//------------------------------//
// Chapter 52:  Ponies 
// Story: The Accidental Invasion 
// by computerneek 
//------------------------------//

“Anyways,” Hailey smiled, as she doled mashed potatoes onto her plate.  “It’s about time you all find out the Equestrian’s secret- which, after the Papa Tango, is actually ours as well.”
Ginny glanced up.  That shimmery barrier was back around them again- the barrier that must have been why Percy, sitting next to her, hadn’t heard a peep of the discussion they’d just had right in front of him.
Hermione looked up.  “All of us?” she asked.
Hailey nodded.  “Yup.  And Myrtle, technically, but she’s two tables away right now.”
“Myrtle?” Hermione asked, blinking.
She nodded.  “Yes, Myrtle Warren.  She’s a second-year now.  Anyways, the secret is thus:  On the other side of the portal, they’re ponies.”
Hermione blinked.  “Is that it?” she asked.
Hailey nodded.
“Oh.”  She shrugged.  “I already knew that.”
Hailey tilted her head.  “You did?” she asked.
Ginny nodded.  “Yup!  Sunset told us when the Papa Tango was named.”
Hailey scowled, and seemed to flicker.  She sighed.  “She didn’t put anything about it in the report,” she mused.  “She must’ve been so sidetracked by discovering another Phoenix-born that she forgot about it or something.”
“Ponies?” Ron asked incredulously.
Hailey nodded.  “Yes, ponies.  Would you like to see?”
“See?” Ron asked.
Hailey promptly shrank in her seat.  “Well yeah.  You can even try it yourself, if you like.”
Hermione stared.  Hailey had spontaneously turned into…  Yes, ‘pony’ probably was the appropriate word, though she looked more like a cat-pony, and her head seemed a bit big for her body.  Nevermind the miniature wings she was flapping lazily to stay aloft.  Her mane and tail were a very dark black, just like her hair as a human- and her fur was a dark blue.  Hermione got the idea she would be nearly invisible in darkness.
Right at that moment, Percy looked up.  “Pass the potatoes, please,” he asked.
“Uh-!” Hermione muttered, blinking- but Hailey didn’t hesitate.  The horn on her head glowed suddenly a very dark blue, and the bowl of mashed potatoes acquired a matching aura as it lifted effortlessly into the air and floated over to Percy.
Percy accepted it.  “Thank you,” he said, and started doling some potatoes onto his own plate.
Hermione stared.
“That privacy spell of yours is so handy,” Hailey told her.  “As far as he can tell, I just handed it to him the normal way.  Completely aside from still being human.”
“...  Oh,” Hermione muttered.
Lily raised an eyebrow.  “So they can’t see if we-?” she asked.  “Just because I’m fairly certain we’re not telling everyone about that.”
“Oh yeah,” Hailey nodded.  “They can’t see it at all, inside this ‘privacy’ barrier Hermione invented.”
“Specifically when you cast it,” Hermione told her.
Hailey shrugged her wings, having landed back on the bench and using her horn aura to work her knife and fork.  “Well yeah,” she said.  “That kinda happens when it qualifies as a defensive spell…  and my Cutie Mark power is the indomitable defense.”
“Cutie Mark…?” Hermione asked blankly.
“We still don’t have ours,” Lily sighed, also shrinking into a pony.  She also had wings, but no horn, and was somewhat noticeably smaller than Hailey.  She reached up and worked her cutlery with her front hooves, which seemed to work as if they were hands.
“Alright,” Silver said suddenly.
Hermione looked, and saw a pony in her place, with gleaming silver fur and her silver mane split neatly into thirds by royal blue stripes.  There was a horn sticking out of her forehead.
“I did it,” Silver explained.  She looked down at herself.  “It’s…  Interesting.  Why don’t you guys try?”  She looked between Ginny, Hermione, and Ron.  Then she glanced up at her forehead.  “Uh…  Hailey?  How’re you doing that horn thingy?”
“Levitation should be instinctive,” Hailey told her.  “Think like it’s your mind’s hand.”
