Ginny walks calmly up the steps to her dormitory, enters, and checks to make sure the room is empty. Fortunately, she’s a British student, so she gets to sleep in the normal, five-person dormitory here- not the monstrosities the Equestrians sleep in.
There’s no one here.
She walks over to and sits on her bed.
“Alright, Ariel,” she mutters aloud. She still occasionally accidentally addresses her imaginary friend verbally… Oh alright, three times out of every four. But this time, she’s intentionally addressing her verbally. “I think we’re safe to try it now.”
“Alright then,” Ariel, her imaginary friend, responds. “Here goes.”
Earlier today, roughly three days after the Papa Tango exploded in her face, Ariel had informed her that she’d discovered something that might let her manifest herself in the real world.
She can feel it. Whatever Ariel is doing, she can feel it, and it’s using a lot of energy… not from her, though. No, this is Ariel’s energy, leaving her. Ariel has been able to sense through her senses, and read her memories, ever since they met- perhaps this will change that?
… She didn’t realize just how much she was relying on Ariel to keep herself… well, powered. She never knew having very little magic in her could be so physically draining.
Then she sees it. Little threads of light, coming out of her chest, coming together in front of her. Gathering, whirling together. Forming, shaping, into-
She holds out her arms, even as most her strength leaves her, to catch it.
She can’t think of how to describe it, as it finishes forming up in midair.
Then it comes to life, and drops gently into her arms, letting out a little yelp as well, in Ariel’s voice.
Ariel lands incredibly gently in a heap in her arms, almost like she’s weightless. Which, given that she looks much like a ghost, she’s not surprised- she’s actually more surprised by her ability to interact with the ghostly figure.
“Ow! Owowowowow…” Ariel grumbles, while Ginny lowers her down to her lap. “That was… unexpected. I thought I’d be like a ghost, yet not only do I fall but you’re as hard as stone.” Ariel then glances up at her. “I bet I’m weightless, too?”
She nods, staring.
Then Ariel twists around to look at herself. “... Okay. I also thought I’d be more… well, human, rather than whatever this is.” She lifts a hoof to slide it across her wing. “All green, huh? Looks a little funny, because I’m… er, ghost-ish, but I think I’ll become more solid as my power levels rise.” She looks up again. “Speaking of which, how are you doing?”
Ginny’s vision is swimming by now. “Eh,” she mutters. “I’ll live.” Then, the blackness takes over, and she passes out.
She jolts awake very suddenly- and lets out a gasp when she lands on her back, on… oh, it’s her bed.
“Ginny! … Huh, that was fast. You okay?”
Ginny looks around. There’s no little green pegasus, with her electric blue mane, floating around the room… and she feels no different from how she felt when she walked in a minute ago. “What… What happened?”
“I… I didn’t realize what removing my magic from your matrix would do to you. I’m sorry!”
She shakes her head, scowling. Ariel must have undone it. “Don’t be sorry, I’d have lived.”
“Not really. Especially with your matrix still in flux, taking that much power from it for very long at all could be deadly.”
Her eyes widen, and she shivers. She’d forgotten about her changing magic matrix- or, more accurately, hadn’t thought of it. “How… How bad is it?”
“That short of a separation doesn’t seem to have done anything but temporarily suspend the changes. Though… Yeah, we may want to do that again sometime.”
She blinks. “Wha-!? Why?”
“Because… we’re both absorbing ambient magic right now. Only, it seems I’m absorbing most of it- and I’ve tried, I can’t share. But when we were separate- not truly separate, I’m afraid, I still felt the connection- you got the full dose, and I didn’t miss out. As a result, your magic increased by almost six times during those few seconds. If we keep doing that, with sufficient time in between to make sure we’re not risking your matrix, we could theoretically get your intrinsic power levels high enough I wouldn’t have to worry about coming back in so quickly.”
“Ginny!”
“Gah!” Ginny jumps when Lyra calls out her name, almost as soon as she walks back down into the common room. “Lyra-!” she complains.
Lyra screeches to a halt, blinks, and puts her hands up. “Sorry, I was just worried about you. It’s been…” She takes a deep breath. “It’s been seventy-one hours since…” She glances at the floor. “That. Seventy two is the most likely time for… other effects. Um… Shall we go back upstairs?”
She tilts her head. “Other effects?”
Lyra nods. “Yeah. Top secret, though, so I can’t yap about them here.”
Ginny blinks, and finally nods, before walking right back up to the dormitory with Lyra.
As soon as the door closes behind them, she turns to Lyra. “What other effects?” She can feel Ariel listening carefully as well, through her ears.
Lyra closes her eyes for a second.
“That tickles!”
“What are you doing?” Ginny asks.
Lyra blinks, looking at her. “What…? Huh. You’d be the first to realize when I was checking for eavesdroppers.”
Ginny shakes her head. “Not me, Ariel.”
Lyra looks around, alarmed. “Ariel? Where?”
She grins, and taps the side of her head. “Imaginary friend. I guess she can feel magic or something, because she said it tickled.”
Lyra stares at her. “Imaginary friend… and she can feel magic? You sure she’s imaginary?”
“Um…” Ginny pauses. “Maybe? I mean, she was able to manifest herself for a couple seconds earlier.”
“Uh… actually, the limit would be quite a bit longer than that. Only, if I didn’t come back in, you would’ve faced mortal peril. And I don’t think I can survive without you, for now at least.” Ariel distinctively shudders, despite not having a form. “Not that I’d want to. Um, can I call you ‘mom’?”
