//------------------------------//
// Chapter 29 
// Story: On the Implications of Parallel Worlds 
// by computerneek 
//------------------------------//

Draco couldn’t stop thinking about what that owl had said until he was climbing his way into the Quidditch stadium shortly after breakfast, still in female form.  Diamond didn’t have anywhere in particular she wanted to sit, or anyone to sit near, aside from him, so she ended up following him.
He scanned the crowd as he climbed the stands…  and something caught his eye.
He looked closer, scanned that part of the crowd…  and finally spotted it.
There was Hermione Granger, sitting alone near the top of the stands.
“There,” he muttered, and started off, Diamond following close behind.
Finally, he paused, near Hermione.  “Is this seat free?” he asked, indicating the seat next to her.
Hermione glanced up at him.  “Mm?  Uh…  Depends.  Who are you?”
He blinked.  “Uh…  I’m Silversong.”  He turned sideways so she could see Diamond, and gestured to her.  “This is Diamond Tiara.”
Hermione nodded slowly.  “Alright.  And why are you here?”
He blinked.  “I…  I saw you up here, and…”
Her eyes narrowed.  “You just want to get close to Harry, don’t you?”
He blinked, and quickly decided to feign ignorance.  “Harry who?”
She stopped.  “Harry…  who?  You don’t know who Harry is?”
He shrugged.  “Maybe?  Is…  Is he famous or something?  Like whats-his-name Potter?”
Hermione facepalmed.  “Something like that, yeah.”
“...  Oh.  Um, I just saw you up here, all alone…  and thought I’d say hi.  You’re about the only person I’m familiar with that I know is friendly.”
Hermione tilted her head.  “That you’re familiar with?”
He nodded.  “Yeah?”
Her eyes narrowed.  “And why am I not familiar with you in turn?”
He blinked.  “...  Oops.  Um…  I’ll explain later, in…”  He glanced around.
Hermione raised an eyebrow.
He was starting to feel very, very small.  “O-Or you could do your…  scanning thing, with your wand…”
Her other eyebrow went up next.  “Really?” she asked.
He nodded.
She sighed, drawing her wand.  He’d only half-expected her to have it on her.  “Alright then.”  She started her incantations.  “Wand arm?”
He blinked.  She always went for the back of his neck in class.  Then he took a deep breath, and extended his right arm towards her.
She touched the middle of her wand to the back of his wrist.
He felt her prod against his magic, as usual.  It was slightly different, but mostly the same.
“...  Huh, that looks almost familiar,” she muttered.
“As it should,” he answered.  “You’ve been helping me with it these last few weeks.”
Hermione drew her wand back suddenly, staring at him.  Her spells cut off in an instant.  “Wait.  You’re not…?”
He nodded.  “I am.  Appreciate it if you didn’t tell anyone.”
She tilted her head slightly, thinking, then smiled.  “Alright then, go ahead, take a seat.  Did something…?”
He shook his head.  “No, it’s…  Lyra’s thing, ended up letting me do this at will.”
“So you chose to…?”
He nodded.
“Tired of being a…”  She shrugged.  “Noble, for lack of a better word?”
He nodded again.  “Much easier to ditch the idiots when they can’t find me in the first place.”
“The idiots…?”
“Crabbe and Goyle.”
Her nose wrinkled.  “Oh.”
“Well, the match is starting,” Draco muttered, looking out into the field, where the teams were walking out of the dressing rooms.  “I assume you’re rooting for Gryffindor?”
Hermione nodded.  “And you Slytherin?”
He shrugged.  “I’m actually a bit indifferent.  Yeah, it’s my house and all, but the Slytherin team is a bunch of dorks.”
Hermione let out a snort of laughter.
“They should let some Aethrs on the team,” Diamond mused.  “As I recall, according to your study a month or so ago, those are naturals on brooms.”
Hermione shrugged.  “Gryffindor seems to get along pretty well with non-Aethr players,” she mused.  “I mean…  the Weasley Twins are Raeths, and Harry’s an Etrah.”
