//------------------------------//
// 110 — Overwhelmed 
// Story: If Wishes were Ponies . . . . 
// by tkepner 
//------------------------------//

“I still don’t see why the Equestrians didn’t contact us first,” Cornelius whined.

Albus sighed. They were having the second of their meetings in the Minister of Magic’s office since the Minister’s ill-fated attempt to coerce the Equestrians into ignoring the muggles.

He stroked his beard and leaned back. “And how would they have done that, Cornelius? This is the Ministry of Magic, not the Foreign Ministry,” he said reasonably. “The Ministry of Magic is only concerned with magical events and preventing muggles from realizing wizards and witches exist. There are no embassies,” he subtlety emphasized, “in the wizarding world as there are in the muggle world. We simply directly contact the proper department in the foreign county’s Ministry of Magic. The closest thing we have to a Foreign Department is the Department of International Magical Cooperation. And their main focus is trading standards, international law, the ICW, and sports!”

He sighed again, starting to get exasperated, but hiding it behind a genial smile and twinkling eyes. “You know all this Cornelius. 

“The Equestrians weren’t looking to sell us anything, primarily because they had no idea what we might be interested in purchasing, so the trading office is right out, isn’t it? International laws are set and enforced by the ICW, and that department is only concerned with our staying inside the law. 

“They didn’t know the ICW existed until we contacted the Equestrians about their children attending Hogwarts. They knew nothing about it, what it meant, or what it espoused, and they are not interested in joining it. There certainly aren’t any laws against that! And as long as they do not violate the International Statute of Secrecy, the ICW has no authority to interfere. And Minerva explained the International Statute of Secrecy — as well as left them a muggle-born brochure so they wouldn’t accidentally break the any important laws.

“And they don’t even know what sports we have, so that department is out, as well.

“Not to mention, as Ambassador Blueblood so ably explained, they were visited by the ministry — twice! Once by the Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes and again by the Department of Magical Transportation. So, clearly, someone in the Ministry knew of their existence and that they had a substantial estate. And I, myself, arranged for the Equestrians to have a floo-network connection installed. I assumed the Department Head would have told you that.” He glanced at one of the in-baskets on the Minister’s desk.

“But I am the Minister for Magic! I should have been told!” complained Cornelius.

“Well, then, perhaps you should take that up with the Department Heads of the Floo-network, and the Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes,” lightly suggested Albus.

He paused, still stroking his beard thoughtfully, then continued.

“And what if the Equestrians did try to contact you? Someone who tried to make an appointment with you, someone who wasn’t a pure-blood or famous half-blood, someone you didn’t know, would your Senior Undersecretary have even given them the time of day?”

He looked thoughtful, for a moment. “For all you know, in fact, they may have tried to do that and been rebuffed.”

Cornelius pouted and spun his chair like a petulant child.

“Well, what about all the magic things they’re doing with the muggles?”

Albus shook his head. It was going to be another wasted afternoon, he could tell.

“The muggles blame it all on the ‘alien’ nature of the Equestrians. They believe, hard as it is to comprehend, that aliens use technology to do things that look like magic but aren’t. Much the same way muggle stage magicians appear to be doing magic, but aren’t. The muggles just assume that because the Equestrians created the portal — one which their muggle scientists can’t explain — the Equestrians must have other things the muggles can’t explain. And my friends in the ICW say that is perfectly all right. 

“Blaming magic on technology was impossible fifty years ago, but now? Many muggles who would have immediately shouted ‘MAGIC’ are now just nodding their heads and saying, ‘Ah, technology, of course!’ and continuing on as if they hadn’t seen a thing unexpected. They have many marvels that copy magic and yet aren’t — such as their aeroplanes the size of busses that carry hundreds through the air and pictures that move in their movie houses.”

As Albus had expected, not much was accomplished that afternoon.

And he never mentioned that he could have warned the Minister, but hadn’t because he had suspected that Cornelius would have caused an international incident just that much sooner.


