//------------------------------//
// [RVS]20 - Celebration 
// Story: A Phoenix Beyond the Veil - The Philospher's Stone 
// by gerandakis 
//------------------------------//


Chapter Twenty

Celebration






"And that's how we got here," Bill concluded his story. "Now. I think there is a party to be had?"

"Quite right," Mrs. Weasley agreed as she carried a large cake out of the kitchen. Ten candles sat prominently atop it.

From there, the celebrations went more or less by the book. Ginny managed to blow out all the candles at once, everyone had a piece of the cake, and from there the various guests began to mingle. Bill and Charlie spent most of their time telling the others what they had been up to and were, in turn, caught up to what had happened at the Burrow.

Seeing Sunset transform into a tiny, candy-colored unicorn was quite the shock for them. Seeing Ginny snatch her up and begin petting her amused them greatly. Seeing Luna, Ginny's childhood friend sit down beside her and do the same only made it better.

"You're right Ginny," Luna said absently, "this is nice." She smiled when the amber unicorn curled up in her lap, smiling contently. "I wonder what I'd look like as a pony?"

"Thestral probably," Sunset mumbled, too relaxed to speak clearly.

"Pardon?" Ginny turned to her amber friend in confusion.

Sunset shook her head slightly and turned to the girl petting her. "Luna, could you stop the ear scratches for a moment, I want to be able to speak clearly."

"Okay." Luna smiled happily and moved her hand to stroke the little unicorn's back instead.

"Thanks. I said you'd probably a thestral. A pretty rare, mostly nocturnal tribe of ponies. You strike me as the type. If you do end up one, we'll probably have to find another to teach you how to use their shadow magic, they're pretty secretive."

"Shadow magic?" Ginny seemed to be somewhere between worried and intrigued.

Sunset chuckled. "You might want to call it dark magic. But in this case 'dark' doesn't mean evil, but actually dark. Mind you, those two are not mutually exclusive, but most shadow magic isn't any more evil than what most wizards and witches use here. It's just unfortunate that thestrals like to call their shadow magic 'the dark arts' as well.

"Anyway, a good bit of unicorn magic is actually derived from their shadow magic. They were actually the first ones to figure out invisibility and teleportation. More or less the entire field of arcane phase theory is derived from their techniques. Not to mention a good chunk of illusions as well."

"So ..." Ginny tentatively spoke up. "You're not all unicorns then?"

"What? Oh no. Unicorns are one of the three great tribes, pegasi and earth ponies are the other two. I'll go into more detail tomorrow."

"Well okay then." Ginny shrugged and went back to petting the still sleeping Hermione. "And what colors would you think?"

Sunset shrugged. "Not sure, if I had to take a guess, I'd go with dark gray coat and light blonde mane and tail, but that's just a guess."

Ginny inclined her head slightly. "Hmm, I'll go with orange."

"Orange? Why orange?" Sunset stared at Ginny from Luna's lap, Luna herself also seemed to be mildly interested.

"I don't know ... she just seems orange to me."

"Well," Sunset smirked, "shall we find out?"

"Find out? How?"

"I don't think they'll mind if we're gone for a few minutes. Philomena?"

Philomena gave a trill from where she had perched herself on the backrest of the bench they were sitting on. After a brief flash of flame, the party had three young girls, a unicorn and a phoenix fewer.





Sunset took a deep breath as she looked around. Her tower suite was just as she remembered it. She had suspected that the palace staff would have done nothing but keep the room clean, but it was reassuring to have confirmation. She turned around and smiled a seeing Hermione's pony form again. It had been over a week since she'd last seen it.

Then she noticed the two others. She smirked. Ginny and her had both been right in a way. The charcoal gray thestral with a practically white mane and tail could only be Luna. She had to admit that the two orange stripes cutting the girl's white locks into three parts, twisting and turning as they did, suited her style quite nicely.

Ginny meanwhile, had kept her Weasley red hair for mane and tail, though now intermixed with streaks of a pale red, almost pink really, and a deep cherry red. The overall picture suited her quite well and matched rather nicely with her snow white coat and wings.

Both of them were lying on the ground as if asleep, but they were both stirring. The moment they turned to her, Sunset could see their eyes. Luna had kept her pale silvery eyes, but, of course, they were now the slitted eyes of a thestral, a fact that the color almost seemed to be made for. She was squinting her now much more sensitive eyes in the bright midday sun. Ginny, meanwhile, had her hazel eyes turn a bright amber, almost perfectly matching Sunset's coat.

Hermione stepped up next to Sunset, looking at the pegasus and thestral before them. "Well. You both came out rather nicely, didn't you?"

Both of them looked at their hooves, Ginny at a pearl white one, Luna at a charcoal gray one. Both of them shrugged. Sunset giggled. "One moment." With that she walked over to the bathroom, returning a moment later with a small hoof mirror held in her magic. She held it out to them so they could study their reflections.

"Hmm. I like those eyes. I can work with this."

