//------------------------------//
// Chapter 41 
// Story: The Gate 
// by computerneek 
//------------------------------//

Harry can only stare.
He’d gotten off the train, carrying his oddly weightless trunk, and placed it on the ground next to him so he could wave to Ron; his other hand held Hedwig.
Then, he’d seen the impossible.  Or, at least, what he’d thought would be impossible.
His Uncle Vernon is on Platform Nine and Three Quarters.
With one of the luggage trolleys.
And…
“Wingardium Leviosa,” Vernon mutters, pointing his wand at Harry’s trunk.
Harry can’t believe his eyes.
Or his ears.
“What in the world?” he asks numbly.
“C’mon,” Dudley begs him.  “I want to see how high we can fly.”
“Now, now, Dudley,” Petunia pats his shoulder.  “Remember, we can’t go doing that where any, ah, non-magical folk can see.  The Statute of Secrecy is a thing.”  She looks up at Harry.  “If a bit stupid of a thing, if you ask me.”
Harry blinks.  “Ahh…  Well, um…  Hermione?”  He looks in her direction, but she doesn’t seem to be paying him much attention.
Malfoy then steps up next to him, leaning casually against his shoulder.  “I wonder how long it’ll take before she recovers,” he chuckles.  Hermione’s parents are taking turns levitating her trunk back and forth across their trolley, amusing themselves with Hermione’s dumbstruck expression, her eyes tracking it back and forth.  Then he looks up.  “As for the Statute of Secrecy, we hide because muggles will hunt us for our magic, everyone knows that.  Unless…”  He glances at Harry.  “Bonbon did say something about turning muggles into wizards.  Is that…?”
Harry nods.  “I think,” he mutters.
Petunia scowls.  “They can’t exactly tear it down, I’d have to admit.  But non-magical society is ready to accept witches and wizards.  Especially now that Lyra’s perfected her ‘Whiskey Tango’ thing.”
Malfoy shrugs.  “There really isn’t much we can do about it.  Like I said, everyone knows that.  Nobody’ll believe muggles are ready for magic.”
Harry looks at him.  “You believe that?”
Malfoy nods.  “Hermione’s a muggleborn.”  He chuckles, glancing over at Hermione, still watching her parents magicing her trunk back and forth.  “Or, she used to be, at any rate.  All it took after I made her acquaintance was about fifteen minutes before she disabused me of that notion.”  He looks casually at Harry.  “Did you know, the occurrence of the disowning of muggleborn wizards by their parents upon receipt of their Hogwarts letters has been declining steadily- and reached zero three years ago?”
“Ah, no, I didn’t.”
He shakes his head.  “Neither did I.  Until she told me, and showed me the reference materials she used to get that info.”  He gazes wistfully at her.  “You know, she’ll grow up to be a fine woman some day, won’t she?”
Harry nods.  “Yeah.  Yeah, she will.”
Malfoy tilts his head, grinning evilly as he looks sideways at Harry.  “Did you know, in Equestria, polygamy is perfectly legal?”
“What-!?” Harry asks, simultaneous with Vernon.
Malfoy bursts into laughter.





“Alright everyone,” Vernon greets the breakfast table, lowering the one letter from the day’s mail that hadn’t arrived through the mail slot.  “It’s finally through, we’re officially allowed to use magic in the house.”  He snorts.  “Well, only me and Petunia are, technically, but I don’t care about that- and what they don’t know won’t kill ‘em.  Anyways, we’re going to have to pretend magic doesn’t exist tonight; your Aunt Marge is coming for dinner, and I’d rather she not find out about it.”  He taps another letter, one of the ones he’d simply snorted at earlier.
“Got it,” Harry and Dudley state together.
Dudley looks at Harry.  “That mean you can start teaching me magic tomorrow?”
Vernon chortles.  “In theory, yes.  I’d rather you waited for next year, though, Dudley- Lyra tells me to expect Hogwarts to send you an invitation.”
Harry shrugs.  “I taught a class last year,” he states.  He’d found out, after they got home, that Dudley doesn’t know any magic- and his aunt and uncle only know Wingardium Leviosa and Lumos.  They hadn’t been able to find a safe place, outside the residential areas, to practice any magic, so that’s where they stand now.