“And everyone else?”
“Wood and the Chasers are all Aethrs.”
“Ahh.  How about the Slytherin team?”
She shook her head.  “I don’t think any of them participated in my study.”  She scowled.
Diamond shrugged.  “Lyra said she noticed that even British Aethrs tended to be the slender ones, with Etrahs the heavy-set or muscular ones.”
“Really?”
She nodded.  “Yep.  The same propensities as are common across Equestrians, actually- she noticed, during your study I think it was, that those tendencies seemed to carry through to the British as well.”
“And she didn’t mention it?”
“She said she noticed it in her memory of your study a few days ago.”
“In her memory…?”
She blinked.  “Uh, in case you didn’t know, Lyra has photographic memory- she’s practically incapable of forgetting.”
Hermione scowled.  “Cheater.”
She shook her head.  “She hates it most of the time.”
“Funny how the Slytherin team is all heavily muscled, isn’t it?” Draco asked, in an effort to break the budding argument.
“And how Harry is a natural on a broom, yet also an Etrah,” Hermione continued.





There it was.
Professor Snape sighed, lifting his wand- he’d already drawn it in anticipation- to point it at the boy.
Someone, he suspected Professor Quirrell, was trying to jinx the broom Harry was riding, to get him to fall to his death.
He started his counterspell…  then winced as the feedback came back.  The attacker was going for brute force…  and using more power than he had to counter with.  So, he took a route with more finesse.
Fortunately, since the attack was focused mostly on Harry and the interface between him and his broom, it was fairly easy for Snape to secure himself access to the broom’s controls.  The attacker would relinquish control of the broom the moment Harry fully separated from it…  at which point Snape planned to step in to put the thing under the boy again.  By doing that, he could keep Harry alive long enough for the attacker to be ousted.
“Someone’s attacking Potter’s broom,” he announced, through the wards.
Once he secured his ability to put the broom back under the boy after he fell off of it, Snape moved on to fight the attacker directly- trying to repair the normal linkage between broom and rider.  He couldn’t try to counterattack the attacker without jeopardizing the boy’s life, so that would have to do.
He listened, over the wards, to the other Heads of House working to inconspicuously locate the culprit.
“What is going on?” Dumbledore asked.  He wasn’t watching the match today; he had far too much paperwork to finish…  and of course, he had finally gotten a response from Silversong, who had promised to visit him after the match.
“They’re trying to get Harry off his broom,” Snape answered.  He knew his ward-voice, such as it was, came across snarled- but that kinda happened, when he was so focused on the fight.  “I’ve got the broom, though.  I can guarantee he won’t fall to his death, but he might fall a few times, and get hurt.”
Then, Dumbledore joined the search…  using heavily-enchanted binoculars from his office window, which happened to face the Quidditch pitch.  He also started calling off sectors of the pitch as clear.
This went on for a minute or so, during which all the players- and everyone across the stadium- seemed to realize that Harry was in trouble.
Then, there was a sudden wash of greenish energy arcing around the stands, a cry of alarm echoing around the same, and the attack dropped off instantly.
“What was that?” Dumbledore asked.
“It…  It seems a number of spectators have been partially transfigured,” McGonagall mused.  “Hmm…  The Heads of House seem to have been immune- probably the Wards- but everyone else was fair game…  oh, about a quarter of them, now have goat legs and hooves.”
Snape finished restabilizing Potter’s connection with his broom, lowered his wand, and looked around.
He noticed, in the corner of his eye, that Professor Quirrell was struggling with the hooves sticking out the bottom of his robes.
Yeah, that would tend to distract just about anyone from an ongoing spell.





Up in the stands, across from where Professor Snape was sitting, Silversong meekly put her wand away.  “S-Sorry.”
Hermione, who had just started running off to stop Snape, managed to stand up on her…  hooves.  “What in the world-!?”
Diamond, still seated next to Silver, also stuck out a goat leg.  “...  Interesting.”
