//------------------------------//
// Chapter 36 
// Story: The Gate 
// by computerneek 
//------------------------------//

“Oh, there you are, Harry!”
Harry turns, raising an eyebrow.  It’s the day after he’d asked for their ‘papa tango’ thing.  “Yes, Lyra?”
“Well, I’ve been running tests on the matrix down there, and…  Well, I’m sorry to say, I won’t be able to activate it until I’ve finished installing the age restoration routines.  As such, it’ll be another month and a half or so.  I’m really sorry about that, but the way these standing matrices were designed, the safeties will never check out unless every last part is installed- and age matrices are always a pain.”  She shrugs.  “If nothing else, you’ll have it for next year, eh?”
He sighs.  “Yeah, I guess.”  Bonbon had given the go-ahead, so Lyra had planned on doing it with him tonight.





“Something’s bothering you,” Harry states bluntly.
“Ah, nothin’,” Hagrid mutters.
Spike looks up from where he’s giving Norbert a belly rub.  “Really, Hagrid, even Norbert can sense it.  Right?”
“Yah!” Norbert answers.  “Un-con!”
Ron stares at Norbert.  “I…  I still can’t believe how fast he’s learning.”
Hermione ignores Ron, looking up at Hagrid.  “Unicorn?  Is something the matter with a unicorn?  Maybe in the Forbidden Forest?”
Hagrid ignores Hermione’s question.  “Lyra says his growth spurt will end in a month,” he informs Ron.  “And he’ll gain the ability to become a human at the same time.”
Norbert scowls at him.  “Un-con!  Foe-est!”
“Hagrid,” Harry sighs.  “There’s something wrong with a unicorn in the forest, isn’t there?”
“N-No,” Hagrid mutters.
“An injured unicorn, probably,” Hermione states.
“Yah!”
Everyone looks at Norbert.
“Well, that answers that,” Hermione continues.  “Hagrid?  Would it be a problem if we joined you in a search for whatever’s hurting unicorns?”
“Something’s hurting them?” Malfoy asks.  He’d been invited to the party by Hermione some week or two back and, despite being a Slytherin, seems perfectly okay with Norbert.
Hermione turns to face him.  “Yeah.  Around here, unicorns are beasts, but they’re so, ah, pure that almost nothing even tries to hunt them- and that which tries, can’t.  They also almost never hurt themselves, so if it’s an injured unicorn, nine times out of ten, it’s something powerful hunting unicorns.”
“Around here?” Hagrid asks.
Hermione shakes her head.  “This world,” she states.  “Equestrian unicorns are a bit different, and Malfoy’s been there.  Met one, I understand.”  Her grin has a conspiratorial edge to it that Hagrid doesn’t notice.
Malfoy snickers slightly.
“Oh, alright,” Hagrid grumbles.  “You can come with me and look.  Tell you what, come back this evening, and I’ll see if I can get us a lead to follow.”





They come back that evening, as a party.  Harry, Ron, Hermione, Spike, and Malfoy.
“Alright,” Hagrid nods.  “Looks like we’ll be able to split into three groups.  I’ll lead one; Fang will have another.  The third…”
“We can trash anything that comes our way,” Malfoy declares, putting an arm around Hermione’s shoulders.  He glances at her.  “Right?”
She blushes.  “Yeah.  You won’t need to worry about us.”
“...  Right,” Hagrid mutters.  “Then, who’s with Fang, and who’s with me?”


In the end, Harry end up pairing with Hagrid, while Ron and Spike take Fang.
“Now, if you see the unicorn, send up green sparks.  If you encounter trouble, send up red sparks.  Everyone know how?”
Heads nod.
“Alright, let’s practice.”
Spike promptly throws his head back, shooting a tongue of first green then red flame high into the sky.  Then he grins at Hagrid’s shocked expression- Hagrid still can’t seem to get over his ability to breathe fire- and draws his wand with everyone else, to demonstrate the spark spells.
Then, everyone heads into the forest.  Hagrid points out the unicorn blood on the ground, before the path splits into three; Hagrid and Harry take the center fork, Ron, Spike, and Fang the right.