Seconds later, Silver’s horn glowed with a royal blue aura, matching her cutlery.  It was rather lighter than Hailey’s.
Ginny reached out and, tentatively, stroked her mane.
Silver blinked in surprise, her fork clattering to her plate.
“Uh- sorry?” Ginny asked.  “Was that…?”
“Oh, no,” Silver said, looking up at her.  “That actually felt really good.  It was just unexpected.”
“It did…?” Hermione muttered, then looked at Hailey, and reached past Sadarina to stroke her mane too.
Then she startled when Hailey flicked her ears appreciatively.
Hailey laughed.  “Yeah, it does feel nice,” she agreed.  “They do it all the time in Equestria.”  She glanced at Hermione.  “Why don’t you transform too?  I can show you what it feels like.”
Hermione raised an eyebrow.  “Will you tell me what a ‘cutie mark’ is?” she asked.
She nodded.  “Yeah.  You’ll also be able to see mine- it’s ultraviolet, visible to pegasus eyes only.”
“So I’m a pegasus?” Hermione asked.
She shook her head.  “No, Alicorns have pegasus vision too- but interestingly enough, PT pegasi and alicorns do not have pegasus vision in Equestrian Human form, only in pony form.”
She tilted her head.  “What about real pegasi?”
“You were a real pegasus for a couple minutes before you ascended,” Hailey told her.  “But Equestrian pegasi get human vision on this side too.  I’m told it’s very disorienting when they cross the Gate into Britain.”
“It is,” Lily agreed, while James shrank into a unicorn on her other side.
“Aww, that means I can’t see it,” Ron moaned, on her other side.
She looked.  He had shrunk into a pony as well- and true to his words, he didn’t have wings.  He also didn’t have a horn.  Just like the others, his mane was the same color as his human hair, as an unspectacular brown- and his fur, such as it was, was a slightly darker brown.
The truly spectacular part was that he was translucent and sparkly, but not like a ghost- almost like he was made out of some kind of living liquid.
“What in the world…?” she blinked.
Hailey peered past her.  “Oh, a crystal earth pony!  That’s rare.  Crystal ponies live in the Crystal Empire, far north of Equestria- and are completely immune to temperature fluctuations, among other things.”
Ron looked up.  “Among other things?”
She nodded.  “Yes.  You’re also immune to drowning, since crystal ponies technically don’t need to breathe.  That said, crystal ponies are a lot denser than other ponies, so it’ll be basically impossible to swim instead of walking across the bottom.  Pretty sure those features won’t carry over even to your Equestrian Human form, since they’re biological differences, not magical.”  She smiled.  “Just like pegasus eyesight.”
“Oh wow,” Ginny said suddenly, drawing Hermione’s attention.  She’d also shrunken, her gleaming red and gold hair perched on top of an aquamarine coat of fur.  Her wings were folded, and she was looking around in awe.  “You’re right.  The world does look different.”
“Oh, alright,” Hermione groaned, and closed her eyes.  She tried to imagine herself turning into a similar little pony, and concentrated on it…  but nothing seemed to happen.  She sighed, opening her eyes…  and stopped.  She seemed to be a lot shorter than before, the world seemed that much more vibrant than it had before, almost like she was seeing a larger spectrum than she’d seen before.
There was also, when she looked up at the ceiling, a little bronze nub at the top of her vision, looking suspiciously like a horn.  And she knew her wings were bronze-colored.
Then she looked sideways at Hailey, around Sadarina…  and paused.  “Huh,” she muttered.  Hailey looked…  different, somehow.
“Huh to you too,” Hailey told her.  “I would’ve thought you’d have your cutie mark by now, but you don’t.”  She pointed a hoof at Hermione’s…  What was the word?  She racked her brains, but as near as she could tell, she had never found out what a horse’s hips were called.
She was at once appalled by her failure.  She was better than that, and she knew it!