Ginny lets out a gasp, covering her mouth with one hand as she turns away from Lyra, blushing like a tomato. Ariel sounded so sincere about that.
Lyra stares. “Uh… You okay?”
“No, no,” Ginny begins, trying to wave it off, before cutting herself off, blush deepening while Ariel breaks out giggling. “Um, I mean yes, I’m okay! It’s just… She wants to call me ‘mom’.” Payback for laughing at me.
“Hey!” Ariel chokes back her giggles, blushing.
Lyra scowls, looking at Ginny. “That’s up to you, definitely. Though… Hmm… She might not be all that wrong, either.”
Her blush intensifies, alongside Ariel’s, as she turns back to Lyra. “... What?”
Lyra nods. “I’m only catching the fringes of the bond, because you’re colocated with her, but it’s definitely there. And that is among the possibilities.” Lyra smiles at her. “You said she could manifest herself outside your body?”
Ginny nods slowly.
“Can she do that now?”
Ginny shakes her head. “Not safely. Something about magic matrix stability.”
Lyra winces. “Well, I guess we’ll have to wait on that, then. I’d have to see you two separate from each other to be able to determine the nature of the bond.”
Ginny tilts her head. “Why?”
“Because it’s a lot easier to see a bond in the open than inside someone,” she answers simply. “Not to mention, since at least one of you- I’m guessing it’s her- has been Papa Tangoed in full, your combined power levels are so high I’m having difficulty telling what belongs to who, let alone seeing through it to read the bond.”
She blinks. “What?”
“Come on, let’s sit down. This might take some explaining.”
“So, you mean to tell me,” Ginny mumbles, “that I- and Ariel in particular- am stronger than Dumbledore.”
Lyra nods. “Yep. Way stronger than Old Moldy.” She glances sideways at Ginny. “That’s what I call your ‘Voldemort’ bloke.”
Ginny’s jaw articulates up and down for a couple seconds, before she opens it to speak again. “You mean to tell me that the Papa Tango makes people exponentially more powerful, completely aside from granting us extra magic powers and near invulnerability.”
Lyra nods. “It’s a bit more complex than that, but yeah, essentially.”
“And you didn’t tell me that before?”
Lyra shrugs. “Well… With you, it probably didn’t matter, but I figured I should practice not mentioning the good effects until after it’s applied. So people are less likely to come hunting after it for the wrong reasons.” She scowls. “I still need to work on that, though. Oh, and that’s a good point- I checked everything down there, and it’s all exactly right. But Ariel’s presence might have messed it up, caused it to turn the wrong person into a pony… which could be dangerous but, if properly handled, and assuming the bond is one of a select few types, is at least survivable.”
“Um…” She looks towards the door. “Ariel didn’t… exist before that… thing.”
Lyra blinks. “Huh. Well, she might’ve, and you just didn’t know about her… Um… Yeah. The Papa Tango isn’t designed for people with thaumic bonds of really any kind, save the symbiotic ones we form with our wands. So if you had a thaumic bond to her that you didn’t know about… Hmm. I don’t think it would have broken it, but it would probably have gotten confused, and could have picked the target of the bond, depending on what it was, for transformation instead of you. Which, if Ariel is fully Papa Tangoed and you’re not, is probably what happened.
“The problem is… I can’t see the bond staying the same as it was before, unless it was a strictly symbiotic bond like the one to your wand. As for what it changed into… there’s really no telling.” She sighs. “So, do either you or Ariel know how long it’ll be before it’s safe for her to manifest once again?”
“Eighteen hours, thirteen minutes,” she answers instantly.
Lyra blinks at her.
“Did you just spout some random numbers at her? … Wait, those weren’t random, were they? Um…”
“Um… Did you just calculate it that fast, or did you do it earlier?”
She blinks. “Um… Neither. I just… knew.” She scowls at the floor.
“... Wow, they’re accurate too, as near as I can tell.”
She blushes slightly. “And Ariel says I’m right.”
Lyra stares at her for a couple seconds.
She shrinks slightly away. “What?”
“Oh, sorry,” Lyra mutters, looking away and staring at the wall for a second, before shaking herself. “Sorry, I was just thinking. Um…” She glances back at Ginny. “What do you say about experimenting with that ability a little?”
“Ability…?” she asks. “Wait, that wasn’t a fluke?”
Lyra shrugs. “Oh, it might be a fluke… but it might also not be. And at least one of the survivable types that bond could be would also very slowly Papa Tango you… Several of the unsurvivables would as well, before eventually… Um, in any case, unless I miss my guess, that ability to pull the correct numbers out of your hat is an exclusively Equestrian ability.”
She blinks. “What…?”
Lyra chuckles lightly. “Because of what the Papa Tango is, all Papa Tangoes are known to receive full sets of Equestrian abilities, including this… ‘Unique Talent’, we call it on this side, because it’s different for everyone.”
She tilts her head. “How long would it take?”
“It depends,” Lyra mutters. Then she looks up at her. “You have photographic memory, right?”
She blinks, and blushes. “How- How’d you know?”
Lyra shrugs. “Cadence mentioned it. Something about how you always remember exactly what the book or Professor Flitwick said. Perfect recall, I suppose?”
Her blush intensifies, and she nods faintly. Most people she’d met, before coming to Hogwarts, got weirded out when they realized she could remember anything.
“Me too,” Lyra smiles. “Should speed things up quite considerably. Wanna give it a go?”
She shrugs. “Why not?”