“Well, that went about as well as it could,” Harry groans, sprawled across the couch.
Dudley walks heavily into the room, having just seen Aunt Marge off. “Yeah,” he sighs, flopping himself down into the recliner Vernon and Petunia had gotten him for his tenth birthday- one of the very few of Dudley’s belongings that had survived that long. It’s giving out, though, judging by the pitiful groaning of the springs. “That was… terrible.”
Vernon stops in the doorway, leaning against the frame as he lets out a huff of breath. “She might even have been worse than normal this time around,” he grumbles.
“Worse?” Harry asks, looking up at him. “I thought it was Voldemort’s soul fragment that was making everyone so nasty?”
Vernon nods. “It was. Only, she never stopped being nasty.”
Petunia steps up next to him, leaning against him. “Yeah…” She heaves a sigh. “Kinda makes me wonder if she’s found another, ah, fragment of an evil wizard’s soul.”
Silence holds for a few seconds.
“You’re going to have to teach me to cook like that too,” Dudley mutters. “That was good.”
Harry had cooked dinner tonight, rather than Dudley; he didn’t want Marge to realize anything strange was afoot either, and that was the easiest way to do that, in that particular instance. He grins half-heartedly. “Yeah, sure. But not tonight, that was exhausting.”
“I wonder how good a cook that Malfoy is?” Vernon asks mildly.
Harry blinks. “I… I have no idea,” he answers. “I suppose we can let him help if he wants tomorrow, then?”
“You know,” Petunia mutters. “There’s one other person that never changed when you went to school.”
“Oh?” Harry asks, looking up at her. “Who was that?”
“Mrs Figg.”
“Figg?” he asks, gazing at the ceiling. “Well, she was my favorite babysitter. Even though she made me look at pictures of her cats.” He shrugs. “And it’s possible she’s a squib, too.”
“How would that…?”
“Lyra tells me that the soul fragment would have affected only non-magicals… and that squibs are magical enough. So, if she is a squib, she will have been immune to it.”
Petunia looks at Vernon. “That makes sense, actually.”
Vernon looks back. “Though it begs the question,” he mutters. “If she is a squib, was she genuinely hard on Harry, or only hard on him because we were?”
“That’s… a very good question,” Petunia answers. She glances up at Harry. “I could try calling her, see if she’d like to visit tomorrow morning.”
Harry shrugs. “Sure. If she is a squib, it won’t be a problem for her to see us using magic.” He tilts his head. “I wonder if Lyra’s Whiskey Tango works on squibs…?”
“Uh… Hermione?”
Hermione looks up. “Oh, hi Dad!”
“How are you… uh, on the ceiling?”
Hermione glances down, at the ceiling she’s kneeling on, and shrugs. “I don’t know… I figured out I could do it during the battle with Quirrell at the end of the school year, and never asked Lyra.” She glances down. “And, um, a bulb burned out, so I thought I’d change it.”
“I take it the chair wasn’t tall enough?”
“It didn’t look tall enough… and this is easier than flying.”
“Your telekinetic powers not working or something?”
“Oh, they’re working just fine. I just don’t have fine enough control to be confident I can get the bulb in securely without breaking it.” She finishes screwing in the lightbulb, before rising to her feet and walking sedately to and down the wall. Once on the floor again, she glances up at the light fixture, flicking the light on telekinetically. “Oh, that reminds me- shortly after that battle, I figured out why I have my telekinesis.”
“Not how you got it?” Dan asks hopefully.
“No, that’s still a mystery. The thing is, I have telekinesis because I’m not a pegasus.”
He sighs. “So, first you’re a pegasus, then you’re not a pegasus? What now, a hippopotamus?”
Hermione lets out a snort of laughter. “Yeah, no, I’m not a hippo. I was originally a pegasus- and I still look like one, mostly. Just one small difference.” She crouches briefly, hopping upwards- and shrinks considerably as she goes, her clothes disappearing into nowhere.
Dan stares. She’s bronze-colored and tiny, her even smaller bronze wings flapping lazily to hold her steady at about head height. The old lightbulb looks a little funny, sticking to her flat forehoof as if it were glued to it.
He’d have to concede with her; she does look like a pegasus, albeit a strange one, save only the spiral horn sticking out of her forehead. “You’re…” He begins.
“An alicorn,” she answers. “No clue how I was turned into one, but I actually do know when. It would have been when I found myself transported to a world of clouds for a few seconds, right after the first time I went supersonic.”
“So, you went supersonic, and became an alicorn.”
“Um… Kinda, I guess. It wasn’t the going supersonic that did it, though- Rainbow goes supersonic all the time, but she’s still a pegasus- and besides, neither Harry nor Draco were pegasi, yet they still became alicorns after that battle with Quirrell. Speaking of which, Harry’s house was finally recognized by the Ministry as a wizarding home, so Draco invited me over to celebrate tomorrow. Is that okay?”
“Um… I take it he’s going to be coming for a teleport?”
“Yeah.”
“Then…” He sighs. “Be safe, alright?”
Mrs. Figg, as it turned out, had not been interested in visiting.
But none of the Dursleys seem to care. They’re all decked out in dinner jackets and so on.
Harry pauses at the bottom of the stairs, raising his eyebrow at Dudley and Uncle Vernon, waiting in the foyer. Aunt Petunia is visible in the kitchen “We expecting someone?” he asks.
“Ah, yes,” Vernon answers him. “Your ‘Draco’ could be along anytime.”
“So… why the, um, formal clothes?”
“We wouldn’t want to make a bad first impression, now would we?”
“Ahh… those clothes are more likely to make him uncomfortable than anything else.”
“Really?”