۸-_-۸


Elly was in the library that day just outside the packed room for the fifth and sixth years. A recording of soothing music was playing, and masking the noises a roomful of people would normally be making. A Ravenclaw taking a break and staring aimlessly around the room suddenly looked at the seven animagi. The Ravenclaw frowned. “Hey,” he said to Scootaloo, lightly stroking her feathered wing that was draped across his lap.

“Hmm?” came the distracted response, before she looked up from her paper at the wizard.

“When’s your birthday?”

She blinked, then said, “June 12th.”

“And you’re what, eleven, twelve?”

She frowned and shook her head. “I’ll be ten.” *

The Ravenclaw’s jaw dropped, as did the students closest to them.

“You’re nine?”

Her frown deepened. “Almost ten,” she said testily.

He stared at her, then looked at the other two fillies. “And them?”

She snorted, but nodded towards Apple Bloom. “Her birthday is May 3rd, she’s ten right now. And Sweetie Belle will be ten on April 11th.”

She turned back to look at the Ravenclaw. “Why,” she asked curiously.

They had attracted a bit of attention, now.

Elly smirked. She had wondered when the humans would notice. She knew every human Firstie, except Ginny, was eleven on September first. That had led her to investigate. Why were these older humans acting so young? Her research had shown that human nymphs were incapable of walking at birth, unlike ponies who could walk and run almost immediately, and nymphs who crawled everywhere. And it took the human babies most, if not all, of a year to catch up. At a year old, ponies and nymphs were running around everywhere. And humans were just beginning to walk. And being unable to explore for so long left the humans behind in mental development. 

And talking for humans was delayed until they were almost two years old! Ponies were fully vocal by six months, at the latest. Lings were fully vocal only a month after pupating. Again, that placed the humans behind, comparatively.

Which was why the ponies, even though physically younger, were on par with the human Firsties, and looked eleven.

She smirked again. She wondered what they would say if they knew she was only eight. Having access to the hive mind certainly had speeded up her learning by a considerable margin. Most of her learning was merely a matter of putting theory to practice and becoming proficient. Of course, being an infiltrator meant she was smarter than most lings her age — and required a lot more things to practice. Not more knowledgeable, because every ling could access the hive mind when needed, but she was better and quicker at applying what she knew.

Unfortunately, the extent of the hive mind, at this point, was just her. And she was woefully lacking in knowledge. Both from home and here. It would take her decades to learn everything she needed to learn in this new world.

The Ravenclaw blinked several times, then said, “Just wondering.” He smiled. “Hoping for a birthday party before exams, I guess.”

She blinked at him. She turned and looked around. “Hey, Parvati!”

The Indian girl looked up. “Yeah?”

“Didn’t you say your birthday was coming up?”

The witch nodded. “Yeah, in two days, February tenth, Monday.”

Scootaloo looked back up at the Ravenclaw. She smirked. “There ya go! And her birthday is the same as Padma’s! So, two for one!” She started to get excited. “We can make tonight a blowout! A two-house party! Where are the twins?”

Elly almost started jumping for joy. She could already feel the excitement flooding the room. She would need a few more jars for this. She hurried back to her room. She had some planning to do — primarily a safe place for her store of food. Her trunk was running out of room. Maybe she should ask a house-elf if there was a place to hide things. And then avoid it because the house-elves knew where it was.

After thoroughly investigating it, of course.


۸-_-۸


Starlight Glimmer was striving to come up with a ploy to attract the wizard’s attention when he looked over at her and frowned. She pretended to be too involved in finishing her lunch and reading the newspapers a second time. It was actually her second lunch, but she had needed an excuse to stay at her table. She didn’t think she could stretch out going through the ads much further without something else as a distraction.

“Excuse me,” he said politely in a cultured tone that would have done a Canterlot noble proud, “Are you, perchance, seeking employment?” And very much unlike how he had sounded talking the Chief Warlock. Another sign of how familiar the two were with each other.

She looked up at him, as if surprised he had spoken to her.

“Why, yes,” she said, and gestured to the newspapers and her notes. “I only recently arrived from Canada.”

He glanced at her papers, and the quill she held in her magic in mid-notetaking. “I couldn’t help but notice you seem quite accomplished at wandless magic.”

