After their thorough search of the library environs, they headed back out Main Hall and up the stairs that bracketed the library entrance.
The two banners on the next floor’s walls were of two horses, not ponies, both with wings and a horn. One had a bright, day background, with a white alicorn, the other was night themed, with a black alicorn.
“Yuh think those are supposed to be Celestia and Luna?” asked Ron.
“Their ancestors? Maybe?” said Myrtle. “This castle is a thousand years old, you know.” She stared around them, trying to take in the entire expanse of the Main Hall. It was definitely two or three times the length of the Great Hall at Hogwarts.
“And the girls said that both Celestia and Luna are thousands of years old, so probably them,” said Percy as he stared at the two banners. “Very stylized, I’d say.” He moved closer and ran his hoof along the lower edge. “These should be in a museum, not left here to rot.”
“Harry did say they were starting to renovate the place last year,” said Ron.
“Still, they shouldn’t be left here.” He glanced at his siblings. “They are history, after all. Can you imagine a banner like this of the Founders just being . . . abandoned?”
They all nodded at that.
Ginny flew up and detached the banners, with Myrtle’s help. They rolled them up and shrank them, placing them in Percy’s saddlebags. They had a gift they were sure would please Twilight. Or maybe for the Princesses, if Twilight thought them appropriate for that, and she didn’t want them.
They went through the doorways beside the banners into an enormous room with a throne at the far end. The windows looked out onto the same courtyard they had seen before. This room had seen the most damage, and not just from time. A battle had taken place here. Several, in fact, both one from long ago and one from recently. The weathering and shading on the exposed marble clearly showed the difference.
Even though the floor was free of debris, columns were broken and severely damaged. Or simply missing large sections where something had blasted the columns in two. And scorch marks were still visible. The windows had new glass, but nothing fancy. The huge divots and cracks in the floor made them wonder why the library below was in such good condition.
Whatever non-marble decorations had existed were long gone, destroyed by the fires that had clearly raged at one time.
Ron, naturally, went straight for the throne and plopped down on it. “Hey, look! I’ma king!” He struck what he thought was a regal pose. As a pony, he simply looked ridiculous.
“Get down from there!” ordered Percy as he rushed over.
“Make me,” Ron said, running his hooves over the inset gems on the arms of the throne.
There was a POP and fresh fruits appeared in a depression built into the side of the throne beside the row of gems.
“Right! I was feeling hungry,” Ron said, grabbing an apple and taking a big bite. “Hmm,” he continued, “Goog!” Juice dribbled from the side of the apple. He swallowed the rest and grabbed a second.
Percy tried to pull him off the throne, but Ron hunched down, and braced his leg and other two hooves against the thrones sides. He didn’t move except a slight pull sideways. He smirked at his brother.
“Don’t sit there! Don’t touch anything! It’s disrespectful. Who knows what’ll happen?” Percy let go of the leg he was holding and went for a body grab.
“Yeah,” said Ron. “Like I’m gonna disappear if I hit one of these gems.” He punched a different gem with his freed hoof.
The throne platform suddenly flipped over backwards, flinging Percy back into the room in front of the throne. It dumped Ron, head first, through a trap door. Then it returned to normal, with no sign that anything had happened.
۸-_-۸
Harry and the fillies had discovered nothing, so far, except empty rooms in the corridor they were exploring. Most had furniture, but it was all utilitarian in nature, filing cabinets, desks, and so forth. These were for the staff that ran the castle, obviously. They came to a cross corridor that was lined with pony coats of armour, which they carefully inspected.
They had never seen pony armour like this before. The Royal Guards had some armour, but it wasn’t anywhere near the full coverage that these ponikins sported.
It was very interesting to see that there was even armour for the pegasi. It had metal pieces that fit over the leading edges of the wings and protected the vulnerable joints at the body. The wing surfaces were left uncovered.
The armours had to be very heavy and only the physically strongest ponies could manage to fight in them. Which brought up the point of what kind of monsters had they had to fight that needed that kind of armour? After all, they knew just how much damage a pony could take.
