//------------------------------//
// Chapter 27 
// Story: On the Implications of Parallel Worlds 
// by computerneek 
//------------------------------//

Professor Snape was already there; it looked like Bonbon was explaining what had happened to him, with Diamond by her side.  She saw Bonbon look up between sentences almost as soon as Madam Pomfrey entered.  “Madam Pomfrey,” she greeted.  “Worst one’s over there, then there’s…”  She pointed out the locations, and named priorities, of injured students.
Madam Pomfrey nodded, and hurried off towards the ‘worst one’.
Bonbon hardly drew breath.  “Silversong, can you get Luna?  Seven one, five three, tell her Sweetie Drops asked for the Princess in the common room.”
“Yes ma’am,” Draco answered, and ran for the girl’s dormitories again.  It almost felt normal that time, but he still had to suppress a shudder as he ascended the steps.  He navigated the Equestrian dormitories again, found the destined door, and knocked.
It was answered by the girl he recognized as Princess Luna, from the Leaky Cauldron.  “What?” she asked.
He bowed lightly, remembering what she’d said at the Leaky Cauldron about on vacation.  “Uh, Sweetie Drops asked for the Princess in the common room,” he muttered.
Luna rolled her eyes.  “And it’s not even two months in.  Whatever.”  She stepped out, pieces of dark blue metal- no, regalia- following her.  “At least we made it through a whole month before something happened.”  She marched off towards the exit; Draco followed.
By the time they made it down to the common room, Draco noticed the entry wall was opening again…  to admit Professor Dumbledore.
He resisted sighing.  The higher-ups had clearly been called, on both sides…  and all because of his hat.





It took nearly two hours for everything to get processed.  Draco had to stay for the whole thing; they kept asking him questions, which he answered as truthfully as he could.
It rather helped that nobody realized he was Draco, and so he never got asked about that.  They also assumed he hadn’t seen how it started, because of course Silversong wasn’t present when it started.
When asked why he hadn’t helped Diamond subdue the combatants without hurting them (it turned out that the Raeth Diamond had hit with the table had a concussion), he’d answered that she knew what she was doing more than he did, so he’d let her lead.  When asked why he hadn’t tried to help, he’d answered that he didn’t have nearly enough skill with his Raeth magic to do anything of value to her, and he wasn’t sure where his wand was.  Which was true enough- when he had shifted to his male form in the dormitory, it had been in his pocket…  but it had disappeared with the pocket when he took his female form, and he wasn’t sure where that pocket was.  It certainly wasn’t the same pockets as were in his female form’s robes.
In the end, much of the time had been spent explaining what had happened to Dumbledore.  Apparently, Bonbon had figured out so many details, to an alarming level of precision and accuracy, just by looking around the room.  Dumbledore- and Snape- had then asked questions…  then Silversong had received five points for keeping a cool head in a tense situation.
When he’d asked what Dumbledore was talking about, he’d mentioned how Silversong had been able to determine that Diamond had the combatants handled from the very beginning, and had moved on- of her own volition- to making sure the other students that had gotten caught in the fight were okay, even before she had further instructions.  Then of course, Dumbledore had blinked, smiled, and given Silversong five more points, for her willingness to follow those instructions, and general helpfulness.
Of course, because Snape had seen him heaving heavy furniture fragments off one of the British students that had been caught in the fight, before Madam Pomfrey got to them, he’d asked why he didn’t use his Raeth magic when he did that.  He’d answered that he was unskilled enough with his magic that there’d be too much risk of hurting the trapped student even more.
Then Diamond had stepped in and said something about ‘magic kindergarten’ that seemed to confuse both Snape and Dumbledore, but they accepted it and stopped asking.  Whatever it was, he’d apparently been halfway through it when he got his Hogwarts letter.  He’d tried to look like the news wasn’t new to him.
Finally, towards the end, the Raeth Diamond had knocked out had woken up…  and attacked Princess Luna.  Her attack only managed to knock the unprepared Princess down before Dumbledore’s and Snape’s stunners both hit her, knocking her straight back out again.  Luna had risen slowly, dramatically, and overruled Dumbledore’s decision to give the girl detention.
“She just attacked her diarch,” Luna had stated dangerously.  “Thus ends her tenure at Hogwarts.  I will be taking her back to my sister in Equestria, to determine the length of her stay in prison.”
Dumbledore had then mentioned the Wizarding Prison, Azkaban.
Bonbon had shaken her head.  “It won’t be effective against Equestrians.  Our magic comes from inside- and mere bars will only work for an Aethr…  and even then, only for a limited time.”
Then Luna had disappeared into thin air, the girl in tow.
Upon return, some five minutes later, she said she’d discovered the girl had a long criminal history in Equestria, including a previous discharge from prison…  so she was now a lifer, and could be permanently removed from Hogwarts’ attendance lists, as she would never be returning.
Dumbledore had accepted the explanation.
When the two professors finally left, Draco was then hounded by at least a few students that wanted to hear his side of it.  He wasn’t able to get rid of them until after breakfast, when they had classes.
Finally, he managed to ditch his followers while meandering randomly through the passages…  with a nearly-overflowing bladder.  He had not been looking forward to finding out how girls used the bathroom, and he did happen to be in a passage with bathrooms- so he glanced both ways to make sure he was alone, shifted to male form, and stepped into the boys’ bathroom.  For as much as his clothes came and went with the form, his bladder did not.





