"Six more?" I had my head on the floor and was looking under the bed as I asked Dean the question. "How many ponies do you think there are here?"
"Can you see him?" Ron asked.
"I am sure Harry Potter would tell you if he could see your rat, Ronald Weasley." Addera's voice was full of scorn. She was curled up on my bed currently, and had refused to help in the search. "I bet the ponies wouldn't accuse me of eating a foul-smelling rat. Why would I even eat a rat, when there were pork sausages?!"
Climbing down beside me, Ron looked under the bed himself. "I already said I was sorry!"
"And then you went and threatened Hedwig. She is a good owl, Ronald Weasley. She'd want to eat your rat as much as I do." Addera made some noise on top of the bed.
Looking up I saw Addera flicking her tongue out and staring around the room. I'd never seen her do it before, but I could take a guess.
Slithering off the bed and onto the floor, Addera made her way toward the exit. "His scent fades down the hallway leading to the hole."
Ron jerked upright and looked at Addera in surprise. "Thanks!"
"We need to hurry if we're going to find him before next class starts," I said, trotting after Addera.
We headed down the hall and to the hole that led out. Addera reached out with a hoof and gently nudged the fat lady's painting away before slithering out. "And it stops here. There's too many other smells around."
"Then how were you able to smell 'im in the dormitory, then?" As he asked, Ron was looking around outside the entrance to the Gryffindor tower.
I knew the answer, though it was something I'd kept from outright saying before. "Ron, you know how we normally use magic to clean all our things?"
"Yeah. It's been 'orrible over the last few days. I've got a new respect for muggles just from that."
"Ron, you haven't washed Scabbers for nearly four days, and he's not a very clean rat."
Addera snorted. "I could pick out that rat's smell over the scents of all the Gryffindor students because I know their scents. Out here—Let me just say that Scabbers isn't the only one shirking their cleaning duties." She reached down and picked me up.
Not for the first time I felt a little odd about how nice it was to have someone cuddle me against them. Addera's fur was much like my own, and though it was so very soft to snuggle against, she had a complete covering of basilisk scales still. I didn't realize I'd stuck my nose into her fur until her hoof that wasn't supporting me rubbed behind one of my ears.
"Are you quite comfortable, Harry Potter?"
My ears twitched as she spoke. I tilted my head up and nodded. "You're so soft, and you're—well—here."
Apparently a chat was in order since we were waiting for Ron. "You said your parents died. Who were you living with all this time, Harry Potter?"
"My, uh, aunt and uncle. Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia—and my cousin, Dudley—look after me when I'm not at Hogwarts." I let out a bit of a sigh at the thought of having to go back there when all this was sorted.
Addera rubbed one of my ears in what I was sure she meant as a soothing gesture. Any animal would no doubt relax and calm down at the touch. It would have annoyed me that it worked, only it worked. "These people, Harry Potter, are not who you'd wish to live with?"
Fighting against Addera was impossible, so I relaxed instead. "What? Of course not. Calling people muggles as an insult is bad, but they're the most muggle muggles that've ever muggled."
"I thought muggle was just a noun, Harry Potter?"
"Not where the Dursleys are concerned. Uncle Vernon works at his brother's metalwork factory—they make drills. Aunt Petunia literally made her life revolve around taking care of her son and their house. And Dudley, he has taken a shine to eating himself into a blob and beating on anyone smaller than him—not exactly a hard thing to be."
"That sounds annoying. Why didn't you just bite h—cast a spell on him?" Addera asked.
"Got my bag!" Stepping out of the hole in the wall, Ron turned and closed the fat lady's painting. "Thanks for holding open for me."
The fat lady beamed in obvious delight at the thanks. "Such manners! Quite alright dear boy. Run along now, you're already late for class."
Ron turned to us and glared at me. "Are you goin' about like that now, or did something happen to your legs?"
"If you must know, I'm trying to comfort him after one of his best friends attacked him, Ronald Weasley." Addera made a point of stroking my ear a few more times before setting me back down on the floor.