Each of the armours, there were easily a dozen or more, were on small pedestals only fetlock-high on both sides of the wide hall. The pedestals were all half-moon shaped, with the flat part against the walls. It was all very imposing.
While they were grouped around one specimen, Scootaloo was standing on the armour’s pedestal for a closer look, they heard what sounded like an organ note play. Before they could blink, the pedestal spun on the flat side. It was now empty. They all startled back, and began to panic.
“Whar’d she go?” demanded Apple Bloom.
“Scootaloo!” yelled Sweetie Belle.
Harry, after the first moment of shock had started looking for the magic that had to have been responsible.
“Scootaloo!” repeated Sweetie.
This time there was a thump from the wall behind the pedestal.
After a period of yelling at the wall they got the answers they needed. While she could hear them, they couldn’t hear her — so they resorted to one thump for “yes” and two thumps for “no.” Yes, she was okay. No, she hadn’t touched anything. Yes, she had heard a sound that she thought was a musical note. No, she didn’t see a way back. No, she couldn’t find a lever.
Meanwhile, the others had been scouring the vicinity for clues. They were now considering how to kick the wall down.
“Stand back,” Sweetie Belle shouted, bracing herself in front of the wall.
“No! Stop!” shouted Harry. “If you do that, the residual magic will hide the trigger!”
She sighed, but sat down and waited.
It wasn’t obvious, but eventually Harry found a tiny spot of magic on the wall. However, his touching it, either physically or with magic did nothing.
“Scootaloo, can you hit here?” he called out. There was a thump two hooves to the right. “No, move to your right!” he called out. It took several tries, but, as she later told them, “Just as I lined up for a kick, the stone under my right fore-hoof shifted and then the door opened.”
The four of them stood, staring past the ponikin into the dark and narrow corridor.
“Well,” said Sweetie Belle.
“A very deep subject,” Apple Bloom interjected quickly.
After a dirty look at the filly, Sweetie Belle continued, “Hidden corridors lead to hidden rooms, don’t they? One of which is bound to have books in it. And if they weren’t hidden, Twilight would already have moved them, right?”
Sweetie Belle lit her horn and started into the corridor. The rest quickly followed. Scootaloo was annoyed that the narrow space ruled out flying and she had to walk. Harry went last and kept a look out for anything behind them.
۸-_-۸
To the twin’s relief, the trap-door was to a slide that dumped them into an underground room.
“Well,” said George, “That was unexpected.”
“Indeed,” came the muffled response from under him.
They untangled themselves and took a look around. They weren’t really worried. They were unicorns, after all, and knew the teleportation spell well enough that they could easily escape any time they wanted. The front steps to the castle couldn’t be that far away.
And with their horns lit, they could easily see everything around them.
The room wasn’t a dungeon by any stretch of the imagination. It was rather cozy, actually. There was a sofa by one wall, a small bookcase on the second with a reading table. A fireplace occupied the third wall. An unlit torch was in each corner of the room. The bookcase was sparse, with only a few books in it. A quick look revealed several intriguing titles: Cutie Marks: Discovering Your Talent; The Order in Chaos; and Greece: Land or Cooking Oil? There was another book, How to Turn a Castle into Demented Funhouse in 37 Easy Steps, but it seemed to be more of a diary with lots of hand-written . . . hoof-written notes and drawings.
The other books in the bookcase covered more pedestrian topics such as Modern Farming, Construction Techniques, and Plumbing Essentials.
The twins quickly shrank and stored all the books. It would be easier to convince Twilight to keep a few if they handed . . . hooved . . . her a bunch.
The Demented Funhouse they saved for last as they wanted to see what the current castle might have in store for them. The placement of an organ caught their attention, and they decided to look for that. Which wouldn’t be all that difficult as they could now hear very faint notes being played.
But that could come later, after they read the book.