She shrugged dismissively, “It’s convenient for notetaking. I prefer a wand, otherwise.” It was amazing how much easier magic was here with a wand. Almost as easy as using her horn back in Equestria.

He smiled winningly, “Perhaps you could help me. My house here in London has been vacant for quite a few years and needs cleaning. And while I’m good with a wand, it would go much faster if I had help?” He gave her an appraising look and smiled encouragingly. It was an approach only a brazen and self-important stallion at home would consider proper. He probably thought it made him look roguish and mischievous.

She tilted her head and raised an eyebrow enquiringly, anyway. She had wanted to meet this stallion, and here was the opportunity laid out in front of her. All she had to do was manage it.

“I would be happy to pay you the going rate for such services, but I do have to warn you that there are several nasty little creatures that have taken up residence while the house was vacant. And there are some Dark items that you would need to be careful about.” It was his turn to look at her inquiringly. “Are you, possibly, skilled with curse-breaking, too?”

She smiled. After dealing with some of the creatures she had met in the forest on her way to Ponyville, she felt her skills were more than enough to handle little annoyances. And with her magic, what spells she couldn’t decipher and unravel, she could easily just smash. “I do have a little talent with that,” she modestly offered.

A bit later that afternoon, as she held a magical shield while whacking doxies out of the air with a bat, she decided that maybe these little pests were a bit of a bigger problem than she had anticipated. It would take more than a few days to “clean” the house. And some of those Dark items he had mentioned belonged in Tartarus! Or destroyed.

In the meantime, she and Sirius seemed to getting along pretty well. His humour took a bit to get used to, but it wasn’t as awful as she had expected from a self-centred noble who merely thought they were being clever with innuendo. He was impressed by her spell control. And he especially liked her solution to the foul-mouthed portrait — layering a sheet of glass across it and silencing the glass so that nothing that was said could be heard. That she then finished by drawing an extravagant moustache on the glass over his mother’s face had him fall down laughing.


۸-_-۸


Elly stared at the room in astonishment. Never in her wildest dreams had she expected to see such a room. It had literally not existed a moment ago, that she could detect, at least. The wall in the corridor on the seventh floor had been saturated in magic, but then again, so was most of the castle. Watching the door form, and then seeing the large room behind it, had been enlightening. The door hadn’t just been hidden, it hadn’t been there to hide! What a wonderful way to hide a hive! 

The magic was far beyond her at the moment, but she was determined to learn it.

In the meantime, she took a quick look around the mostly empty room. Quirky, one of the Castle’s house-elves, had told her the Come-and-Go room had been packed with things just a short time before, but that the Headmaster had ordered them to clean it and separate the trash from the usable items.

She definitely would not be using this room for her precious food!

On the other hand, when she explained her trunk was getting full, Quirky showed her the nearby room full of abandoned items that had already been checked for harmful spells, refurbished, and cleared for selling. Which is how she acquired a trunk with three storage spaces in it, two were double the depth of a student-trunk and the third was a clothes closet! Depending on which lock she used, she had a different space. More than enough room for her needs. And at a price that was barely more than the cost of a normal trunk.

No one had said that the elves couldn’t sell items from the Come-and-Go room directly, instead of Professor Flitwick dealing with a storekeeper.

With a bit of illusion work, she managed to get it back to her room unseen, and hid her old trunk inside the clothes’ closet. Maybe she could sell it at a second-hoof store.


۸-_-۸


Valentine’s Day did not catch Harry by surprise. He knew about the day from the way the Dursleys had acted — ever more sickening sweetness between the two adults. And he had learned he had to remain unseen on that day, or else. At primary school, it had always meant everyone traded cards and small gifts of chocolate with the sentiment “will you be my . . . .” Everyone except him, of course. His school-desk was conspicuously empty of cards all day long. And chocolates. And he never had cards to give of his own. Dudley saw to both situations, at his parents’ urgings.