A shiver ran through me and I shook myself to fluff out my fur. "He said he was sorry, and I couldn't exactly blame him since Hedwig was eating an actual rat. What class do we have again?"
"Potions," Ron said with all the savor and delight of eating an Every Flavour Jellybean and finding he had made a poor life choice in trying it. "We've got Potions next."
We headed down to the basement, then the dungeon of the castle before we reached the classroom for Potions. We were late, of course, and the moment we entered the room Snape glared at us.
"Ah. I had wondered why my class was so well behaved—it was short three Gryffindors." Snape was standing (on all fours of course) at the head of the classroom and glaring down the aisle between tables at us. "One. Two. Three—"
We rushed to find seats and I jumped up onto one (with a really good jump I might add) before he got to five.
"… Four." Snape looked at us with his bored, deep eyes. "Four points from Gryffindor—for each of Addera, Harry Potter, and another Weasley.
"Now, can anyone who's not named Hermione Granger please tell me what is required to make a shrinking solution?"
I reached into Addera's backpack and pulled out my mirror so I could see more clearly, only to have Snape rear up beside me. "Agghh!"
"Oh, I'm sorry, Mr. Potter, were you hoping for a quiet class you could sleep through?" Snape's eyes flicked down to the glass on the desk and he raised an eyebrow. "You'll see me after class." He jumped down and walked back to the front of the room in a manner that somehow seemed more malevolent than his normal glide.
So much for my hope that he'd go easy on me. I focused on casting my locomotion spells as quietly as I could and started taking notes.
He droned on and on about the same potion, ensuring to describe every single aspect of its creation in so much detail I figured I'd be able to make it in my sleep. Neville might even be able to make it awake.
All too soon the class finished and everyone was getting up around me. I put my books, quill, ink, and blotter back in Addera's bag and followed it with my piece of mirror.
"I'll see you at dinner, Harry Potter," Addera said before slithering out of the room and leaving me alone with Snape.
Waiting, I sat still on my chair until Snape was done doing something at the front of the class and called me. "Harry, do you still have that rat?"
Right. The rat. Of course he was going to ask me about the rat I saved from his experiments only to feed to Hedwig. "N-Not anymore, sir."
Snape was sitting beside the desk at the front of the room. He looked hard into my eyes as if trying to find answers just by looking. "Pity. I did some further experiments without you present. The results were vastly different from yours. How were you able to control the magnitude of your spell so effectively?"
"G-Gemma Farley helped me with it. She said it was a problem with the efficiency of the magic, and the best way to make it less efficient was to cast with less patterns," I said.
"I see. It's not often that I hear of a Gryffindor student seeking tutoring from a Slytherin, but I approve. Ms. Farley is quite knowledgeable on fire spells, but her true focus is dueling, or so she has shown. You'd do well to learn as much as you can from her, Harry.
"You can go now." His dismissal was sudden and sharp.
"T-Thank you, sir." I turned and trotted down the aisle of desks and out the door as swiftly as I could. I barely turned toward the stairs leading up to the basement when Addera slithered up beside me. "I thought you were going to wait in the great hall?"
"No. I said I'd see you at dinner, and I still will, Harry Potter." There was no sound from her scales working on the stone floor. "What did he want?"
I couldn't help but grin. "He wanted to know where his rat was. I didn't tell him Hedwig got it—That reminds me, I need to find her and apologize for Ron being so stupid." The hallway and stairs didn't even slow us down as we ascended through the castle.
"He really loves that rat, doesn't he, Harry Potter?"
"Yeah. He does. It's been in his family for years. Hedwig's different, though. I don't know how, but I just felt a connection to her when I first saw her. She's important to me." We reached the ground floor and headed directly for the great hall.
"He still shouldn't have said those things, or tried to hit you, Harry Potter."
"No, he shouldn't have." I barely got the last word out as we entered Hogwarts' great hall. A wave of noise seemed to hit me as we walked in. Everyone was talking to everyone else, but just as we reached a spot beside Hermione, McGonagall cleared her throat.
