“You’re kidding,” Professor McGonagall accuses distantly, sounding as if she knows she’s wrong.
“I kid you not,” Professor Snape answers solemnly. He’d just finished relating that lesson to them.
“But- but that’s impossible! Especially in a single day!”
Snape chuckles. “Not for Lyra and Diamond, apparently. They did admit- after everyone else had left for dinner- to having taken ruthless advantage of both Lyra’s and Diamond’s unique abilities to pull that off. Reportedly, Lyra’s unique ability- the one they call her unique ability, rather than one of the many she’s demonstrated for us- has primarily to do with music, but it works anywhere there’s something she can harmonize. Limited application, she tells me, without music.
“But that’s where Diamond came in. Her unique ability apparently has to do with getting people to do what she wants them to- so she basically drove them at each other, giving them a common goal… which Lyra was able to harmonize them on, after which they slowly redirected that goal. Which ended, somehow, with Malfoy detecting and responding to something he shouldn’t have known to watch for- and also shouldn’t have known how to respond to!” Sigh. “I asked. Even Malfoy doesn’t know what spell he used. Said it felt like gibberish on his lips, but it was the right gibberish.”
“Hmm,” Professor Dumbledore mutters. “How are they doing on the points side of things?”
“Very, very carefully,” Snape states. “Neither of them gave- nor took, for that matter- nearly as many points as I would have. Felt more like they were using the points as a disguised way of saying ‘good job’, rather than as a reward or punishment.” He grins slightly. “Something tells me students are going to be fighting for the chance to be the receivers of their hard-earned points.”
Dumbledore sighs. “Well, at least they’re not easy point-mills like I was worried about. Though I do find that interesting- how many Gryffindor points versus Slytherin did they give out?”
“Through the course of that class period, she gave out twenty points to Slytherin and five to Gryffindor. Nothing happened for her to deduct. Diamond didn’t do anything with points, almost like she was leaving that for Lyra to figure out.” Scowl. “They did seem strangely synchronized in their presentation.”
“... Huh,” Dumbledore mutters. “That’s… strange.” One hand comes up to rub his chin. “Maybe that ability of Lyra’s helped ‘harmonize’ their presentation as well?”
Shrug. “Eh, I suppose. I can’t see that working, though- she’d have to be a mas-!” He freezes for a second, then hangs his head. “Yeah, that’s probably what happened.” He glances back towards the door back out of Dumbledore’s office. “Though, I did happen to overhear Malfoy bragging about narrowly avoiding muggles in helicopters on his broom. Is that something we need to worry about?”
Dumbledore shakes his head. “Shouldn’t be. I doubt Malfoy knows what a helicopter really is- and I doubt Lyra has one, either.” He shudders briefly. “I hope she doesn’t.”
“Come and get it, Potter!”
Madam Hooch had, unlike all the other instructors, been interested to teach every student herself. She’d also requested that all the British students be relegated to the same sections, if at all possible; unfortunately, six thousand students in one class is still well beyond her.
The difference being, of course, that second-years and beyond don’t have flying lessons. As such, Madam Hooch only has one year to teach- and, reportedly, is usually bored all year.
Now, however, Neville had just kicked off early, fallen off, and crashed. Lyra, the only Agent in today’s session, had been distracted- and hadn’t been fast enough on the cushioning spell. He’d broken his wrist, and she hadn’t studied human anatomy well enough for an Equestrian healing spell to work. Once he left behind Madam Hooch, a general painkiller spell attached to the broken bone alongside a positional locking spell holding it still, Malfoy had snatched Neville’s dropped Remembrall off of the ground and jumped into the air.
Harry mounts his broom- but stops moments before taking off.
“What?” Malfoy demands. “Afraid of a little- Eeek!” He dodges backwards and a little higher as something passes right in front of him. “What- What is that thing?” He watches it come to a stop off to the side then twist sharply to face him again, like some kind of giant praying mantis, with something whirling on top of it.
“Nice to know you’ve never even gotten close to being caught by a muggle with a helicopter,” someone calls from below.
He glances briefly back down, eyes returning to the mantis-thing. “Of course I have, many times!”