Hermione’s weak levitation- she figured she could be excused, it was her first time ever using this kind of magic- fell apart, and her fork clattered to her plate.  She looked up.  “There are house-elves?  Here?” she asked, looking up at Nearly Headless Nick; he’d been telling them about trouble in the kitchens, apparently because Peeves had been there, scaring the house-elves out of their minds.
“Yes,” Hailey said suddenly.  She felt her ears twisting even faster than her head- it was a very strange sensation, but that’s what you got when you turned yourself into a little pony.  Thanks to Hailey’s privacy spell, everybody else seemed to think they were still human- except Sadarina, of course, who reached over to stroke Hermione’s mane.  Hailey and Silver were right, it did feel almost alarmingly nice.  “They’re also some of the best-treated house-elves on Earth,” Hailey went on quickly.  “If you want to make a stand on the treatment of house-elves, which I do agree does need to happen, Hogwarts is not the place to do it.”  She smiled.  “I happen to know a few house-elves in…  Well, not both situations, but Dobby used to be treated like dirt.  Right?”  She looked up at Silver.
Silver nodded.  “Yeah.  And all to maintain the front.”  She sighed.  “Well, not anymore.  I think Dad’s using me as an excuse to soften up a little.”
Hailey nodded, and looked back at Hermione.  “So how about we get you the full picture over these next couple weeks?  Something tells me we’ll need your brains to come up with an action plan that will be more effective than those used by the last twelve Elf Rights Movements.”  She chuckled.  “Which were all, coincidentally, started by muggleborn Hogwarts students…  and not one lasted two full years.  I believe Hogwarts:  A History glossed over them, since it was written by a pureblood- and they don’t think anything’s wrong.”
“Excuse me?” Silver asked, an eyebrow raised.  She also folded her forelegs, making her so cute.
Hailey laughed.
“How do you know about that?” Hermione asked, raising an eyebrow of her own.
“The Room of Requirement,” she answered.  “The house-elves call it the ‘Come and Go Room’, and showed me how to get in last night.”  She sighed.  “Ask it for the right thing, and it’ll reveal a very detailed and magically kept record of the Castle’s long and storied past.”  She chuckled.  “Did you know, these last four years comprise about seventy percent of that report?  And that’s not even counting my Goddess of Reports phase, that’s ten percent all on its own!”  She sighed.  “The Full Castle Record says that it was created as an attempt to create a true magical intelligence.”
Hermione looked at her.  “To create a-?  How?”
She shrugged.  “The Room of Requirement doesn’t exist in three-dimensional space- or, technically, it does; it’s the size of a marble.  The Full Castle Record seeks to ram as much information into that space as possible, and hopefully- theoretically- overload the space-time continuum with thaumic information density and birth a new Goddess.”
Hermione blinked.  “But in order to do that, you’d need…”  She scowled.  “How much info?”
“The full Castle blueprints are in there, along with exactly what order the bricks were laid.  The exact state of the Castle, all the way down to exactly where each blade of grass is, is recorded daily.  Um…”  She rubbed her chin.  “Hmm, it’s blind to the Thaumion Flow, though.  If it wasn’t, they might’ve succeeded by now.”
“The- The what?” Hermione asked, completely forgetting her food and peering over Sadarina’s lap at her.
“The Thaumion Flow,” Hailey answered.  “The flow of magic across the Multiverse…  and what gives Harmonia her strength.”
“And there’s that name again!” she cried.  “Gyah!”
Right at that moment, Sadarina picked her up and placed her in her lap, before reaching over to retrieve her abandoned meal.
“Which name?” Hailey asked, a mischievous glint in her eyes.
“You know what I’m talking about,” Hermione grumbled, resisting the urge to stomp her hoof on Sadarina’s thigh.  “Harmonia.”
Sadarina filled Hermione’s fork with Hermione’s mashed potatoes.  “Say Ah,” she smiled.
“Ahh, Harmonia,” Hailey smiled.  “Have you ever wondered what happens if you multiply a Pinkie Transform by a Granger Warp then apply that to the Misty Step whilst under Rainboom?”
“Uh-!” she muttered.