"Everyone? May I have your attention, please?" McGonagall had a knack for getting everyone's attention, though tonight it worked exceptionally well. "I'm sure you all have many questions about our new visitors, and I'm here to provide some answers.
"The land we've found ourselves in is called the Crystal Empire. The ponies, Princess Cadance and Prince Shining Armor, have assured me that our being here is not just tolerated, but welcome. However, their reason for being here is that when we arrived, we appear to have done so along with an evil sorcerer that had escaped from their justice many years ago.
"This, Sombra, is a nasty character every bit as bad as You-Know-Who, so I expect anyone with knowledge of him to come forward at once. The second delegation that arrived is a special group of heroes who have come specifically to deal with this threat, and have knowledge of a weapon with which to dispatch him. The Crystal Heart is an ancient artifact. It's a huge, bright blue gemstone in the shape of a heart. Likewise, if you have any knowledge at all about it, please step forward at once."
McGonagall paused to take a breath. I couldn't help but marvel at how much information she was giving out. The wildest thing about it was it was the truth.
"Onto more pleasant things. As you heard last night, we have a student council now, and they're hard at work for you—all of you. There will be a quidditch game tomorrow between Gryffindor and Ravenclaw." This news earned a huge cheer from the students. We all jumped to our feet and shouted in excitement. If only I had an idea on how I could play. "Quiet please! Thank you. There will also be sign-ups for a fifth team to compete. Anyone who thinks they have what it takes should please contact Miss Farley."
Gemma stood up and waved. "Could I say a few words, headmistress?" At McGonagall's nod, Gemma looked even happier. "We've got more than just quidditch planned. Heidi—" Gemma waited for Heidi Macavoy to stand up, "—is going to be organizing a wizard chess league, anyone interested in signing up should contact her. Eddie—" it took a bit longer for Eddie Carmichael to stand, but Gemma waited, "—is going to be organizing a game called football, I'm sure enough of you know of it to teach those who don't. And finally Harry—" I stood up, but it wasn't until George grabbed me and held me above his head that Gemma acknowledged me, "—is going to be organizing short courses on all manner of topics. Harry, what do we have already?"
"Go on, 'Arry, wot've you got?" Fred asked.
I cleared my throat and looked out over the crowd of mostly amused students. "We're going to try to encourage everyone to not only sign on to learn something interesting, but also to teach something too. Everyone here knows at least one thing really well—better than anyone else. Addera is going to teach a class on parseltongue—" a lot of surprised muttering met that, "—Hermione is going to teach about muggle studies—but not the kind of stuff in regular classes, and Ron is going to teach the opposite—all the wizard stuff Hogwarts can't teach."
A throat clear at the teachers' table broke the rising babble, and everyone turned to see Dumbledore stand up. "If I may, could I sign up for the parseltongue course?"
Everyone in the great hall tried to speak at once—which was not uncommon—but the problem was they were trying to speak with me—which was uncommon.
"Everyone! Please!" McGonagall had to have used magic, or some item that used magic, to be heard above the whole school. "I'm sure Mr. Potter will be able to arrange sign-ups tomorrow. And please don't forget the other activities your student council has organized. Now, enjoy your meal."
"George?" I asked once noise in the great hall filled the silence. "Can you put me down now?"
"I'm Fred. He's George."
I looked between the two twins and, this close, made out Fred's freckle pattern on the one holding me. "Sorry, Fred."
"Quite alright, Ron. What with you missin' your glasses, you actually have an excuse." Fred let me down and set me back on Addera's coil just as food started appearing on the table.
Dinner tonight was a vegetarian casserole with roast vegetables and—when I thought no one was looking—a pork sausage. I looked at the tube of seared meat and remembered how poorly I'd eaten at the Dursley residence. Using the locomotion charms I'd put on knife and fork, I cut one end off the sausage and dipped it in the gravy the rest of my meal had been covered in.
