couldn’t give them the food they needed.”
“What do they eat?” asked Sir Walker in a stunned tone.
“Love.”
After several seconds of dead silence, the Prime Minister said, “You’re not joking are you?”
She shook her head slowly. “No. They are emotivores. They literally eat emotions, specifically love.” She waved a hand in the air, “Oh, they can eat other things too, like vegetables, fruits, and meats, but their life-force and magic are powered by emotions.” She gave them a wane smile. “Regrettably, those other foods don’t really provide the Changelings with much nourishment. It seems they eat food, as we do, only to blend in with ponies when they’re gathering love for their hive.”
She paused, then added, “Except water. Water they need just like any other creature.”
The Prime Minister shook his head closed his eyes for a moment. “So, these changelings are like bees? Only instead of collecting nectar from flowers, they collect love from ponies? And take it back to their hive to share with the others?”
She nodded happily, “Yes, exactly! They are quite similar, right down to all the workers apparently being females. But with their ability to duplicate other animals, of both sexes, it’s sort of a moot point.”
“And you couldn’t provide them with love?” he asked, arching his eyebrows.
She blushed. “Well, the problem is more properly that we could not love them. And we didn’t trust any of them to not try to take control of any ponies who went into their cells.”
“Wait,” said Sir Walker, “What do you mean control?”
Twilight pointed at the fangs in the mouth of the Changeling. “These exude a venom that makes the victim willing to do whatever they are asked to do. It’s easy to detect, the victims are glassy-eyed when first bitten. And while it is active, the victims are very suggestible. It makes it easier to draw love from the pony that has been bitten.” She shifted on her feet. “You can’t be sure the victim won’t come back in several hours and hit your guard over the head with a club and let their changeling escape.”
She gave a small shudder. “And while they can feed from a short distance — no contact needed — convincing two ponies to make love in a dank, dark cell in the dungeons isn’t a simple task. Not to mention that after we fought off their invasion most ponies hate and fear the changelings. So, trying to generate feelings of love while knowing a terrifying monster is on the other side of the wall from you is a bit of a problem.”
She sighed deeply, “Hence, our current lack of prisoners.”
Then she frowned.
“We’re already redoing our spells to prevent anything bigger than a worm from moving over or under the walls or through the gates. Unfortunately, we don’t know that the Changelings can’t make themselves that small, too.”
“We also will be tearing down and rebuilding the building around the portal tree on this side to make it impossible for anything to sneak through like this again. And adding an air-tight building around the base of the tree in Equestria. It will be a good deal more inconvenient to use the portal, but I believe the trade-off will be worth it.”
“One thing we have managed to do, though, is to come up with runes that are effective at detecting changelings.” She opened her briefcase and stuck her arm in it. She withdrew several bundles of papers. “Here are some photographs for you, and the runes — with their explanations. You have to paint the runes at each corner of a door or window frame, or stamp them in metal at each corner. If a changeling comes through, she’s forced back into his normal form.” She sighed as she looked at the doorframe to the conference room.
“If you’re building a building, you can put the runes inside the doorframe or windowframe where they can’t be seen. Or damaged so that they no longer work. If you remove the casings from the doorframes of completed buildings, you should be able to insert slips of metal with the runes on them between the frames and the wall, keeping them hidden. This is what we are doing to every door, window, air vent, or other opening through the walls and roofs of the portal buildings.
“This will not happen a second time,” Twilight promised fervently. “Although, I’ll understand if you wish to cease talking with us about an embassy,” she added dismally, somehow managing to convey the attitude of a kicked puppy. “And ask us to maintain only minimal contact.” She sighed sadly.
She handed the papers to Castor, who was closest to her. He took one bundle and handed the rest to Sir Walker, who passed them on after taking one for himself.
They studied the papers for several minutes as Twilight nervously rocked from side to side and looked around the room. Sir McColl looked over at Twilight.
“Can you add . . . runes . . . to stun the changeling as it comes through the door?” he asked. “That would make it much easier to apprehend this creature if it should be discovered. It would also make it possible to catch one should it try to sneak in when no one was watching, such as late at night.”
Twilight pursed her lips and frowned. “It should be possible, but then I think I would have to put in a storage crystal for the magic to power the stunner.” She stood silent for a moment, then grabbed a paper and pencil from her briefcase. She stared at the paper as the pencil flew across it scribbling things, and then x-ing some out while underlining others. She filled one page, then another.
The men continued studying the papers she had given then and quietly discussing things. After several minutes, she pushed a final paper over to Sir Walker.
“That should do the job,” she said. “The stun will last at least twenty seconds, but not more than fifty. For anything longer, I need a magic gem in the setting. Then it could last for several hours.”
She pressed her lips together tightly, then said, “Because this is our fault, I will put a priority on making metal strips with the gems embedded in them.” She paused. “I’ll bring over a few hundred tomorrow to get you started. Then we’ll bring you several thousand a week. If you want to make them yourselves, I can arrange to have the gems delivered by the ton.”
The men exchanged thoughtful glances.
