Malfoy stares at it.
“What?” Cherry Berry asks.
“That’s a train,” he states simply.
“Yes, yes it is,” Bonbon answers. “That’s the train that’ll take us to Equestria.”
“That’s a train in a building,” he states.
“All trains are in buildings at some point,” Starlight informs him. “As a matter of fact, the Hogwarts Express is stored in a shed.”
He shakes his head. “No, no. That’s a train, in a building, with no tracks to get out.”
She looks at him like he’d just said something blatantly false. “Uh, no, it has tracks to get out. Through the gate.”
“What gate?”
She points. “That gate.”
He looks at the tunnel she’s pointing at, sloping down and out of sight, a pair of railway tracks leading into the darkness.
“What gate?” he repeats.
Bonbon puts a hand on his shoulder. “That tunnel is the gate,” she informs him. “It’s roughly sixty miles long, and lets out in Equestria, outdoors. The first few times we used the gate, we teleported- but once we had time to actually build something, the train makes it ridiculously easier. And what you’re not seeing is the five more trains on this line, or the forty-four still being built.”
“... Oh. So, an hour and a half in a helicopter, then… What? An hour? In a train?”
But all three girls have suddenly become distracted by something.
He looks at them, waiting for a second, before tapping Bonbon on the shoulder. “What’s happening?” he asks.
Bonbon shakes her head. “Sorry, nothing. Just had some undercover criminal or another try to kill Professor McGonagall when Fluttershy ratted him out. She’s good with a gun, though, so she took him out. She did specify he’s still alive, so she clearly found an easy way to stop him in his tracks without converting his head to chunky salsa.”
Malfoy shudders. “Ouch.”
Bonbon nods. “Yeah… Honestly, I was hoping we’d have more time to get used to school life before the staff found out every one of us Agents are heavily armed, but…”
“No, no,” Starlight informs her. “All they know so far is that Fluttershy has an S&W five hundred, and that she’s fast enough on the draw to beat a magician silly. They don’t know anything about the rest of us.”
“True,” Bonbon mutters, and her hand moves up to her mic. “Readiness Delta Seven.” Her hand drops away from it again. “Anyways, Draco- you were going to spend a day as Silver?” She gestures towards the train. “This is the way there. I will warn you, I’m a lot bigger than you on the other side.”
“Huh?”
Nod. “Yep. Cherry and Starlight will also be a lot bigger. And while Starlight’s a unicorn like you, me and Cherry are both earth ponies- no horn.” She pauses for a second. “And, it would seem Lyra will be joining us on the other side.”
He blinks. “Isn’t she at the castle?”
She nods again. “Yep. She’s just finished papa tango-ing Hermione- all she has left is to explain a few things and she’ll be on her way.”
“How will she get there, though…?”
Shrug. “She’ll teleport. The matrix she gave you may be the simplest, but it’s also the most power-hungry. She makes long-distance teleportation look easy- she could go from Hogwarts to Canterlot and back several times in a row, on the more common high-efficiency teleport, before running anywhere close to low on power. With her custom, extreme-efficiency teleport, that takes advantage of certain aspects of her unique magic, she can actually make it to the moon and back if she exerts herself.”
“All the way to the moon?” Malfoy asks, looking up at the ceiling.
“Yes,” Bonbon nods. “That’s what she told me last month when I asked how her reserves were holding up with all the teleportation.”
“... Oh.”
“Anyways, hop on the train already. I’m moderately curious what you’ll think of Ponyville.”
He looks over at her as he allows himself to be lead into the train car. “Moderately curious?” he asks incredulously.
She rolls her eyes. “Oh, alright. Morbidly curious. But you should know, we won’t transform until we actually hit the other end of the tunnel- and enter the Equestrian universe.”
He scowls, sitting next to Bonbon as the train begins to move. “Well, that’s no fun,” he mutters.
Bonbon nods. “Yeah, it is no fun.”
Time seems to crawl as the train plows on down the tunnel. Before long, too excited to have anything to say to the girls, he gazes out the window… at the solid, fairly featureless wall of the tunnel. He actually can’t tell if it’s moving, just by looking at it; only the occasional puff of smoke or steam racing past tells that tale.
Bonbon leans on him very suddenly, eliciting a surprised yelp that amuses both the other two girls. “You know something?” she mutters.
He looks down at her. “What?”
“I’m going to miss being the same size.”
“What?” he asks again, this time confused.
She smiles, looking up at him. “We turn into humans when we step out one end of the tunnel, and into ponies when we step out the other,” she states. “In between, we hold onto the form of whichever world we’ve been in most recently. With this much space, we kinda know exactly how the size comparison goes.” She sighs. “You probably already know conservation of mass is not one of the constraints of this transformation. After all, you’re a good bit smaller as a filly than as a boy, right?”
He nods. “Yeah?”
“Well, it’s the other way around for us adults. If we were adults on this side as well, we’d be mighty close to conservation of mass- but no, we’re all little girls. So when we cross the border, you’ll shrink and I’ll grow.”
“... Oh.”
A whistle blows somewhere up ahead.
Bonbon straightens up. “Oh, and we’re almost there. That’s the warning signal- the engineer has the exit in sight.”
Malfoy looks at her, and straightens up himself; he’d been leaning against the wall, next to the window. Then, he looks down at his hand. “One thing I’ve been wondering… How do I look? In a full-body mirror, when not freaked out about being transformed into a strange creature?”
Bonbon smiles at him. “You’re in luck, then,” she informs him. “Me and Lyra have several of those.”