"Are you sure you want to eat that, Harry?" Hermione asked. "Only, I've been doing research on horses, and it says you shouldn't—"
"Hermione, look." I opened my mouth to show off my teeth. "Ooo feee da fwangs?" Closing my mouth again, I floated my fork up with the piece of sausage on it. "I need to see if it's just something silly or what." And with that I put the pork in my mouth.
The flavor was excellent and reminded me of so many Hogwarts' meals where I ate similar fare. Chewing, I swallowed it and nodded with a big grin. "See!"
Hermione gave me a ruthless stare. "Don't you have a game of quidditch tomorrow?"
I cut off another piece of sausage and nodded before eating that too.
"Well, you'd best hope kirin can metabolize meat, because horses can't. In fact, when a horse eats meat, it has the worst case of gas for days—according to the only book in the library on horse care." Hermione used one crystalline hand to finish her statement with a fork full of the same casserole I'd been eating.
Looking down at the remaining half of my sausage, I hoped that Hermione was wrong. "Well, someone needs to work it out." I had another mouthful.
Besides, if the sausage tasted this good, how could it be bad for me? I kept eating until I finished my plate, but didn't go getting more.
There was a lot I needed to work on for tomorrow. I had to work out how to ride my Nimbus 2000 without falling off, I needed to work out how to see, and hopefully figure some way to be able to grab the snitch.
Severus Snape ate little. He was hungry enough, but his attention was on one Harry James Potter. Two words of Harry's name brought bile to Severus' throat, which is why he was trying to focus entirely on Harry's first name. When he was just Harry, Severus could forget the boy's father. When he was just Harry, he could teach him.
What annoyed Severus most about the situation was that Harry showed promise. He thought logically, he could follow instructions, and when he wasn't reminding Severus of James Potter, he didn't need to be chastised into following classes.
Looking down at the table before him, Severus eyed the little case. It hadn't taken too much effort to put together, but he wanted Harry to learn from it. A test. The meal wound on, and though Severus barely touched his meal, he did nibble here and there at the things he particularly enjoyed—mostly the brussels sprouts.
When most of the students started getting up to leave, Severus stood and used a simple, nonverbal Locomotion charm to float the box along with him. Again, in his head, Severus complained bitterly about his present form—there was simply no way to stride with menace when you were quadrupedal in such a configuration. His attempts earlier in the afternoon had just resulted in what looked like prancing—and that wasn't going to happen.
"Here."
Harry Potter turned and looked up at the bigger and darker version of himself. "S-Sir?" Severus was looking at him expectantly, but without his glasses Harry barely noticed the little box floating before him until it jiggled a little. "What's this?"
"This is a gift and a test, Harry. I'm sure it won't take you long to figure out how it was made." Severus waited just long enough for Harry to cast his own Locomotion charm before dropping the one already active. "Good luck in the game tomorrow. You're going to need it."
"What'd he give you?" Ron asked. Curiosity burned within him as he watched Harry slowly open the little wooden box. "Bet it's a slug. One of them flesh-eating ones. When he watched Harry lift out a pair of glasses, he nearly fell over.
Putting the glasses on, Harry could tell they weren't perfect. They distorted a little around the edges, and the frames were made out of wood, but they worked. "What'd he mean by test?"
With a heartfelt sigh of defeat, Hermione Granger rolled her eyes. "Typical. Why can't he ever give me extra homework?"
Alastor "Mad-Eye" Moody stood on the landing of the fortress. His coach—pulled by thestrals—soared away into the clouds. Turning slowly, he glared at the ocean with one eye as if daring it to splash him, while the other remained fixed on the edifice that was Azkaban prison.
When the prison came into sight of his remaining natural eye again, Alastor stepped forward with the rolling gait his missing leg enforced upon him. He walked right up to the two guards at the door—each accompanied by a dementor floating just a little further to the side—and turned both his eyes to one then the other. "By order of the Ministry, I'm here seeking answers regarding the missing school."
"Papers?"
Calm as a slaughterhouse in the early hours of the morning, Alastor stepped right up to the guard and pressed his false leg down on the toe of the guard's boot—and worked the clawed end down firmly. "Albus Dumbledore is missing, along with another thousand witches and wizards, and you want to see my papers? Can you swim?"