۸-_-۸
Immediately after Ron disappeared, Percy jumped onto the throne. He looked at the two girls. “No way I’m leaving Ron alone,” he stated. He punched the same gem the other red-head had hit, and just as suddenly disappeared.
The two girls looked at each other, wide-eyed.
Myrtle shook her head. “If they were renovating the place, there can’t really be anything dangerous here,” she said looking at Ginny.
Ginny looked around the room. “Well, no reason to hang around here,” she said. She headed from the throne. The two of them squeezed themselves onto the seat, then Myrtle hit the gem.
It was very disorienting, at first. Ginny tried to use her wings to control their descent after she grabbed Myrtle in her legs. Myrtle lit her horn and they could see the walls rushing by them. However, they could see light below them rapidly getting closer.
Then they shot into a large room only moments before they plunged into warm water. They quickly surfaced, pony-paddling, and looked around. Ginny wrapped her wings tightly to her body to reduce their drag.
The castle clearly wasn’t on level ground as they saw they were in a huge swimming pool bordered on one side by windows. Ginny’s brothers were in the shallow end shouting and waving at them. The two girls made their way to the boys. Oddly, half the room’s wall at the shallow end came to the edge of the pool. Except for that one part there was more than enough room to lounge or walk around on. As they went closer, they saw the corner of the pool had steps to let them climb comfortably from it to that area.
Percy had climbed out and was looking around. “This is almost as big as two classrooms.” He looked up. “And the ceiling is nearly as high as the one in the Great Hall at Hogwarts.” He looked over at the others as they climbed out to join him. “You two just fell from the hole in the ceiling, there.” He pointed up at the ceiling at far end of the room over the pool. There was no sign of an opening. They stared and frowned. It had to be a trapdoor that only opened when trigged. Which was why they hadn’t smelled the water in the pool while in the throne room.
After a quick look, the others climbed out, and shook off as much of the water they could. A few drying charms took care of the rest. Wand holsters were certainly worth the expenditure, if one had the money, they agreed.
The room was in amazingly good condition. In fact, it looked as if it had just been prepared for them. The water was clear, filled the pool, and was actually warm! An open cupboard had towels in it. If they didn’t know better, they might have thought someone had prepared the pool and room just for them. And this was in a ruined and abandoned castle? The spells on this must be very powerful.
They turned and looked out the windows lining one side of the room, trying to figure out where they were.
The windows overlooked a small park dense with bushes and trees. If it had had a plan or walkways, they had been overgrown long ago. A high wall enclosed the park, limiting their view, but revealing nothing more of the castle.
The four headed for the door on one wall of the room. Ron was pouting at the dressing down his brother gave him for being a berk and just punching buttons willy-nilly. “You could’ve been killed!” Percy had concluded angrily.
The door led to a room with three doors. Two doors led to what had to be royal restrooms, each as big as a Hogwarts classroom. One was decorated in a motif that emphasized the moon, the other the Sun. The third door led to a set of marble stairs and another door. The stairs went up and led to several rooms, one room per landing, culminating in a large bedroom — with attached bathroom. All the rooms were empty, and included what were obviously maid quarters, a study, a small library, and another room for receiving guests. They did find a book that had apparently been knocked behind the bed in the bedroom — Dream Walking for Dummies. It looked more like a diary than a published book, though, with numerous hand . . . hoof-drawn images and notes.
From the windows, they could see they were in the northern part of the castle. The throne room was on the opposite side of the tower from the pool. Myrtle inadvertently discovered there was a slide that went from the bedroom bathroom down to the pool. Ron discovered another one that went . . . elsewhere.
Once more, the other three had to follow blindly.
۸-_-۸
Harry was surprised that the corridor led them to the castle kitchen. The exit was hidden behind a dishware cupboard. Even looking, it was hard to see that the fillies came from behind it and not the doorway beside it. You couldn’t tell the tunnel was even there unless you were specifically looking for it. And a moveable cupboard could easily hide it from detection.
The kitchen was huge. And well stocked. Both equipment wise and with food.