He nods. “Yeah. I don’t think Draco’s ever seen a muggle dinner jacket before. Besides, it’s an informal visit- his dad won’t be coming.”
Some five minutes pass, before, while the Dursleys are still changing back into their normal day wear, Harry notices Hermione’s aura approaching on the other side of the door. There’s another with her, though not the one he was expecting. It only takes him a second to remember the connection, though- Silversong is Draco. The two auras approach the door, and pause.
Harry waits eagerly, sitting on the lowest stair of the staircase, staring at the door. “Come on,” he mutters.
Eventually, finally, the knock sounds from the door.
Harry explodes up from the stairs, reaching the door in seconds. He nearly forgets to unlock the door, but he remembers just in time- and finally pulls the door open.
There they are. Hermione, standing next to Draco, both looking surprised.
He fairly leaps on Hermione, hugging her for all he’s worth.
Hermione squeaks, stumbling back as he hits her at full tilt.
Draco lets out a faint cry of alarm, before visibly relaxing, and chuckling.
Harry looks at him. “What?” he asks.
Hermione hugs him back, whispering in his ear. “You missed me that much, huh?”
He promptly draws back, blushing furiously, and puts his hands behind his back. She lets him go. “Uh…”
She giggles, blushing even more furiously. “Don’t worry, um… I would probably have done that to you if you didn’t first.” She glances sideways at Draco.
“It’s… Um,” Draco begins, blushing. “Shortly after my transformation, Lyra said something about Equestrian magic… and herds. Something about drawing, um, people together, regardless of age.”
“Wait,” Harry mutters, blinking and stepping back against the doorframe. “You mean Equestrian magic is why I missed Hermione so much?”
Draco shrugs. “She did say it doesn’t create those connections, only identifies and strengthens the ones that are already there…” He blushes cherry red, looking away. “She said it makes finding ‘true love’ easy.”
Hermione pulls both boys into a singular hug. “Probably why Bonbon never heard of divorce.”
“Ahh,” Harry mutters, as Hermione lets them go. “Even though me and Draco are, um, boys?”
Draco raises an eyebrow at him.
Harry’s blush renews, and he facepalms slowly. “Right. Um… Come in, I guess. Is…” He looks at Draco. “Is that something we’re going to have to worry about forever?”
Draco shrugs, following him and Hermione in the door. “Probably on this side, yeah. The kind of closeness it makes is considered normal in Equestria, but… Well, my father would probably throw a fit if he realized it was happening.”
Harry raises an eyebrow at him. “He would?”
He nods. “Yeah. He still calls the Granger family ‘mudbloods’, and he’s not a fan of same-sex marriage.”
“You haven’t, ah, shown him, have you?”
He shakes his head. “Absolutely not! He’d probably throw me out for being transformed, extra magical powers or not. I’ve managed to pass off the hair as an originally-temporary side effect of a prank, that was made permanent because it bypasses a particularly nasty house curse… which, I haven’t told him, isn’t actually being bypassed but completely ignored- we’re immune to that kind of thing.” He sighs. “I haven’t shown him my wings, he’d probably chop those off.”
“Or, at least,” Hermione adds, “try.”
“Really?”
Hermione nods. “Yeah. I rather doubt you’d let him.”
He blinks. “... That is true.”
“That. Sounds. Horrible,” Aunt Petunia inserts, making her way down the stairs.
Draco glances up at her, before looking at Harry. “Uhh…”
Harry shrugs. “Not yet.”
Petunia reaches the bottom of the stairs. “They’re a part of you, right? Not some spell construct?”
“Ahh…” Malfoy mutters, looking indecisive.
“Spell construct?” Harry asks. “They can make wings with those?”
She shrugs. “Is there a reason they can’t?”
“Ahh…” Hermione inserts. “I’d assume they can’t, on this side at least- there’s no books on the topic. And if you go to the other side, there’s also no books telling how to make feathered wings as a spell construct.”
Petunia blinks. “Wha- huh?”
Harry smirks, before resting an arm across Hermione’s shoulders. “Aunt Petunia, meet Hermione Granger, the girl with the magical ability to know exactly in which book to look for whatever she wants to learn about.” He looks at Hermione. “I take it you’ve found a way to leverage that to find out what’s possible or not?”
She nods, fresh blush fading. “If something doesn’t exist, there won’t be books about it, and the magic will come back empty-handed.” Then she scowls. “It’s not proof, though- simply absence of evidence. Which is not the same as evidence of absence.”
“In any case, if they’re a part of you, nobody should be cutting them off, least of all your own parents! I mean, we did have to have Dudley’s tail removed after… that happened- but if one of my boys decides to come home with wings one day, they’re his to keep! … Was it something I said?”
Both Hermione and Draco are both snickering into their hands.
Harry raises his eyebrows. “Ahh,” he begins. “Does that mean Dudley has a brother?”
She scowls. “Just because you’re not my biological child doesn’t mean you’re not my child,” she informs him.
Harry grins, letting out a chuckle.
Draco stops snickering first. “Uh, what was ‘that’?” He looks at Harry. “And isn’t Dudley human?”
Harry nods. “Hagrid tried to turn him into a pig when he delivered my Hogwarts letter. Wasn’t too successful- only gave him a pig’s tail.” He sighs. “And if I remember my Transfiguration classes correctly, anything else it may have done to him will have reverted itself by now.” He glances up at Petunia. “Another perk of being magical.”
“Anyways,” Hermione mutters, lifting her arm up underneath Harry’s to rest it across his shoulders, wand in hand. “We were here to celebrate magic being allowed here, right?”
“Ah, yes,” Uncle Vernon nods, plodding down the steps. “I do believe that was the plan.”