"Mr. Moody! Please, come inside!" Mopping his brow despite the chill, Archibald Burns was not stupid. He knew that if anyone was likely to break into Azkaban and tear his way through it looking for what he wanted, it was Mad-Eye Moody.
Alastor turned to the wizard who'd opened the doors to Azkaban, he lurched away from the gate-guard. "Finally, someone with sense. What's yer name?"
"Archibald, Archibald Burns. Captain of the Guard at Azkaban, sir." Archibald watched as Alastor shoved all his weight onto the gate-guard's foot before entering the gates. "I heard news about Hogwarts. What can I help you with?"
"Access to these prisoners, a room to interrogate them in, and lodgings for the duration." Alastor walked past the man without even glancing at him with his flesh eye—his enchanted one, however, studied the captain very closely. No wand and no weapons apart from a club. "You're not armed?"
"Azkaban is protected by dementors. Only an idiot would attack. We don't carry wands in case one of the inmates gets hold of them. There are no wands here at all—except yours." Everything in Archibald screamed that he had to ask for Alastor's wand. Everything except for his self-preservation. Mad-Eye Moody's reputation precluded asking him to disarm himself, and given the ex-auror had put a good number of Azkaban's greatest inmates in chains, he had no reason to expect any of them to be able to disarm him.
Stopping in his tracks, Alastor turned his full attention on the captain. "You're not going to ask for mine?"
"You'll need it during your—questioning. Sir, I know of your reputation and deeds, you don't need to surrender weapons at Azkaban. On my word."
"Good man. Glad they have someone with a bit of sense out here. It'd be a shame to have locked all these fools up only to have a bigger fool—" Alastor's enchanted eye rolled back to examine the gate-guard (who was crouched down and examining his clearly broken foot), before turning back to look up and to the left, "—let them all out again. I've only got so many limbs left."
A joke. Archibald Burns was in no way prepared for Alastor Moody to tell a joke, even one so dryly delivered. "Doing my duty, sir. Who do you want to see first? I'll have them escorted to a room. You understand, however, I'll have to have a dementor watching the door."
"Protocol." Alastor pulled a flask from his greatcoat and plucked the end off it before taking a swig. "… Is reassuring to hear. I need to see Rubeus Hagrid. See to it, man."
Rubeus Hagrid kept ducking his head while trying not to make the umbrella hidden down his back stick out. It was a difficult maneuver that required he headbutt every archway—the archways took more damage than he did. "What's goin' on? I was trying t' read m' book."
"You're in for it. One of the aurors is here, and he's got a mess of magic lined up to wring the truth out of all of you. He might even have put you here. Mad-Eye Moody's his name."
Blinking in surprise at the name, then plowing his head into another arch, Rubeus felt the crack of stone this time. "Oh, someone new? That'll be nice. Ya know ya don't have t' keep these chains on me, not they do anythin'." Reaching one hand up, Rubeus rubbed the spot where the archways kept hitting his head—snapping his chains in the process. "Oops."
Used to the half-giant's problem with chains, but not willing to break protocol, Sevasti Gorran led Rubeus Hagrid to the steel-bound door of the interrogation room. Raising his baton, he thumped the door with it three times. "Got Hagrid here, sir!"
"Send him in." Alastor stood behind the table that had the most obvious of purposes. Chains in each corner, there was the stain and smell of old pain wrought into the metal. The table had no hope, however, of accommodating Rubeus. When the half-giant walked into the room, Alastor was thankful he had his wand at his side. "Sit down."
"This is all some kind o' misunderstanderin'. I ain't never hurt no one. Well, 'cept for that mad woman down the 'all. She was a right piece o' work." Rubeus knew—instinctively—what the room was about, and he wanted no part of it.
"I don't care what put you here unless it has to do with Hogwarts disappearing. What do you know of it?" Alastor reached into his coat and drew out his wand. Power vibrated down the length of the old and worn oak, while molten fire bubbled up within the dragon heart-string within.