The mantis thing charges at him. He ducks, and it whirls off to the side at the last second anyways, dodging quickly away from him and stopping, facing him, with incredible speed.
“Nah,” someone says down below- Lyra. “You wouldn’t realize it if you did.” The mantis-thing turns upside-down in one fluid motion. The constant buzzing thrum of the whirling thing on its top doesn’t stop, but it seems to go out of sync with the rest of the world, becoming heavier somehow.
“Of course I would!” he declares.
It seems to dance in front of him, before flipping back over and twisting sharply to the sides, as if it were something’s head, shaking for a no.
“That’s a helicopter,” Lyra continues. “If you can’t recognize it, you wouldn’t recognize a real one. Oh, here they are.”
Then, while the mantis thing shoots suddenly backwards and to the side, something passes over his head. It’s a good six feet up, probably- but as it does so, that thrumming becomes very loud, to the point that he can feel it in his bones.
He looks up.
There’s a much larger one, completing its sideways pass over his head and sliding far enough to the side that its much larger whirling thing is nowhere near him before it lowers down a little closer to his level, still facing him side-on.
Then a door on its side opens, and Bonbon is visible inside, leaning against a wall. “I hear you’ve dodged a few of these?” she asks, patting the outside affectionately.
He falls off his broom.
As he falls, he dimly registers that he’s not falling as fast as he should be. It seems somehow… slower. Pain also racks through his body at the same time; has he hit the ground already, and just not seen it yet? Something black flashes past underneath him, in his peripheral vision. Probably unconsciousness coming up to capture him. Bonbon’s… thing seems to be drifting in his direction almost lazily, Bonbon reaching out a hand towards his drifting broom.
The pain seems to double and change shape, almost as if he’s changing shape himself. Even through the pain, an uncomfortable tickling sensation ripples across his skin- then something seems to whip distantly about him, and he sees something silver.
Finally, the pain goes away, and his vision begins to clear again. Bonbon’s about to catch his broom, but he’s still falling; he can feel the wind on his back, in a very strange way. There’s something black off to the side, he thinks. He braces himself to hit the ground, lifting his head up-
He doesn’t hit the ground. He hits something far less solid, more like arms. Huge arms, feeling fuzzy against his back as they immediately dig into his back, his catcher grunting with the effort. Something hard, in one of the hands, presses against his side. He focuses on the face as he comes to a stop, realizing this person just caught him while on a broom…
It’s Harry.
Who had been on the ground when he fell.
What kind of sorcery is this?
He feels a light jolt as Harry steps off his broom, allowing it to clatter to the grass underneath him, and looks down at him confusedly. “Uh…” Harry begins. “Malfoy?”
He draws in a breath. It catches in his throat; it doesn’t feel right. He manages to get past it, and starts to answer. “Wha-!”
That’s as far as he got. His voice is so completely wrong as to be ridiculous; his oration chops off with a squeak as he looks down at himself. Particularly, his arm; that caught his attention first.
It’s silver. It’s covered in fur. His hand is gone.
He lets out a scream that’s way too girly and twists out of Harry’s grasp. He falls a short distance to the ground, landing on all fours, with both his legs fully extended. It doesn’t feel weird, as it really ought to.
He runs for it. On all fours, because that feels right. Even though he knows it’s wrong.
He hears the squealing of girls.
It seems to be pointed at him.
He pours all of his strength, all of his speed, into his flight.
He dodges between legs. He dodges between people.
He spots a girl anticipating his path, and diving for it.
It’s too late for him to redirect to the side.
But he knows just what to do. He jumps.
How he jumped, he has no idea. But the girl gets an armload of dirt while he clears her head and lands on her other side, resuming his flight.
How he just jumped twice his own height, he has no idea.
He keeps running.
A group of girls now, anticipating his path and diving.
It’s too late to dodge.
It’s too late to jump.
He doesn’t know what to do-
Then suddenly, there’s a magic matrix on his mind.
It’s incredibly complex, but he knows it’s exactly what he needs, and that he has it perfectly accurate.
He doesn’t know where his wand is. It certainly isn’t in his hand.
… Not that he seems to have hands anymore.
But that doesn’t matter. He knows what to do.
