//------------------------------//
// Chapter 13:  Discord 
// Story: The Boy Who Disappeared 
// by computerneek 
//------------------------------//

“Hey.  Princess.”
Flurry looked up at the speaker- and as she did so, she felt Captain Gleaming Shield stiffening by her side.  It had been spoken without any respect.  She didn’t give it the courtesy of a verbal response- not only was he being disrespectful, but she had just closed Day Court for lunch.
He didn’t wait for one.  “Who do you think you are, to be ruling us from on high?”
Gleaming Shield leaned in slightly.  “He’s a member of the anti-Celestia faction,” she muttered.
Flurry gave a marginal nod; she’d been told about the various factions before Gleaming Shield had ever let her into the throne room to open Day Court the very first time.  This was the distinct minority faction that was opposed to Alicorn rule; Celestia had shut them down hundreds of times over the ages.
“I am your princess,” she answered firmly.  “And you would do well to remember that.”
“Oh yeah?”  He lowered his horn at her.
The response was immediate.  Gleaming Shield might not have been a unicorn, but that didn’t stop her from defending against one.  One of her shoes became an instant missile, headed directly for his horn, while she shoved Flurry backwards and stepped protectively in front of her, spreading her wings to further obstruct his view.  Simultaneously, the various Unicorn guards around the room leveled their horns to lay attacks- and at least three cast shields between Gleaming Shield and the attacking stallion, all three of which were slow enough her shoe made it out uninterrupted.
Pegasi didn’t have magic horns, and they might not have been the strongest, but they were the fastest, and by a significant margin.  Captain Gleaming Shield was no exception- as a matter of fact, had she not decided to become a Guard instead, she would have made a top-tier Wonderbolt, as her speed rivaled that of Rainbow Dash herself.  Combined with Guard training and reflexes, that left her metal shoe moving at a whopping two hundred miles an hour.
Then, the shoe collided with the attacker’s horn, right on target.  None of the Unicorn Guards had gotten far enough into their spells to start launching attacks against him.  That didn’t matter- because at the very moment the shoe struck, as if to add insult to injury, a lightning bolt crashed out of nowhere to strike the tip of his suddenly fractured horn, charring his horn and fur black.
He cried out in pain, head snapping back, then collapsed straight to the ground.
Then, Discord stepped into the Throne Room through the door, looking…  suspiciously normal.  “Now, now,” he remanded.  “We can’t be having any of that.”  He stepped up to the stallion and lifted him into the air by the scruff of his neck.  “Celestia might have been attacked when I was looking, but did you really think I’d let you wipe out the only hope Equestria has left?”
“Discord,” Flurry nodded, stepping around Gleaming Shield.  “I was wondering when I’d see you.”
He glanced up at her.  “Worried about all the God of Chaos stuff?”
She tilted her head.  “Um…  a little bit.”
He shrugged.  “I sow harmless chaos.  Right now, much at all would be very harmful, so I’ve been keeping it elsewhere.  Least I can do.”  He then looked back at the stallion in his paw.  “This idiot tried making the harmful sort, of course.  There’s always someone, isn’t there?”  He flung him casually to the side.
Flurry winced when he landed with a distinctive crunch.  “Um, on that topic, are you able to get the other Princesses back, or…?”
He shook his head.  “That curse sent them across the interdimensional barrier- and while I can reach across it, I’m no more than an average Joe in other dimensions.  It’s only here that I have my powers- I know where they are, but I’m powerless to retrieve them.”  He sighed.  “And even if I could retrieve them, they’d probably die in a few days anyways.  Not to mention the people serving as their hosts right now- those would be killed by the transaction.”
“...  Oh.  So we’ll never see them again?”
“Oh, I wouldn’t be so quick to think that,” he mused.  “Twilight managed to give her host quite the motherlode of information, so they should be able to make their way here- at which point mere contact with Equestria’s magic fields might be enough to bring the other Princesses right back.”
“What happens if…  something happens to their hosts?”
He shrugged.  “I might be powerless in other dimensions, but I can send my power between dimensions to do things.  Not very precisely, mind, but…”  He sighed.  “I’ve donated a part of my power- rather permanently, I might add- to each of their hosts.  They should be completely invulnerable and immortal, whether they were already or not, even to magical attacks- and, at least over time, it’ll even free them of prior…  ailments.”  He shuddered so hard some of the floor tiles popped up to shudder as well, before cementing themselves back down.
“So how long do we have?”
He shrugged.  “I don’t know, to be honest- all depends on when they start trying.  So…  anywhere from a week to eight or nine years to possibly even longer, if they wait after school.”
“Can we talk to them?”
He shook his head.  “I’m afraid their local magic fields aren’t strong enough for that.  If ever they’re all in one, magic-dense place, I might be able to reach them then.  And if I can, there’s a good chance I won’t have the power to spare to be the one talking.”
“What about the guy I talked to, that refused my power- Ronald Weasley?”
He rubbed his chin with a talon.  “Hmm…  I don’t know.  It’s theoretically possible for you to reach him, but you’d have to use some complicated spellwork that I’d have to turn to Twilight to assemble.”
She rubbed her chin with a hoof.  “Do you… know where to start, perhaps?  Maybe Blueblood or the like can build on it?”
He rubbed his chin again, this time with his tooth.  “...  True,” he mused.  “He was able to make standing spells to move the Sun and Moon, long thought impossible even by myself.  I’ll give him the matrices he might need.”  He snapped his tail, and a second Discord appeared out of thin air, holding a thick manilla envelope, to walk out the side door of the throne room.
“Um-!” one of the Guards muttered.  “Can I, er, ask something?”
“Obviously,” Discord answered.  “You’ve just done so.”  He grinned.  “Ask away.”
“Y-You said you sow harmless chaos…  if that’s the case, what was that when you, ahh, de-petrified yourself?”
He shrugged.  “Spending a thousand years in stone will drive anyone crazy.  The good Celestia knew about that, though, so she gave me a second chance, with Fluttershy- and she helped me, ah, snap out of it.”  Then he rubbed his chin with a hoof.  “Not unlike how Cadence’s love-shield helped Chrysalis snap out of her starvation-induced craziness.”