"The Heir of Slytherin!" Rubeus spoke without a thought. He wanted to tell Alastor everything. He didn't care if he rotted away for the rest of his days, so long as someone saved Hogwarts. "We had students bein' petrified by somethin'. 'Twas a shame, just like las' time. They thought it was me again. That's why I'm 'ere."
"Heir of Slytherin? That rot aga—" Alastor narrowed his eyes. "Wait. I remember you. You're no monster." Thrusting out his hand—the one not holding his wand—Alastor Moody smiled for the first time in about two months. "The Order."
His eyes widening, Rubeus remembered the older man from his days fighting You-Know-Who. Even in his own mind he wouldn't say that name. "Alastor Moody." Relief flooded Rubeus as he shook the auror's hand. "You've gotta believe me, I—"
"Tell me all of it, Rubeus. Start from—Start from the first time and leave nothing out. I want the facts, but I also want your thoughts, guesses, and wild accusations—old friend."
Draco Lucius Malfoy was more curious than ever. She'd gotten through another day of not being noticed for being a girl, though more and more she'd noticed Lucian's focus on tails. Wizards and witches who had a thing for transformation magic usually had things perfectly under control—they'd learn it and be happy for all their lives—but Lucian liked seeing others' tails. Which was why Draco had bitten the bullet and gotten one of the girls in her class to help sew a hole into the back of her trousers.
Not an hour after Draco had had the hole cut than Lucian had focused on her and asked excitedly about getting his own pants done similarly. Favors for favors, Draco had to remind herself. Lucian Bole was just about the biggest brawler in the school—more prone to it than even Gregory Goyle—but Lucian was smart about roughing students up.
The slightest smile creased Draco's lips at the sight of the big guy looking so happy.
"You look happy about something, Draco." Vincent Crabbe sat down beside Draco. "What's the deal?"
Vincent, on the other hand, was big and stupid, but that too Draco had learned was important. As Gemma said, everyone was worth something. "Just wondering what this meeting's all about. Gemma seemed insistent that everyone from Slytherin be here." Lie and truth. Truth and lie. Draco's crash-course in senior student politics was something she had to run to keep up with, but keep up she did.
"'ere she comes." Vincent watched the much older girl walk into the common room and look around. He'd seen that look on his father's face before, and even on Draco's father's face (it was his normal look)—Gemma looked at the students of Slytherin house like she had them all in her pocket. Vincent wasn't the odd man out in that respect—she'd arranged for someone to help him pass his Herbology class. He owed her.
Gemma smiled at each face that turned to her—because they all did. Every single student in Slytherin house owed her on several favors she'd done or arranged for someone else to do. "Normally these meetings are all about politics and mutual back-washing. I'd stand here and give you all a talk specially designed to sway each of you to think exactly what I want.
"Allow me to be blunt, we have a problem." Gemma turned and walked to one of the chalkboards kept in the common room for notices. She scrubbed out everything except the rude comic someone had drawn in one corner—she was hard as a rock politically, but Gemma could appreciate a good fart joke as much as the next first year. "The problem is this: using magic turns us into ponies."
Draco watched Gemma write on the board with a piece of chalk she held in one hand. Gemma Farley being blunt wasn't new to Draco, but her being blunt to everyone was a shock.
"There are a number of ways the situation here will go. I'll start with the most interesting one." Gemma's hand wrought beautiful cursive script onto the board.
Hogwarts is stuck here, we never go home, no cure for "pony" is found.
Even the most compulsive fidgeter in the room was quiet now. The mood of the room turned dour.
"Now, if we hold back, don't cast anything but the most needed spells to save our arses and our lives, we will be left out of most of the integration. That's a bad outcome." Gemma scrubbed off what she'd written and began building a matrix on the board. "Each of these is a possible outcome, each of these is an action we can take."