He pushes that matrix into an unfamiliar part of his mind, and dumps his magic into it.
Something tingles on his forehead.
Time seems to stop as the spell catches, and activates.
Everything momentarily turns blue.
He dodges under his bed to curl up.
The dormitory is empty. No one knows he’s here.
He lets out his breath.
Then he looks around.
How did he get here, again?
He turns to examine himself.
What happened to him, too?
His… coat of fur, is silver.
His tail is silver too, though there are twin royal blue stripes reaching all the way to the tip. He can also see the base of his… mane? It carries the same colors.
He rolls onto his side, glancing down to verify what he could hear in his voice. Then, he looks closer; he didn’t see anything right off.
He still doesn’t see anything. It’s all hidden by his fur.
So he lets out a sigh, lying down- and freezes.
Next to his bed, Bonbon slams bodily into her back on the floor without even trying to break her fall, holding her head expertly off the ground, her pink-and-purple hair rippling underneath her. She turns her head to look at him. “Good afternoon,” she greets him.
He squeaks, curling up. His tail brushes against his nose, and he quickly bats it down with one forelimb. If she can follow him here from her flying contraption that quickly, there’s nowhere he can hide from her. Not even with that strange, very complex magic matrix he still remembers.
“I thought you ought to know,” she goes on. “Lyra got a good look at you before you disappeared. She said the transformation should wear off in about a half an hour.” She turns her head to look at him, her tone becoming very serious. “You don’t want to be under the bed when that happens.”
He shudders; before… whatever that was, he wouldn’t fit under the bed very well.
He squeaks again, and closes his eyes, forcing himself to use his voice- and hating every moment of it. “What about… the girls?” He sounds very much like one of them.
Bonbon shakes her head. “The Weasley twins have something prepared to keep everyone busy for the next few hours,” she states. “As a matter of fact, it’s a good thing you didn’t come in through the entrance hall- you might have set off their trap early if you had.”
He lets out a brief snort of laughter. “You?”
She shakes her head. “Don’t worry- neither me nor any other Equestrians are going to squeal crazy. I mean, sure, you make a cute unicorn filly- but Lyra’s cuter, even if she’s not a filly.”
“... What?”
Bonbon smiles at him, and gestures towards him with one hand. “That’s what us Equestrians look like in our homeland,” she states. “There’s going to be some curiosity- we can’t bring our normal forms here, our own magic makes sure of that- but nopony is going to go crazy over it.”
“Then- Then why…” He looks at his… hoof. “Pony?”
She shrugs. “Honestly, when Lyra started the process to expand your magic to match an Equestrian’s capability, we did not expect that to include transformation. We knew it was a possibility; that’s why she had the twins prepare their… distraction.”
“Then how- how do you know it’s temporary?” He still hates his voice, but the more he hears it, the more natural it feels.
“Because it’s the very magic that turns us human,” she answers. “Lyra informed me that it appears the final stage- triggered by your fright when you fell off your broom, she thinks- includes a physical transformation to match your magical signature… until your magic finishes integrating itself with you, at which point you’ll revert to your prior form. We think.”
“You… think.”
She rubs her head with one hand. “Yeah… Our hair colors didn’t change when we crossed the portal, but everything else did. As much as you should rubber-band back to your prior human form, we’re not sure how complete that return will be. According to Lyra, there’s around a seventy percent chance your mane color will stay, for example- though she tells me there’s a ninety percent chance you’ll turn back to a boy.” Sigh. “If you don’t, she knows a spell to fix that, even though it would wear off every twelve hours or so. The good news with that is that you’ll be able to cast it yourself, even without your wand, as a unicorn- and she’ll be able to give you the matrix the same way she gave you the teleportation matrix.” She glances at him. “That was a good reaction, by the way. Lyra expected to have to come in here after you to peel a few girls off.”
“What-!?” he asks, startled.
She nods. “Yeah. That matrix she gave you is the simplest one- the only one she could reasonably expect you to be able to use safely without knowing any of the underlying concepts. The problem with it is that it is incredibly easy to accidentally take other people or objects with you.”
“... Oh.”
“Anyways, come on out. As I said before, you do not want to be under there when you turn back. And no, I’m not going to pounce on you or anything.”