Sadarina stuffed the fork in her mouth and, while she sputtered in surprise, giggled madly.
Hailey laughed.  “Rainboom is an Equestrian magic effect for when you break the speed of sound.  Twilight’s got a nice castle in Equestria- and in it, one of the finest wind tunnels I’ve ever seen.  Not that I’ve seen very many.  Had to be at least fifty miles long, on the inside- perfect for experimenting with Rainbooms.  Pinkie said that’s where she figured out how to reach Harmonia.”
She nodded slowly, and swallowed her mouthful of potatoes.  “Okay,” she muttered, while Sadarina was collecting some of her steak.  “So what happens when I do that?”  She eyed the fork as Sadarina brought it back down, and accepted the bite peacefully.  It was not just making Sadarina giggle, but it was making Hailey laugh- and things that could make her laugh, really laugh, not her normal, almost cautious laugh, were few and far between.
“You cross to the Astral Plane.  It’s a lot easier than standing on an altar in the basement of Canterlot Castle and singing a very specific prayer in Old Ponish three times fast to the beat of a drum.”  She spoke very quickly.
“Mmm?” Hermione asked, her mouth still full of steak and gravy- which she could swear was tastier than when she’d been feeding herself.
Hailey chuckled.  “The fun part is that you can get back from the Astral Plane by singing a very different prayer in Prench seven times fast while tapping your hooves to the beat, or you can just apply a Pinkie Transform to the Misty Step.”
She nodded, swallowed, and opened her mouth.  “So why the Astral Plane?  And, um, is it normal for a pony to like steak?”  She accepted the next bite almost cheerfully, making Sadarina giggle again.  She was right, it did taste better than she’d expected it to- better than the last identical bite, even!
Hailey chuckled.  “British steak, oh yes.  Equestrian meats have a very different flavoring that you wouldn’t like even as a human- well, except fish, those are pretty tasty.  Add that ponies are pretty universally vegetarian, yet are technically omnivorous…”  She smiled.  “We checked.  Us Papa Tangoed humans have pony digestive tracts when in Equestrian Human form, giving us that expanded dietary freedom- we can get all our nutrients from plants, or we can even get it all from meats, if we pick the right meat.”  She chuckled.  “And as for the Astral Plane?”
Hermione listened with only half an ear as she accepted the next forkful of food- this time green beans, which were like ambrosia.  She knew she’d remember it later; it was instructions, and she’d never yet managed to forget any of those.
When Hailey finally finished telling her what to do in the Astral Plane, with a ‘And you’ll know what I mean’ at the end, she looked up and swallowed her food.  “Alright, I’ll do that at some point,” she muttered.  “In the meantime, I feel like each bite tastes better than the last.  That can’t be true, can it?”
Hailey giggled.  “That, Hermione, is what you would call the Magic of Friendship.  Ever since Twilight became the Princess of Friendship, whenever there’s a pony involved, food will always taste better when a friend is feeding it to you than when you’re eating it yourself.”
“Oh,” she muttered- and, as she accepted Sadarina’s forkful of steak this time, she used her levitation or whatever it was called to stuff some of Hailey’s mashed potatoes into her mouth.
Hailey swallowed it quickly and, laughing, looked up.





“What the-omp!” Diamond cried in surprise.
Lyra Heartstrings looked up in time to see the shocked but appreciative look on Diamond’s face, and the dark blue aura around her fork.
Then Bonbon burst into laughter, having apparently watched the whole thing- she’d been in conversation with Diamond.
Lyra scowled.  There was something she needed to ask Hailey, when they next met.





Professor Dumbledore looked up as the ring of laughter echoed around the Great Hall.  It wasn’t too often that happened during a Feast- especially laughter like this, that sounded so much like giggling.
Then he blinked, trying to reprocess what was happening.  All of the sudden, most of the students were feeding each other rather than themselves, and giggling and laughing about it.  The laughing was so loud that hardly anybody seemed to notice when Alastor Moody arrived, even though he did it in an oddly dramatic manner.