Along the side was written:
Hogwarts stuck, no home, no cure
Hogwarts stuck, no home, cure found
Hogwarts stuck, portkey home, no cure
Hogwarts stuck, portkey home, cure found
Hogwarts home, no cure
Hogwarts home, cure found
And along the top was:
Try not to change
Change a little
Change a lot
Whole hog
"First one, we hold back, there's no way home, Hogwarts is here, there's no cure. That's a bad outcome." Gemma wrote the entry in then turned to look at Draco. "What about the rest of the line?"
"Well," Draco said, her mind racing to find the answer, "If we change a little, it's mostly as bad as the first one, but we'll fit in a little. The last two would be easier to fix. We'd fit in, we could use our magic in the meantime to gain advantages over the other houses, and—"
"Good! You're thinking well!" Gemma turned around and filled in Draco's answers. "Lucian, what if a cure's found?"
Lucian's mind was elsewhere—the yellow tips of the tail poking out from under the dress of the girl on a couch nearby. He looked up at the board and remembered what Gemma had been talking to him about earlier. "Use magic as much as we can because it can be undone. Might as well go with it all. Not using magic's bad, because we waste our advantage."
"So what you're saying is we might as well do like that Gryffindor girl and Hooch? Sod that," Terence Higgs said. "You've gone daft, Gemma."
"Terence. Wonderful timing. Hogwarts is stuck, we're not, no cure." Gemma glared at her former fellow prefect. "What's the answers?"
"The opposite. If we can go home and there's no cure, we'd be freaks. We'd be lucky if they didn't snap our wands."
"Exactly!" Gemma turned and filled more of the board in. "That goes the same for any returning home result where there's no cure. Here."
Terence noticed Gemma put OK in change a lot. "Why just okay in change a lot? We'd be freaks!"
"Because, in case you hadn't noticed, we'd be freaks that can possibly fly, or be immune to fire, or be able to use a horn as a wand. We'd be freaks, but at a distance Hermione Granger still looks human and with some charms she could pass for one." Smiling as a lot of heads nodded, Gemma turned to one huddle of girls in the common room. "Helena, what do you think of these last two? We could return home and be cured?"
Helena didn't quite enjoy the word stooge, but she was happy to be Gemma's stooge because it meant another step up the ladder. Those who did favors for Gemma got the best grades and were never wanting for help. "Whole hog is best. Use our magic freely and no consequence."
"That's the key. Okay, so let me fill that in too." Gemma took her time writing in the words, waiting for Terence again. Even now she used him. He was her counter, the devil's advocate in the group. If she were constantly fighting the devil, Gemma reasoned, she must be doing something good.
Terence didn't know why letting Gemma have free reign hurt his pride so much, but he found himself unable to keep from poking at her words. "Why do you put bad for change a little on the ones with cure found?
"Remember what Ravenclaw looked like, on the whole?" Gemma asked. "Remember Gryffindor and Hufflepuff? They all have a smattering of pony features among them. Do you want to be just as good as Hufflepuff?"
"So we should change a lot, but keep a little humanity?" Draco didn't see any need to hold back. Cutting in now was cutting in on Terence, not Gemma. When Draco's mentor turned to face her, Draco saw a big grin on Gemma's face.
"I'm not saying you sell your humanity cheap, but don't be stingy. If you are sick of doing laundry, let all of us know so you can do ALL our laundry with one spell. If you really want to show up a Gryffindor, go ahead." Gemma heard the murmuring from all corners of the room. It wasn't angry or charged, it was excited.
Gemma had to wave her hands to settle the students down. "This—" she pointed at the blackboard, "—is a game, but isn't that what we do all day? Isn't that how Slytherin works? We play, we win."
"Everyone else loses?"
Spinning, Gemma missed seeing who spoke, and no one owned up to it. "No. That's the best bit. We're all here to play this game, but you don't need an opponent in this to be able to win."
"So we're going to tell all the other students?" Draco asked, a little shocked.
"Of course not! We lead by example. Gryffindor has been known as the leaders and doers for too long. Slytherin, we're going to show everyone how to be the best by being the best!" The cheering shout Gemma got caused her to shiver from her toes to her fuzzy ears. Heir of Slytherin? Gemma thought, A title for a little man. I would be content only with leader of—of Equestria.