“Any decent stamping mill could make a million of these,” the Home Secretary said, waving the paper Twilight had given him, “in a couple of days.” The Prime Minister nodded in agreement.
“You can?” she said, clearly surprised at the number and time frame.
The director nodded, “Sure,” he said nonchalantly, finally happy to show them something the humans were much better at, “just give us a sample and the gems, and we’re good to go.”
She blinked, then said, “In any case, we’ll mount a few dozen on both sides of the portal so this won’t happen in the future. And I’ll have Princess Celestia ship us a million gems of the right size.” She frowned. “It might take a week to gather and size them correctly.” She looked at them hopefully, “Will that be sufficient? And I’ll still drop off three hundred tomorrow to get you started, with another few thousand by the time the royal gems arrive.”
After a few moments silence, the Home Secretary asked, “Do you think this changeling is a realistic threat? It is only one.”
Twilight sighed. “I don’t know. Was it sent by its Queen — Queen Chrysalis? Is it alone, or was it merely the first of more that the Queen is intending to send through?” She shook her head. “I know that the Queen doesn’t know anything about portals or she would have exploited them long ago. Could she create a portal now that she knows about them? Probably not. Could she use the lone worker as an anchor for a portal? I know I could, but I don’t think she can. Or, was the worker alone? Had it heard rumours of a new world and decided it had a better chance of surviving here, so it decided to go through the portal?”
She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “All the surviving workers we managed to trace — we still haven’t been able to catch any — fled Equestria many months ago. We haven’t seen any since then.”
She paused to think, “However, if they can imitate common animals then they could have been standing right beside our guards and we wouldn’t have known it.” She sighed ruefully.
“I suspect that this worker might have been hiding in the Everfree forest. It saw an opportunity to go somewhere where it wasn’t being hunted. Somewhere where no one knew of its existence, and therefore it would be safe.”
She looked out the window for a moment. “Whether it can feed off the love of non-magical beings such as yourselves is unknown. It might be that you’ll read in the newspapers about some weird bug-like pony found dead in a forest or an abandoned building.”
She looked back at them “Or it might survive just fine. From what we did find out, the workers collect love-food for their hive. They don’t deviate from that unless it’s at the order of their Queen. A lone worker, without a hive, is unlikely to want to call attention to itself. It would have no home to retreat to if it was found out. So, it will only feed itself when necessary, and then only sparingly.”
“So, realistically, I would say probably not, you don’t truly need to worry. But it is better safe than sorry. For all we know, it could be Queen Chrysalis.”
She quickly added, “That’s highly doubtful, as I can’t see Queen Chrysalis abandoning her surviving hive members. At the very least, if she could sneak in that close, she would have taken as many workers with her as possible. Or maybe it’s an immature queen from the hive. But I doubt that. I can’t see Queen Chrysalis allowing an immature queen in her hive, especially one who might supplant her.
“So, no. I don’t think this Changeling is a real threat to you. Now, the wizards and witches might have a problem, because it should be able to feed love off of them without a problem.” She shook her head. “Unfortunately, we simply do not know.”
She stopped and thought a moment.
“On the bright side, we checked all the personnel at the portal and none of them are changelings and none of them have any memory gaps to indicate that they were temporarily replaced. We also haven’t had any pets or other animals wander into the portal area. Which means we haven’t any other issues with infiltration.”
She scanned their expressions. “I believe this is a situation of better safe than sorry.”
“How do you know these runes will work?” asked the Sir McColl.
She smiled wanly. “A guard ‘accidentally’ left a cell-door only partially locked, and several changelings attempted to escape. As soon as they left the cell, they took the appearances of other guards to try to gain themselves a few seconds of confusion when they were spotted. The runes had been carved onto the walls, floor, and ceiling of a passage, one that led to the way out of the dungeons. It was far out of their sight in the cell. The runes worked perfectly.”
The politicians were silent, considering what they had been told. Both the Home and Foreign Secretaries were regarding the princess with a bit of hostility while the Prime Minister maintained a blank expression.
“How will we know if this Changeling has started harvesting ‘love’ from any of our people?” asked the Prime Minister.
She pursed her lips. “Look for reports of people apparently being in two places at once,” she said slowly. “Or people being unable to remember doing things with their spouses. Flirting, when they are known to not be flirts.”
“Oh, sure, like that’s unusual behaviour,” said Castor somewhat sarcastically. He shook his head.
She shrugged helplessly. “I’m sorry I can’t help more. As I said, we never even suspected that these creatures were in our land until they attacked us.”
She sighed despondently.
“They also kidnap victims and keep them in pods for easy harvesting of love. When you’re asleep, you dream pleasant dreams and generate the love they need. However, as I said, I don’t know if your people can supply what they need.” She paused, taking in their expressions.
“I’m really, really sorry this happened. Celestia and Luna are simply furious.” Twilight shivered and ran her hands up the sides of her upper arms.
“If you need any help in fighting these creatures, we’ll do anything we can to help you.”
The meeting went on until midnight.
Blueblood’s ambassadorial staff would soon be getting much bigger.
And the date of the portal’s, and the ponies’, unveiling would be moved up.
۸- ̰ -۸