Considering it was nearing lunch time, it seemed only natural for Harry to start fixing them lunch. Being ponies, almost everything was vegetables and fruits, with a few hay-based items. What really surprised them, however, was what they found in a storeroom.
“Are those cakes?” asked Scootaloo.
“It’s huge!
And it was. Nearly as big as the food storeroom beside it. Harry could only shake his head. The preservation spells on the storage rooms had certainly done their jobs!
The fillies were not slow to pillage the fruit bin — not that they could make much of a dent it. After all, it had been designed to store food for an entire castle’s worth of ponies. All the fruit was as fresh as the day it had been placed there.
After their early lunch, they began exploring the rest of the rooms they could reach. All of which were clearly support rooms for the kitchen or staff. And just as clearly vacant of anything interesting.
Just as they were about to leave the area and search the rest of the castle, they heard, “Aha! There you are!” coming from Fred. George was right beside him.
“How’d you get here?” asked Sweetie Belle.
“Yeah,” said Scootaloo flying over to them. “We were watching the door to outside, and you didn’t come down the stairs from the dining hall above. We were just about to go there again.”
“And the kitchen staff quarters are through the door over there,” added Harry.
“We came through there,” George said, pointing at one of the empty storerooms.
Fred frowned back into the storeroom. “Forge,” he said, “There’re only empty pots and pans in there. I don’t see a door.”
They spent a few minutes fumbling around. Many pots and pans were “accidentally” knocked to floor with a great deal of noise. The twins concluded the secret passage they had used was hidden on this side. And they couldn’t find it. The others were on the other side of the kitchen, covering their ears.
“On the other hoof,” George said, “we did find a bunch of books in a hidden room.”
After showing the others their discoveries, and having a bit to eat themselves as the two groups shared information, they headed up to the dining room. There was still plenty of castle to explore!
۸-_-۸
Meanwhile, Myrtle and the other Weasleys found themselves in a windowless room that wasn’t a dungeon. It was rather cosy, actually. There was a small and empty bookcase by one wall, a sofa by the second with a reading table, and an unlit fireplace. An unlit torch was in each corner of the room. Disturbingly, the room appeared as if it had been recently cleaned. That is, no dust was anywhere.
They checked the room carefully and found Faust, Fact or Fiction? behind the bookcase. Then they found How to Move the Sun, which was stuffed under a cushion on the sofa.
With those stowed in Percy’s saddlebags, they headed out through the only door in the room. After a short walk, they found themselves entering the castle kitchens. They heard voices coming from an exit with stairs. And discovered the rest of their exploration party about to leave.
After catching up with each other, and scarfing down food from the kitchen below, the much larger group left for more exploration. And to find the source of that mysterious music they could occasionally hear. Was there a music spell breaking down?
It didn’t take them long. Once they decided it wasn’t their imagination, they quickly homed in on where the music was originating. To their surprise they found a room with a massive organ in it! And, even more surprising, the pony sitting in front of the organ and playing the music was Pinkie Pie!
“Well,” she said, “I couldn’t let you wander through the castle without proper supervision, now could I,” she said. Setting aside that she hadn’t been actually watching them, it did make sense. When they told her about the slides and pool, she vanished so suddenly they didn’t see her move. Only a pink outline remained in the air as the shed fur slowly drifted down. A moment later they heard an impossibly loud “Wheee!” followed by a splash.
With an almost constant, distant, “whee!” in the background, punctuated by faint splashes, they once more resumed their search for books.
The rest of the day was interesting, in that they explored almost the entire castle. And they discovered two more slides, three more trapdoors, six secret passages, and a spring-loaded section that tossed the pony on it from beside a door on a patio to a balcony two floors up.
But one additional book was found, A History of Paradise Valley. They found it in a partially destroyed room that once had been a barracks for the castle guards. It was under a bunk that had been crushed by falling debris. By the scorch marks on the walls and the discarded weapons on the floor, the owner hadn’t survived the battle to retrieve his reading material.