If there was one thing Molly Weasley was conflicted about, it was Ariel.  She loved her new daughter’s endless curiosity; she was like a ten-year-old baby.  However, Ariel might as well be the new Gryffindor mascot as well; she was completely and totally unafraid of plunging herself into the unknown, despite having been afraid she wouldn’t be accepted by her own family.
It certainly hadn’t hurt that they had found out that both her daughters- Ginny and Ariel- were now possessed by superhuman strength.  After Ginny had accidentally tipped the table up when she was trying to see where her fork had fallen to, Ariel had tried too- and found it just as easy.  They’d tried- but to date, the only limit they had been able to find to either one’s strength was the other of the two.
Fortunately, they were both cheerfully optimistic- Ariel just by who she was, and Ginny because of Ariel’s appearance, Molly was sure.  It certainly didn’t hurt that they were as close to each other as Fred and George; it hadn’t bothered them at all that they didn’t have another bedroom- or bed- to give Ariel.  She’d just slept with Ginny in her little bed.
Now, though, they had gotten Ron’s Hogwarts supplies the week before- and Arthur had just gotten paid, so with the family still on a diet rich in potatoes, they were going to get Ariel some clothes of her own- so she didn’t have to keep sharing Ginny’s already scanty clothes.
Now, though, Ariel had run off and struck up a conversation with what looked like a muggleborn and her sister, both just a little older than herself, outside Flourish and Blotts.





“Mr. Weasley?”
Mr. Weasley smiled at the Ministry of Magic Records Department clerk’s surprised question.
“What brings you in here?” the clerk asked.
It made sense to him; the last time he’d walked to the Records Department, rather than sending an interdepartmental memo, was years before, when he’d accepted his current job.  “Family matters,” he answered.
“Oh?  Molly get pregnant?”  Even as he spoke, the clerk stepped down one of the aisles to retrieve a folder.
He shook his head.  “Nah, nothing as simple as that.  I’d like to make sure my new daughter is recorded properly.”
“New daughter-?  What happened to whats-her-name, the first one, um…”  He glanced in the folder he’d just pulled out of the drawer.  “Ginnerva?”
Mr. Weasley smiled.  “Nothing.  Well, unless you count super strength.”
“She…  got stronger, and you got a new daughter…?”
He grinned.  “Imagine my surprise when I walked downstairs to find that my daughter had spontaneously duplicated herself overnight,” he chuckled.
“She…  duplicated herself.”
“Yes.  They’re both incredibly strong- we actually weren’t able to find their limit, even by magic, except when putting them against each other.”
“...  Ahh.  So, which one’s stronger?”
“Both.  Or neither, if you prefer it that way- they seem to be equally strong, but still immeasurable.”
“Okay then.  Do you want us to record that, or…  Wait a minute.”  He looked a little closer at the files he’d brought back to the desk.  “Ginnerva is ten, right?”
He nodded.  “Yes?  Don’t the details self-update?”
“...  Yes, they do, but they’ve been known to be wrong from time to time.  I…”  He rifled through the pages.  “It’s Ariel, right?”
He blinked.  “Yes, actually.  How- how’d you know?  I thought they didn’t auto-document new family members.”
“...  Not normally, no,” the clerk muttered, staring at the pages.
“What?”
“Well, aside from the magical power rating of the infinity symbol on both of them…  there’s a mother-daughter relationship between the two.”
“There’s a what!?”
“They’re recorded as the same age, but Ariel is Ginnerva’s daughter, not yours.  You and Molly are still Ariel’s legal and magical guardians- but…”
“...  Who’s the father?”
“She doesn’t have one.  Just the one parent, no mention of the other parent being unknown or deceased or whatever else.  I’ve never seen it before.”  There was a second’s pause.  “Hangon.  Title…  Princess, on both of them.”
“Princess,” he repeated flatly.
“...  Yeah.”  He looked at the other pages.  “No hint of royalty elsewhere in the family, but according to this, Princess Ginnerva and Princess Ariel are both members of royalty- and so entitled to their own senior seats in the Wizengamot if they just ask.”
“...  Really?”
“Yeah.  Um…  I’ll keep this under wraps for you for now?  I can’t guarantee nobody else will see it down the road, but I can at least buy you some time.”
“...  Yes, please,” he muttered, in somewhat of a shock.  “Any… title, for Ronald?  He had a…  similar vision.”
“Um…  Ambassador.  Ambassador Ronald.”  He rifled through the pages.  “Doesn’t look like any of the rest of the family have gained any titles since I last checked- though Merlin only knows how long that will last, with princesses in the family.”