“You did?” Vernon asks incredulously.  “What did you teach?  PE?”
Harry grins in spite of himself.  “Nah.  They actually don’t have that at Hogwarts.  I taught Defense Against the Dark Arts- so, some of the many ways one wizard can defend themselves against another.”
“How did you know what to teach?”
“I learned it myself a day or so before I taught it,” he answers.  “Princess Luna is a great teacher.”
“P-Princess?”
Harry nods.  “She’s in Slytherin, and she likes to know people.”  He gazes up at the ceiling.  “Though, with Professor Quirrell gone, we might actually have a halfway decent Defense Against the Dark Arts professor next year.”  He shrugs.  “I guess we’ll find out.”
“What kind of magic does Defense Against the Dark Arts cover?” Petunia asks.
“Disarming, shields, and a bunch of countercurses, mostly.  We did a few offensive spells, but they were all simple, relatively harmless ones- like the leg-locker curse, or the full body bind.”  He shudders.  “You do not want to know what Scootaloo managed to do with that one.”
“Ahh, I’ll take your word for it,” Petunia mutters.
“Right then,” Vernon nods.  “Everyone’s wands still hidden?”
Petunia and Dudley nod, but Harry places his on the table.  “I’ll take care of it after breakfast.”
Vernon raises an eyebrow at him.  “And the rest of your school supplies?”
“Should be out of sight,” Harry muses.  “I don’t think she’ll be looking in my bedroom.  Probably wouldn’t hurt to cover them with a, uh, perception filter, though.”
“A perception filter?”
He nods.  “That’s what Lyra calls it.  It’s technically called a ‘muggle notice-me-not’, in that it’s effective against muggles but not anyone with magical awareness, but she tells me it classifies as a perception filter.”
“A magical awareness?” Petunia asks.
He nods.  “Wizards, mostly.  Squibs- muggles born to wizarding parents- also have a magical awareness, and can see through a ‘muggle notice-me-not’.  But I’m pretty sure Marge is all muggle- she won’t see a thing.”  He looks at the ceiling.  “Though, she might wonder about how clean that room is.”
Vernon lets out a snort of laughter.  Over the last week, since Harry got home from Hogwarts, Dudley has helped him clean out all the trash from his bedroom.  As a matter of fact, the heap in the garage had grown so large Vernon had ordered a full dumpster placed in the driveway for an evening; they’d filled it to the top with eleven years of broken trash.  The dumpster company had returned to cart that eyesore off just last night- and the house feels so much bigger than it did a week ago.  “She can wonder all she likes- so long as she doesn’t wonder what that is.”  He points at Harry’s wand.
Harry nods.  “No problem.”
Vernon nods.  “I rather suspect she was more naturally hateful than influenced by that…  soul fragment thingy you have, Harry- she hasn’t seemed to have changed any since you went to Hogwarts.”
“Soul fragment thingy?” Harry asks, then blinks.  “Oh, right.  Lyra did mention that…  a fragment of Voldemort’s soul, bound to my scar.  It’s gone, though- she destroyed it.”
“She did?  But-!”  He looks at Petunia.
“That letter Dumbledore left us when he left you on the doorstep said it’d be impossible to destroy it without killing you too.”
Harry nods, smiling.  “Lyra found a way around that.  I believe she described it as…”  He taps his chin, trying to remember.  “Ah, yes.  She killed me, then saved me before I had time to die.”
“That doesn’t sound quite right,” Vernon mumbles.
“Well…”  Harry scowls at the table.  “It was something about magic fields.  The specific way she killed me was important, as was the way she saved me.  Um…  She ‘reset my magic fields’, something deadly to any non-Equestrian.  Then, before I had time to die but after the fragment disappeared, she…  uh, I don’t know what the ‘papa tango’ is, but she did that, and it reformed my magic fields in a different way.”
Petunia nods.  “Right, her codewords.  She had a book she’d anchored her ‘Whiskey Tango’ to; that’s how she made us wizards.  She also mentioned something about a ‘Papa Tango’ being a bit more invasive, and too powerful to safely anchor to a movable object.”