Naturally, they were subjected to a lecture from Twilight about running off to the castle, even if they hadn’t trekked through the Everfree Forest. Then they were the recipients of profuse thanks for retrieving ancient books that others had missed. And the banners. They managed to convince the bookworm to let them give their other bookworm two of the recovered books: Cutie Marks: Discovering Your Talent and The Order in Chaos.
They knew Hermione would be thrilled to have two books over a thousand years old that no one on Earth had ever seen. Or read. Or even dreamed about.
And Harry discovered that sleeping in Twilight’s bed made for wonderfully restful nights. And even more wonderful mornings waking up with company instead of alone. It made the nights warmer, too.
۸-_-۸
Dumbledore sipped his glass of fire-whiskey as he watched the fire in his fireplace and reflected on the events since the start of school this year.
Foreign students from Atlantis, a late student from overseas, a troll allowed into the castle, and an attack on a student. And the discovery of an actual horcrux in the school. Then there were the uncommonly common potion accidents that yielded usable potions.
There hadn’t been this much commotion in Hogwarts since the end of England’s Great Wizarding War.
Fortunately, right now, the castle was almost completely empty of students. None of the Gryffindors or Slytherins had stayed behind, and only three students total from the other two houses. They said they needed the quiet time to study for their NEWTs. Most of the Professors had returned to their family homes, as well. The Christmas hols, as usual, made for a very relaxing time in Hogwarts.
Except for the Ministry parties in the evenings he had had plenty of time for his research. That was thanks to the Equestrians’ suggestions about assistant teachers. The new policy was working out quite well, as were the suggestions put forward by the other professors. They all reported that having exceptional sixth and seventh year students take some of the load had allowed them to concentrate on those students who needed help. And both the exceptional and the lagging students had produced a noticeable improvement in their magic.
It was a policy he wished they had implemented decades ago. But Headmaster Dippet had been a traditionalist. He had spurned anything that hadn’t been done for a hundred years, at least. And the professors had all learned the futility of trying to change things. There had been many missed opportunities that it had taken Princess Twilight’s forceful suggestions to restart.
And that fresh look had even extended to the muggles. The Atlanteans had been quite clever with their approach to the muggles. They had taken advantage of the muggles’ gullibility and recent fascination with “technology.”
The Unspeakables, at his request, though Minister Fudge’s thought it was his, had taken a look at what the Atlanteans had been doing with their “cures.” It wasn’t all that difficult, the primary information was in the newspapers, after all.
The amputees had been easy, the wizards and witches had merely pretended to be reporters and talked with the muggles. The muggles, to a man and woman, said they had been taken to a muggle hospital and the missing limbs regrown with special medicines and technology. While they alluded to it being “like magic,” they had insisted it wasn’t. All they had seen were machines, medicines in bottles, and doctors — just as you would find in any muggle hospital.
The only surprising thing they had seen had been some of the doctors had unusual hair colours. Which, now that the Equestrian Embassy had been announced, they understood to be the alien doctors. No visible magic at all.
The Unspeakables hadn’t even needed to obliviate the interviewees. “A refreshing change,” Broderick had said. “A simple glamour, a few questions backed by legilimency, and we were done.”
It had taken the Unspeakables a bit more effort to “acquire” one of the Equestrian cancer-cure machines. But they had. And then disassembled it to find its secrets. Their conclusions were that it was a marvellous feat of ingenuity in using rune-based magic but fooled the muggles into thinking it was technology at work.
Even if a muggle were to take apart the device to plumb its secrets, they wouldn’t notice the magic at work.
The real discovery, as far as the Unspeakables were concerned, was that the Atlanteans had somehow managed to get magic spells to work without destroying the electrical items. The two seemed to work together seamlessly. In fact, when the Unspeakables removed some of the electrical stuff, the device quit working. Which made it seem as if the electrical parts were integral to the machine functioning properly. No one would look inside and think, “This is not right.” And even if someone did suspect it to be magic, there wasn’t anything they could point at that conclusively proved it was so.
۸-_-۸