Harry smiled, wrapping an arm around Hermione as she curled up against his side in their armchair, in the Gryffindor common room.  Ever since they’d met on the train, they’d both served as anchors of familiarity to each other- and so, since they were both skinny, they often ended up sitting in the same chair while they studied, and helped each other out whenever they had issues.
He was fairly sure he benefited more than she did from that part- but then, the other part came in.  She often finished her schoolwork long before he did, and moved on to whatever project she was working at the time.  Sometimes it was lesson plans for her class, sometimes it was plans on how to help a particular student (usually Applebloom, he’d noticed).
And more recently, she was experimenting with herself.  During some of his free time, she’d done for him what she’d done for Sweetie Belle- and helped him find the magic inside him, to calm it down.  He’d found that his wand magic came easier when his magic was calmer, but he hadn’t been able to get it to calm down very much.
He knew she was trying to get hers as calm as she could.  He’d mentioned Rarity’s annoying levitation shortly after she’d finished her little research project, and she’d dove into it with vigor.
The only problem with this latest focus of hers was that it tired her out like crazy.  And, since she could never get her dorm-mates to quiet down before nine or ten at night, she’d taken to curling up against his side for a quick nap in the noise of the common room.  She never slept very well when she did that, because of the noise, but at least she could sleep.
Until, in theory, he’d discovered, practiced, and perfected a spell from the library last night.  He flattened his magic as much as he could, then gave his wand a little flick, and barely whispered the incantation.
Success.  Exactly as he had intended, the noise of the common room deadened right out to a low murmur inside of a cylinder of space around their seat.
Hermione blinked, not having fallen asleep yet, and looked up at him.  “What-?  Did you-?”
He smiled back down at her.  “I thought you might like some quiet during your nap.”
“Oh,” she muttered, and smiled.  “Thanks.  What’s it called?”
“It’s Serena Tranqui’s Transient Silence- I got it from her autobiography.  I can show you when you’re done napping, if you’d like.”
She snuggled into his side, closing her eyes again.  “I would like.”
Within minutes, she was sound asleep.
He knew they would be teased about looking like a couple again; that happened every time she napped like that.  But, if he was honest with himself, he didn’t care.  They were just friends- and just like all…  He glanced at Hermione’s notebook, lying open on the table.  Just like all six thousand two hundred thirty-seven people that had said hi to him with the express purpose of making friends with the Boy who Lived during the first month and a half of his time at Hogwarts, the ones dead-set on matchmaking could also take a hike.  They were simply friends.  The fact that they were also each other’s first friends was unimportant.
He smiled, thinking back to Serena Tranqui’s autobiography.  He hadn’t been the one to find that book in the library; no, that had actually been one of the Ravenclaw Defense Against the Dark Arts instructors.  Serena Tranqui was an ex-auror, who often had the element of surprise on independent assignments.  The Ravenclaw had been looking in the index to find the spells she thought would be most useful in combat, but Harry had read through the main text- and not only found the Transient Silence, but also pointed out Serena’s combat uses for it.  As it turned out, the silence charm also functioned as a low-level shield, had a selective silence function that could be controlled subconsciously by the caster so as not to block incantations, and could emit a high, staticky noise, suitable for raising the level of silence- all aside from how it would last for as long as he wanted it to.
The Ravenclaw had classed the spell as “too complicated” for their first-year students, but agreed that it would likely be a good candidate in their second or third years.  He, however, had mastered it in five minutes…  and was using it in place of a simple Cone of Silence, a lesser charm that not only didn’t last very long, but that he had trouble with as well.

Perhaps he was too gifted with Defense Against the Dark Arts?