Hearts and Hooves Day in Ponyville, in the middle of the week the previous year, had been a strange experience that narrowly avoided ending in a complete disaster. At school, the three fillies had given him a card they shared. But they were his best friends and he knew that they had just been being nice. Still, it had given him a warm feeling that maybe he did matter to someone, even if it was only superficial and didn’t really mean anything. The couples at his primary school had always done that, breaking up a week or two later, that is. 

He had apologized at not giving them cards. He had never had thought they might want him to give them cards, he had explained, nobody else ever had. They had reassured him they didn’t mind. And Twi had warned him, later, to not forget it again or there would be dire consequences — based on her observations at her school in Canterlot.

And then their day had descended into chaos. The fillies, with a reluctant Harry, had decided to try for a cutie mark in match-making. The mess that had resulted with their teacher and Big Mac hadn’t ended as well as they had hoped. But lessons had been learned. And their grounding hadn’t been all that severe, really.

So, he thought everything was going the way it should, at Hogwarts, when he woke up on Friday. He had made his own card for the three fillies, asking them to be his special somepony, as was customary for cards on that day. And he had it in his robe’s pocket, intending to give it to them when he saw them. 

The girls, as usual, woke him in the morning. His first warning that things were about to go off the rails was when the girls all gave him a kiss on the cheek instead of simply bumping the bed and telling him to get up. It was rather a pleasant way to wake up, even if he was embarrassed at his room-mates’ guffaws and teasing.

They told him they would be downstairs, waiting, while he showered and dressed.

There were many couples already exchanging cards, hugging, or telling others who they planned to give a card to in another house, when he started down. However, there were five witches clearly waiting for him. Not unusual, except today was the day for couples. Or, in his case, a quad. It only now occurred to him that Hermione and Ginny had kissed him earlier.

Sweetie Belle standing with two witches to either side presented their Valentine’s Day card to him. Then he opened it. Inside were not only the fillies signatures, but also Hermione’s and Ginny’s.

He stared at the card, then said, “Oh, I left your cards upstairs! I’ll be right back!” Then he turned and charged up the stairs, nearly bowling over Dean as he did so. He ignored the boy’s disgruntled, “Hey!”

Once in the room, he quickly pulled out two more sheets of parchment. He folded them into quarters, as Twilight had shown him last year, to make cards. Then he drew hearts with an arrow through them on both, to match the ones he had for the fillies. As quickly as he could he added little embellishments in the form of other little hearts, some filled in. Then he quickly wrote, “Will you be my special friend?” inside. And signed them. An ink-drying spell made sure there were no smudges.

Not having envelopes for the other three at least left off that part of the problem.

He pulled them out of his pocket so that it was all one bundle, took a deep breath, and went back downstairs.

The witches were all waiting with amused expressions as he descended the staircase. Hoping they wouldn’t notice his sweaty hands, he carefully handed a card to each girl. The five giggled, but seemed happy that he wasn’t a complete oaf.

Then he didn’t know what to do. Couples held hands. He didn’t have five hands. What should he do? No matter what he did, he would offend three of the witches! One by one, the girls again kissed him on the cheeks, and thanked him for the cards. Again, they left him hot with embarrassment. The older girls in the common room were amused at his, and the other boys’, reactions.

While he stood there, paralyzed into inaction, the girls solved the problem for him. Ginny seized his right hand and Hermione took his left. They guided him into the hall, the other three followed and giggled.

Several students from other Houses were waiting, cards in hand. Single Gryffindors were hurrying away, clearly hoping to meet the girl or boy they fancied as he or she left their common room. It did make him feel conspicuous that he was the only boy who apparently had five girlfriends for the day. And the girls seemed to be just fine with that arrangement.

Well, at least it was only for a day. Although, sneaking looks at Hermione and Ginny, they seemed a lot happier than they had been in the last month. This was for just a few days, right? Then things would go back to normal, right?

He thought the worst was over as they headed for breakfast. 

He was wrong. Breakfast started okay, with Hermione and Ginny on either side of him and the fillies across from them. And then the owl parliament arrived.

His eyes widened in shock as a sizeable number of owls obviously aimed for him. Soon, he couldn’t see the table, or the fillies, for all the owls vying for his attention. It took several minutes to collect everything and shoo off the owls.