Harry blinks.  “...  Ahh.  Well, it was that same papa tango that gave me this hair, so…”
“It really does look better than it did before,” Vernon chuckles.
Harry blushes, rolling his eyes.  “Yeah, I know.  At least it’s easier to take care of.”
“It is?” Petunia asks, confused.
He shrugs.  “Don’t ask me how, but all I have to do to get it to look like this each morning is to shake my head- and cleaning is as simple as getting it wet, no shampoo required.”
“Hmm,” Petunia hums.  “Yeah, that is a bit strange.  Maybe we should ask Lyra sometime.”
Harry blinks, and nods.  “Yeah, she probably knows.  Good luck getting her to hold still long enough to answer, though.”
Very suddenly, Hedwig swoops in through the open kitchen window, to land on Harry’s shoulder, dropping a letter for him to catch.
Vernon glances up at Hedwig as Harry catches the letter.  “Any way to predict when wizard mail shows up?” he asks.
Harry glances up.  “It’s usually at breakfast,” he answers.  “If we need our mail held for a few hours or something, it’s as simple as telling our owls.  Speaking of which,” he turns to Hedwig.  “My Aunt Marge is coming for dinner today.  We can’t let her see you, or any other owls.”
Hedwig gives a soft hoot.
He sighs.  “Yeah, I know.  Should only be for tonight, though.”  He glances back up at Vernon.  “Right?”
Vernon nods.  “Correct.  She’s only passing through the area.”
Hedwig gives another hoot, before looking pointedly at the letter she’d given Harry.
Harry shrugs.  “Well, that’s solved.”  Then he looks down at the letter, unfolding the piece of parchment.  “And it would seem, uh, Malfoy is expecting a response to this.”
“Malfoy?” Vernon asks.
“Schoolmate,” Harry answers.  “He and Hermione are, currently, the only two aside from myself to experience the Papa Tango.”  He grins, glancing up at Vernon.  “Remember the silver-haired boy at the station?  That’s him.”
“Uhh…  Oh, the one that commented on polygamy in Equestria.”
Harry sighs.  “Yeah.”  He reads the letter.
“Anything important?” Aunt Petunia asks.
“A little.  His dad has contacts in the Ministry, so he knows that number four, Privet Drive, was formally classified as a wizarding residence just last night…  and wants to know if he can stop by to celebrate tonight.”  He looks up.  “He comes from a long line of pureblooded wizards- and won’t have a clue how to pretend magic doesn’t exist.”
“Ahh,” Vernon mutters.  “How late is ‘tonight’?”
Harry shrugs again.  “Dinner, probably.”
Vernon sighs.  “He’ll probably have to wait for tomorrow, then.  It’s…  It’s not a ‘passing through’ thing for him, is it?”
Harry shakes his head.  “Nah.  He could probably teleport straight from his living room to ours if he wanted to.  Alright, um…”  He lifts his wand.  “Accio pen!”  He drops the wand, catches the flying pen, and starts scrawling a response on the back of Malfoy’s note, before looking back up.  “Think tomorrow will be okay?”
“Should be,” Vernon muses.
“Got it,” Harry mutters, finishes his response, and returns the note to Hedwig.  “Thanks,” he informs her, before she takes it and takes off, back out the window.
Vernon stares while Harry uses his wand to return the pen from whence it came.  “I still wonder how you do that,” he informs Harry.
Harry blinks.  “With the pen?”
Vernon shakes his head.  “No.  That owl landed on your shoulder, and took off from the same, but you hardly even noticed.”
“Dad does have a point,” Dudley mutters.  “I know I weigh a few times as much as you, yet I can lean on you and expect more resilience- and strength- than the wall.”
“Uhh…”  Harry mutters.  “I…  I have reason to believe that’s a side effect of the papa tango thing,” he states.  “Some kind of crazy strength boost.  I think it’s magic based, and if it’s even possible to turn it off, I don’t know how.”  He sighs, and shrugs.  “It does mean I’m pretty hard to hurt, though.  I think.”
Vernon scowls at him.  “It’s that ‘I think’ that I’m worried about.”
Harry nods.  “Me too.”