“Well,” Hermione mutters, some time after she and Malfoy started calmly down the left fork, alone except for each other.  “This is certainly more interesting than I thought it’d be.”  There have been little spots of silver unicorn blood, steadily increasing in frequency.
Malfoy nods, eyes flicking constantly back and forth.  “Are…  Are you sure this was a good idea?”
“Of course,” she nods.  “Between my speed and your unicorn magic, we can both be up a tree in a matter of moments.  And, worst comes to worst, you can take us all the way back to Hogwarts.  Besides, with my pegasus eyesight, we’ll have warning long before anything gets anywhere close.”
“You sure about that?”
“About the eyesight, not really- the boost is really no help in dense trees.  Pony hearing could be helpful, though.”
“True…  I don’t think it carries over to our human forms, though.”
She shakes her head.  “No, it doesn’t.  Though…  Feel like transforming, and riding in my arms?  It’d let us take advantage of pony hearing without, ah…”
He chuckles.  “You’re still afraid of being caught in your pony form, aren’t you?”
She hangs her head.  “Yeah.”
“You know, I should be more worried about that than you.  We are looking for something that hunts unicorns, and here I’m a unicorn.”
“All the more reason for you to be riding rather than carrying- I, as a pegasus, can fly us out of trouble.  I doubt it’s a monster bird or something that’s been hunting unicorns.”
“Oh please, you’re still deathly afraid of heights, except when actually in danger of falling.  Which, by the way, I still find funny.”
“Hey, at least I can get us up a tree!”
“Yeah, and I can teleport.  Besides, have you ever flown as a human?  Without a broom?”
“Ah…  no.”
“How about as a pegasus?”
She shakes her head.
“Then you can’t exactly say that.  It’ll be faster and-  Hold on.”
Both of them go completely silent, ears probing.
There’s a…  slithering noise nearby.  Almost like…  Oh, a cloth of some sort, is being dragged across the ground.
Hermione and Draco trade glances, before simultaneously shrinking into their pony forms and slinking forwards, tracking- and following- the slithering sound.
It takes only a couple minutes after that, before it comes to a halt.
They creep around the final tree.
There’s the unicorn.
And there’s the…  whatever it is, wearing a silver cloak, drinking its blood.
Both ponies take deep breaths, then Hermione transforms back into her human form to draw her wand, raising it to point and opening her mouth to speak.
The aura around Malfoy’s horn peaks suddenly, shining brightly- and a crooked bolt of pure white energy slams down from the heavens, directly on top of the thing’s head.  Hermione is slightly amused by how the lightning doesn’t seem to affect her vision; the moment it’s gone, and even while it was still glaring, she could see everything clearly.
“Stupefy.”  The tiny and, comparatively speaking, wimpy bolt of red light flashes out from her wand, connecting dead center on the shrieking creature’s head, silencing it instantly.
Then Hermione looks down.  “You didn’t tell me you’re a filly.”
“Ahh…”  He returns to human form as well.  “Yeah, sorry about that.  But yeah, I’m not just a unicorn, but a unicorn filly.”  He sighs.  “When I’m in pony form, call me Silversong?”
She blinks, and nods.  “Sure.  Now, this creature…  I’m thinking that cry sounded far more human than, uh, whatever that is.”
Malfoy nods his agreement.  “Certainly.  And, um…  We’ll probably want to send up some sparks.”
“Nah.  With that lightning bolt- you weren’t kidding, that was powerful- they’ll be coming running.  Now then…  Homorpus!”
“What in the world…?” Hagrid mutters, having exploded from the trees just in time to witness the spell.
“That’s Quirrell,” Harry states, even before he rounds the last couple trees to see the much larger human figure covered in the silver cloak, face down on the unicorn.  “What’s he doing here?”
“Alright, what happened?” Hagrid demands.
“We found the unicorn,” Hermione helpfully states.  “We also found what was hurting them.  Both at the same time, really.  So, we had an idea to stop it long enough for you to get here- Draco used his Equestrian magic to call down a lightning bolt on its head, and I fired a stunner at it.  Both hit.”  She looks down at Quirrell’s limp form.  “Between the two, it screamed- and the scream sounded human.  So I thought I’d try the humanizing spell, the ‘Homorphus’ charm.”  She sighs.  “I figured that, since it forces anything with a human form into human form, be it werewolf, animagus, or…  I don’t think that was either of the two.”