Silver looked up with the binoculars Hermione had dumped on her.  “Wait, Harry’s recovered.”
Hermione blinked.  “Snape must have been-!”
“No, Snape’s unaffected.”  She’d turned the binoculars down to where Snape was.  “He’s putting his wand away, though.”
Hermione stumbled her way back to her seat, leaning on the backs of the rows in front, and sat back down.  “What were you thinking?”
Silver flinched.  “I- I calmed my magic as much as I could, and tried to cast a shield charm around Harry.  It…”  She looked down, towards what looked to be about a half of the school in a panic, the other half with either their heads in their hands or their binoculars pointed high.
“Failed,” Hermione stated.  “Spectacularly.”
“I…  I noticed.”
There was a gentle clopping noise, a small scream, and an ‘oof’.  They looked; it was Lyra, struggling with goat legs.  “I-!” she began, scrambling back upright.  “There you are, Diamond!”
“Yes, mom?” Diamond asked.
“I-!” Lyra began.  “Any idea what this is?”  She gestured towards her legs.
Hermione scowled.  “Silversong here just accidentally turned half the school into satyrs.”
Lyra blinked.  “...  About a quarter, actually.  And, it doesn’t look like we can cure it, but-!”
“WHAT?” Hermione screamed.
“Calmly, Hermione!  As I was saying, it should wear off in three days!”  She took a deep breath, and turned to Silver.  “Oh, and Silversong?  Nice job.”  She grinned, gave her a thumbs up, and turned to run back the way she had come…  before promptly falling on her face.
Silver winced, hands resting on her still-human knees.
Lyra groaned as she scrambled back upright.  “Ugh…  At least we got some of our youthful indestructibility back on this side,” she mumbled, and resumed running.
“So,” Silver began, and looked at Hermione.  “What’s a satyr?”
Hermione’s jaw dropped faster than Harry had just dived…  just in time for the announcement that Gryffindor had won.





“What in the world…?” Harry asked.
Hermione had, as promised, come to meet him right out of the changing rooms…  though she had hooves instead of feet, and was leaning on the shoulder of a strange, red-faced, silver-haired girl to stay upright.  The girl on the silver-haired girl’s other side, also with hooves, had curly white-and-purple-striped hair.
And the silver-haired girl didn’t seem to have hooves.
“Hey Harry,” Hermione began.  “Don’t mind the hooves…  Silversong here just accidentally turned a quarter of the school into satyrs.”
The silver-haired girl turned away, her face growing redder.  “I- I was trying to cast a shield,” she stuttered.  “You know, to block whoever was cursing your broom.”
“I mean, it worked,” the white-and-purple girl grinned.  “Albeit not quite in the way you were imagining.”
“I-I’m sorry,” Silversong muttered.  “But, um…  could you, perchance, help them…?”
“Stand?” Harry helpfully supplied.
Silver nodded meekly.  “Dumbledore wants to see me.”
He shrugged.  “I don’t see why not.”  He promptly slipped himself under Hermione’s other arm, before looking at the other girl.  “And you, miss…?”
“Diamond Tiara,” she said.  “And I’m a Slytherin, if…?”
Harry shrugged- then helped restabilize Hermione.  “Doesn’t mean anything to me.”
“Alright.”  Diamond shifted carefully and, when she finished, looked at Silver.  “Alright then, Silver.  Go see if you can find Snape or something, and we can meet back up…  what, at dinner?  Or in the common room?”
Silver shrugged.  “Wherever.  Well…  I…  I’m sorry, but…”  She grinned sheepishly, and ran off.
Harry looked at Hermione.  “Is she…?”
Hermione shook her head.  “Couldn’t be further from it.  She’s from one of those high-born families, sure, but she hates it- wants the quiet life, not unlike…  um, maybe mine, had I never met you?”
Harry grinned.  “Or mine, had I never been famous.”
Diamond chipped in.  “Or hers, had she not been of so high of birth.”