And the owls completely depleted the rashers of bacon at their end of the table! The six of them stared at the pile of cards and presents left. Looking around, Harry was relieved to see that several other students had been the recipient of multiple owls. But, they were all upper-year students.

Before they could start opening the cards, however, Percy came to their end of the table. He looked at the piles and sighed. “Let me check, first,” he said.

Harry looked at him in surprise. Check the letters and packages? Why?

Percy began waving his wand over the piles, muttering. He smiled in relief when he was finished. Looking at Harry, he explained. “I wanted to make sure that there weren’t any spells on them, don’t you know?” At Harry’s and the other’s blank looks, he continued. “Sometimes someone tries to slip a compulsion charm through the Valentine cards. Nothing drastic, just an attempt to get your attention. They never last long, do they? Just an hour or three, sometimes a day, right? The same for the chocolates, they’ll sneak in a love potion to try to ‘push’ things along, in the hope that if you hang around with them a bit, you’ll develop real feelings.”

Harry and the fillies exchanged horrified looks and leaned back from the packages. Twilight had given them quite the lecture about the dangers involved in love potions. And they had personal experience with just how badly those could go wrong.

Sweetie Belle, with a scared look, asked, “Can you teach us those spells you just used?”

“Yeah, like, maybe, right now?” Apple Bloom said intensely.

Percy looked at the fillies and saw they were very serious. He straightened and tried to project an air of authority. “Why, of course.” He held out his wand, “First, and simplest, is a general test charm, to see if there are any spells on the letter or package . . . .”

After fifteen minutes, they had a very basic understanding of what was involved, and several spells to use. Combined with the spells they used on food when the twins were close, they now had a decent group of spells to detect harmful actions.

And the names of a couple of books they intended to check out of the library at their earliest opportunity.

They paid . . . shared . . . with him some of the chocolates they had acquired as a way to say thank you. And then shared the remainder with the other Firsties.

Harry wondered if there was some way to make a ring or necklace that could detect when something had been tampered with when it came close enough. A ring or bracelet would be most useful, he decided, as it could easily be worn and no one would know what it did. Then whoever was wearing it couldn’t be slipped something dangerous without detection. Which would make him and his girlfriends much safer. Maybe Twi would know of something like that. Or could make something for them.

Yes, that was what he would do. Ask Twilight when they returned home for Spring half-term Break tomorrow.

The rest of the day was rather pedestrian, by comparison. Although the five girls seemed especially touchy-feely. Hermione and Ginny always held his hands in the corridors and during the meals, and the three fillies bumped shoulders and nuzzled his cheek and neck much more than usual. He was red with embarrassment almost the entire day.

Professor Snape was especially abrasive in class. Sweetie Belle’s potion blowing great clouds of pink smoke into the air didn’t help. Fortunately, the students had learned to protect themselves, so no one discovered exactly what would happen if they breathed the stuff. Unfortunately, Professor Snape’s attempt to vanish the potion reacted with it before he finished. Everyone in the class spent the next two days with little floating hearts over their heads. An innocuous result, but it monumentally pissed off Professor Snape to have little hearts drifting over his head all day.

Harry did notice, however, that one particular Hufflepuff seemed to like to follow them. She didn’t have that silly love-struck expression some witches did when they were with their boyfriend, but she did appear a bit distracted. She did look cute, though, with the way her tongue stuck out of the side of her mouth, occasionally.


۸-_-۸


Elly had difficulty concentrating that Friday. The amount of love floating around was almost intoxicating. It was better by far than living in Ponyville had been, even on Hearts and Hooves Day. Well, maybe not if she had been able to move around in Ponyville instead of being stuck as a rock in a park.

She had to make two trips to her room to discharge her reserves. Thank Mother she had that extra storage space in her new trunk. Eleven jars, with a stasis charm, was more than enough for her to survive the summer without any worries. Even if she didn’t collect anything all summer, she wouldn’t be short when she returned to school.

She just hoped the Equestrians didn’t notice how she kept following them. It wasn’t her fault that they were such fountains of food, today.


۸-~-۸