Madam Pomfrey scowls at her latest patient.
Professor Quirrell.
Struck in the head by a lightning bolt while drinking unicorn blood, then hit by a stunner.  And, as if the unicorn blood isn’t damning enough, there’s a second face on the back of his head that she has yet to identify.
She’s got him- both faces- under an induced coma right now.  Hermione Granger and Draco Malfoy, the ones that caught him drinking unicorn blood and inflicted the crippling attack, are waiting in chairs, opposite the bed.
She looks up at them.
“He’s not, uh, dead, is he?” Malfoy asks.
She shakes her head.  “No.  As a matter of fact, he appears to be largely unharmed- the unicorn blood, no doubt.”  She sighs.  “For the same reason, the stunner probably wouldn’t have worked without the lightning.  Now, where is that Headmaster?”
“Any second now,” Granger helpfully supplies, looking past Malfoy towards the infirmary doors.
Madam Pomfrey looks towards the doors as well, watching for a few seconds before they finally open, admitting Professor Dumbledore.  “There you are,” she grumbles.
“My apologies,” Dumbledore pants.  “Now, what appears to be the issue?”
She points her wand wordlessly at Quirrell, causing him to rotate slowly in the air, rolling a full three-sixty degrees.
“...  Oh,” Dumbledore mutters.  “I fear that’s Voldemort on the back of his head.”
Madam Pomfrey and Malfoy both catch their breaths at the name.  Hermione tilts her head, muttering something to Malfoy, who answers her.





“Victor.”
Lyra spits out her half-chewed dinner, absently teleporting the offensive matter to the moon while her hand flashes to her radio.  That’s Hermione’s voice.  “Where?”
“Papa Quebec.”
She vanishes on the spot, teleporting directly to the Room of Requirement, which the Agency has basically acquired as a local base of operations.
As soon as she arrives, she’s met by the thunder of numerous inbound teleports; even the thunderclap-dampening effect of the Room of Requirement isn’t strong enough to suppress this many simultaneous jumps.  She presses the button again.  “Echo Mike, Echo Mike.”
A second wave of teleports comes thundering in, and within moments, all four hundred fifty-three seats at the long table, save only one, are filled.  She cringes slightly; that’s Hermione’s seat.  She would have preferred if someone else were the one gathering the info; Hermione’s input is much more useful than most.
She starts without preamble, as soon as the thunderous echoes diminish.  “Voldemort got past us,” she states.
“Papa Quebec is both Victor Sierra and Victor Victor.”  Hermione.
She sighs.  “He got past us, both in person and with a servant, in plain sight.”  She scans across the table.  “How did we miss him?”
“We wrongly assumed all instructors were safe,” Sunset answers instantly.
“I bet we saw something that should have been a red flag, but discounted it as something inane,” Starlight declares.
“His turban,” Hard Head announces.  “He claimed an african prince gave it to him for getting rid of a troublesome zombie, but when I asked how he did that, he started talking about the weather.”
“And we know zombies don’t exist down there,” Moondancer states.  She glances at Hard Head.  “We didn’t at the beginning of the year, but we do now.”
“Voldemort must have been hiding under the turban,” Fluttershy nods.
“And we didn’t even think to look,” Bonbon groans.
“Alright, what’re we going to do about it?” Lyra calls.  “I don’t think we can act against him now- not if he’s a teacher.  Even if everyone is basically ignoring his classes.”
“Did Dumbledore get the want-it-know-it spell emplaced?” Bonbon asks.
Lyra nods.  “Affirmative.”
“Then we don’t do anything,” Bonbon replies.  “We just watch.  Report every movement, I want to keep Dumbledore posted if at all possible.  If he enters the Sequence, don’t stop him- but make certain he doesn’t come back out.  He won’t be able to penetrate the final defense, because he’ll be looking to use the stone.  And the Stone is protected against dark magic, right Lyra?”
She nods.  “Yes.  Unless he manages to solve Dumbledore’s spell, or keys access to the wards, the Stone is too well-protected, too firmly wrapped in the wards, for any dark magic to reach it.  He won’t be able to solve the spell, and the wards are too powerful, too well-built, for a non-Equestrian to be capable of keying.  I’ve checked; the only way to key the wards without authorization from someone already keyed to them is through Equestrian-only facets.”
“Got it.  Anyone have anything to add?”
Silence.
Bonbon nods sharply.  “Alright.  Lyra, you tell Agent Index Eye about our decision at the earliest opportunity, and get her input.  If she has anything- and I do mean anything- to add, call a planning meeting and bring her with.”  She looks out across the table.  “Dismissed.”
Thunder echoes throughout the Room of Requirement once again, but Lyra isn’t there to hear it, having returned to her dinner.  Hermione’s magical signature is still in the Hospital Wing.