Something catches his attention, in the corner of his eye, out the window. He turns his head to look- and a moment later, the window passes through the tunnel exit. As it does so, he feels himself shrink- though, like the reverse transformation, it’s completely painless. He glances down, at his hand- and finds exactly what he expected: A silver hoof.
Then he turns to look towards the three girls- or, other three girls, now.
And blinks.
He’s tempted to rub his eyes and look again, but he knows that won’t help.
They’re… huge. It takes him a moment to match hair- mane- colors to names, and further match them to coat colors and… ponies. Bonbon is cream-colored; Cherry Berry is hot pink, and Starlight is a more purplish color. He himself- now a she- is still the same silver he- she- remembers.
“This is going to be confusing,” he mutters to himself.
Bonbon looks down at him. “Oh?”
He nods. “Yeah. Just trying to think of myself as a filly instead of a colt or boy.” He sighs. “And teaching myself to respond to my Equestrian name, Silversong.”
Bonbon ruffles Silver’s mane with a hoof. “You know, I’d say you’ll get it down pat in no time, but I’m not sure how true that’d be,” she chuckles. “All of my experience is in the Agency- and we regularly operate with codenames, that change from time to time.”
Silver tilts her head. “Agency?”
She nods. “Yeah. The whole ‘Royal Equestrian Secret Service’ thing is a fictitious cover for the Royal Intelligence Agency.” She glances out the window. “To convince Britain that we’re a defensive organization with the solitary goal of protecting our Equestrian subjects. While that is one of our goals, it’s not even our primary goal- they can take care of themselves quite well, for the most part. Our primary goal aligns more neatly into our purpose as secret investigators, infiltrators, and of course, Equestria’s toughest monster hunters.”
“So, you… opened a gate to another world?”
“No,” Bonbon states simply, as the train comes to a halt. “That was Lyra. While off duty. She’d planned to explore this world on her own time- but when droves of owls started coming through the gate with Hogwarts letters, she took it straight to the Agency.” She chuckles, rising to follow the other two mares to the door. “A classic case of something small turning out to be a lot bigger than anypony thought. And, of course, timely action rather neatly heading off a disaster.”
Silver follows after her, not stumbling in the slightest. “That… makes sense, actually.” Then she blinks, pausing for the briefest of moments. “Wait a sec,” she states, trotting forwards to get next to Bonbon. “What’s keeping regular humans from getting on this train?”
“They never get into that room,” Bonbon answers. “While the tunnel is the Gate, it’s easier for us to establish a larger space to guard. That entire room is warded against incursions of all kinds, including Equestrian teleportation. Lyra did a bit of tricky spellwork to get it to not block Equestrian teleports that only contain Equestrians; I will never understand how that works.” She glances down at Silver as the two walk out onto the station platform. “And if they try to enter in a more manual way, the entire room doesn’t exist- that archway in is simply solid wall to them.” She shakes her head. “Another bit of spellwork nopony but Lyra can understand.”
Very suddenly, a green unicorn appears out of nowhere, a matter of feet in front of them. “Hey Bonnie!” the unicorn greets cheerfully.
Silver stares for just a moment, before mentally identifying the white-and-light-blue mane.
Bonbon doesn’t wait for her to figure it out on her own, though. “There you are, Lyra,” she answers. “What took you so long? I just explained everything to Silversong alone!” She gestures towards Silver.
Lyra looks over at her. “Silversong? Has-- Wait, WHAT? He turned into a filly?!”
Silver winces, and nods. “Yeah.”
“Is- um- are you okay with that?” Lyra stutters.
She blushes. “Yeah.”
“Hmm…” Lyra’s horn flickers, as she begins muttering to herself. “Yeah, that looks about right… But why…?”
Silver cringes away. “What are you doing?” she asks.
Lyra blinks. “Oh, sorry. I was just…” She stares off into space as her horn flickers another few times, then finally nods. “Ooooh, that makes sense.” She refocuses on Silver. “When I first made and applied the spell, I assumed biological gender would carry through- truth is, it wouldn’t. If you’d started on this side, it would- our human forms are created on first passage based on our Equestrian forms- but you started on the other side. When the spell expanded your magic to that of an Equestrian, I noticed it gave you an Equestrian form in the process. Not an unexpected effect, but I wrongly assumed it would be based on your human form. Fact is, it’s based on your personality instead- and apparently, your personality was a better match to a filly than to a colt.”
Then Lyra scowls. “And there’s something more in your core magic matrix I’m going to have to research a little. It looks like Earth’s magic fields will have disguised it, much like Equus’ magic fields disguise our cutie mark magic, meaning I won’t have seen it there… but the rest of us certainly don’t have it. Maybe if we can identify it, we can figure out if it’s worth formulating a spell to add it to an Equestrian’s core?”
“Uhh…” Bonbon mutters, looking at Lyra. “Are you sure? I don’t much fancy being a platinum blonde. With peach fur.”
Lyra shakes her head. “Nah- the addition of the Equestrian magic more than doubles the size of the magical core, forcing it to take on a primarily Equestrian shape- which forces the subject to have an Equestrian form as their primary form. Hence why Silver kept her mane colors as a human, and why Hermione will, once she gets them. But that little bit Silver has that no Equestrian has is like a dust mote next to that- say, a quarter of a percent of the magical core. There would be flat nothing in noticable effects, save the addition of whatever capability that bit confers.” Then she glances at Silver. “Anyways, the plan was to explore town in time to have lunch at Sugarcube Corner, right?”
He’s halfway into the Hogwarts grounds- again- to cross-examine the staff when the letter reaches him.
He has to turn around.
There’s another emergency Board meeting.
He turns around.
This had better be important.
His son is still missing.