"Yeah, I think I'm fine with this." They both tried to turn to one another, only to promptly fall, unfamiliar with the feeling of walking on four legs.

Hermione giggled. "Take it slow you two, just try walking slowly at first, it comes natural after a while."

The two followed her advice and carefully got up again. Both unicorns lit their horns, ready to catch their friends if they fell, but the two managed to stay on their hooves. Their walking was slow and unstable, but they managed it without falling.

While Luna sat down at a window, enjoying the panoramic view of Canterlot and beyond, Hermione refocused her efforts towards changing forms at will. After having made significant inroads towards that goal from the human side, she found it much easier to complete the process from the opposite end.

Sunset, meanwhile, placed her glowing horn on Ginny's forehead and told her to focus on the feeling of her magic. After training with the others for a few days, Ginny could feel Sunset's magic interfering with her own. She was confused for a few seconds until Sunset's magic reached a part of her essence she instinctively understood to be connected to her current form.

"You feel that?"

"Yeah. That's to do with this form, isn't it?"

"It is. Now hold onto that while I try to find the part of your essence that's connected to your human form."

Ginny did as asked and focused on the indicated part of her essence while she felt Sunset's magic move on to search once again. It wasn't long before Sunset found what she was looking for.

"There. Now focus on planning out a pathway between the two. Once you have that you can stop focusing without loosing any progress."

"So I'm basically planning a tunnel?"

"More or less. Actually that analogy works pretty well. The different aspect you're trying to connect are basically like caves in a mountain and you're trying to dig a tunnel between them."

Having finished her planning, Ginny opened her eyes. "So getting used to our new bodies when we first came here was basically cave exploration?"

"Basically, yes."

"And what happens when the tunnel is done?"

Both of them and Luna turned towards the bright green light that suddenly filled the room. Hermione's form was glowing and changing. She was floating off the ground and slowly returned to her human form. Suddenly, the light exploded away from her and she landed easily on the floor. "That."

With a giggle, Sunset turned to help Luna as well.





The gathered party goers turned as a flash of flame once more lit up the edge of the party. Hermione and Philomena appeared as they had left, but Sunset was once more in Human form and Ginny and Luna displayed subtle differences. Recognizing the symptoms, Emma, Dan and Harry simply rolled their eyes. The Weasleys, however, had never seen Hermione before her trip to Equestria and, in their, shock didn't immediately put the pieces together.

"What happened? Are you alright?"

"We're fine mom," Ginny groaned, annoyance shining in her brilliant amber eyes. "We just took a quick trip to Equestria. Turns out that has some side effects. We'll got pony forms as well, but we're still working on keeping them over here."

"What kind of pony forms?" Ron asked, curiously.

"A pegasus and a thestral," Hermione helpfully supplied, prompting everyone to turn and look at where her and Sunset had once more assumed pony form.

"Does that mean they can fly?" Charlie asked, locking onto Sunset as the most likely source of an answer.

Sunset merely chuckled. "No. It just means they can learn it. They don't magically know how to fly from having wings. Once they figure out how to transform, they can get to that."

While the others were distracted, Sunset took the opportunity to take a closer look at the two younger girls. Like Hermione they had kept their new hair colors. Ginny had also kept her new eye color. Luna's eye color, of course, hadn't changed to begin with, but her pupils had returned to their original, rounded shape.

Once everyone had settled again, the party guests got back to mingling while Luna and Ginny got back to petting ponies, relishing the fact that they didn't have to share any more.

Looking at the sea green unicorn curled up in her lap, Ginny smiled. "You know, I could get used to this."

"This is fun." Luna agreed, turning to look at her friend. "Also I think you still have presents to open." She casually pointed a finger at a table at the edge of the party, where a small stack of presents lay unattended.

"Oh my, I can't believe we forgot about those," Mrs. Weasley called out, drawing her wand. "Acchio." The stack of presents floated over and neatly landed next to Ginny who set Hermione down to join Sunset beside Luna and got up.

It didn't take much to get Ginny started on unwrapping presents. Most of the presents were small items from the Weasleys' various distant relatives. Two stood out. The first was from her own parents, a pair of small silvery earrings, each studded with a single sparkling stone. Sunset, being familiar with various precious materials from the Palace in Canterlot, could easily recognize that they were made of comparatively cheap materials, but they were pretty regardless, their warm green stones nicely contrasting her hair. If anything the new range of colors only made the contrast better.

The other was a set of exercise clothes from the Grangers Ginny immediately recognized as matching those she had seen Sunset and Hermione wear during their Parkour training. Feeling the magic woven into the fabric, she immediately understood that it had the same protective charms as theirs.

When they had been practicing before, Sunset and Hermione had applied those charms to her manually. Now they wouldn't need to anymore. That way she could practice even when they weren't around.

Looking over the stack of presents and her gathered friends and family, Ginny grinned. This was her best birthday yet. The fact that Sunset, Hermione and Luna would be staying over for the night only made her happier.