//------------------------------//
// Chapter 57:  The Floo 
// Story: The Accidental Invasion 
// by computerneek 
//------------------------------//

“She gave her how much detention?” Dumbledore asked, dumbstruck.  Hailey had just been explaining the events of the night before to him, at the end of her weekly report.
“Two hundred and twenty four days,” Hailey told him, “Starting tomorrow.  The final one will be the day of the Third Task.”
“Why so much?  Didn’t Miss Parkinson only throw her name in?”
Hailey shook her head.  “No.  She threw Silver’s name in, and admitted to it when Morning asked.”
Dumbledore winced.  “Still, though, there’s only a chance that she’d get picked…”
Hailey sighed.  “Morning is on the management team,” she answered.  “Hermione is the only member of that team that doesn’t know that the Champions will be Viktor Krum, Fleur Delacour, Cedric Diggory, Harry Potter, and Silversong.”  She sighed.  “Neither of them know Silver will die- that’s reserved to the Elite.”
He held his silence for several seconds, unsure of how to react to the news.  He knew Silver was important to her, but she seemed far too unconcerned about her friend’s impending death.
Finally, he sighed as well.  “Three from Hogwarts?”
She nodded.  “The Goblet thinks Harry is from the Salem Witches’ Institute in America and Silver is from CSGU in Equestria.”
He groaned.  “Of course it does.”  Then he chuckled.  “Salem Witches’ Institute, though?”  He glanced up at her.
She smiled.  “Yes.  Ironic, I know, but he doesn’t- and we’re going to make sure nobody suspects we’re actually the same person.”
Dumbledore paused for a second to sort out the ‘we’re’s, then nodded slowly.  “So…  Morning doesn’t know Silver’s…?”
She shook her head.  “Morning is punishing Pansy not for dooming Silver to get killed, which she would’ve instead passed up the line to you, or for throwing the parchment in, which is a mere five point deduction whether it goes in or not, but for forcing Silver to compete in the dangerous tournament.”
“So why did she do that?”
She shrugged.  “We think Parkinson is trying to get revenge on Silver for replacing Draco…  who never liked her that much, but they had a marriage contract.  It’s making me wonder how those work.”
He nodded.  “They’re binding, generally agreed upon between families…  but it’s possible for the boy’s parents to force a marriage contract that the girl’s parents are opposed to, not the other way around.  For a while, it was common practice for a girl’s parents to get her under contract to someone nice as quickly as possible, so she couldn’t be stolen from them- but nowadays, forcing a contract like that is much more frowned upon, so it’s not very common.  The Parkinsons just never let go of that tradition.”  He glanced down at his desk.  “As a matter of fact, Harry actually has a marriage contract- to Ginny Weasley.  It’s a much rarer loopholed one- not actually binding- but it blocked some… less savory elements from contracting Ginny away from them.”
She tilted her head.  “So…  When we kill Harry, does that void it?”
He nodded silently.
“And is it possible to contract two girls together?”
He shook his head.  “Neither siblings.”
She nodded slowly, evidently thinking fast.  “We need to get Magical Britain to recognize Equestria as a foreign nation, and offer Ginny Equestrian citizenship, before the third Task, then.  Marriage contracts are flat-out illegal there, making any attempt to enforce them on an Equestrian citizen an international incident- and Princess Celestia…”  She sighed.  “Let’s just say there’s a reason the current Equestrian era is named the Celestial Years of Peace, even though Equestria is surrounded on basically all sides by warlike nations.”
There was a second of silence as Dumbledore sorted the information into his memory.  No doubt at least some of it would come in very handy at some point.  “The third task?” he asked.
She nodded.  “We’re going to kill Harry off too.  In a similar way as we killed Draco last summer, as a matter of fact- we’ve even already got the body ready.  Shouldn’t be too hard to just let Harry get killed by Voldemort.”
“Ahh.”  He paused, making a mental note to ask her about that sometime too.  “How are you planning to start that process?”
She shrugged.  “I haven’t really thought about it.  I want to say they’ve already got something in the works; I know Celestia has been trading letters with Fudge since the end of last year.  So…”  She shrugged.  “It’s probably just a matter of mentioning it in my next report to Celestia, and letting the ones that actually understand politics decide on the best way- or time- to do stuff like that.”
He nodded approvingly at her approach- and especially at how she was acknowledging her own inexperience.  “Your next report to Celestia?” he asked.
Hailey nodded.  “Yes.  The management team reports not just to the Headmaster but also to Princess Celestia Solaris in Equestria.  In exchange, if stuff starts breaking down over here, we can count on the support of her and her people.”
He nodded slowly this time, unsure whether he should be thankful or worried about that.  “Alright.  You are aware that someone can force you into a marriage contract against your will too, right?”
She shrugged.  “I’m already a citizen of Equestria- and a royal citizen, at that- so I imagine that’ll be an interesting revelation for anyone that tries.  Completely aside from how I’m actually more powerful than the Gods of this world, so I kinda pity the poor sap that tries to enforce one against me.”  She sighed.
He nodded commisseratively- or at least, what he hoped was commisseratively; he’d never gotten that one down.  “So…”  He looked sideways, at the report that was now tall enough they wouldn’t have been able to see so much as the tops of each other’s tall hats over it if she had placed it between them.  If she was right, and she actually was more powerful than the gods that were only theorized to exist, that’d make her one of the most powerful beings in the universe- and he needed to do a lot of thinking before continuing that conversation.  “Ahh, what about Harry?  Who put his name into the Goblet?”
As usual, Hailey didn’t miss a beat.  “Bartemius Crouch Junior,” she answered promptly, then paused for a second.  “And this is where things get complicated.  The thing is, Barty is working to bring Voldemort back to power- and in order for Voldemort to be properly defeated, we need him to come back to power…  on our terms rather than his.  In order for Barty to be successful, we need to avoid outing him, or letting on that we know he’s using Polyjuice Potion to masquerade as Alastor Moody.”
Dumbledore froze for a second.  “He’s…”  He paused again.
Hailey nodded.
“Moody will still be alive,” he told her.  “Polyjuice Potion doesn’t work with parts from a dead man.”
Hailey smiled knowingly.  “He’d be hard pressed to kill Moody anyways- it takes a lot more than just the Killing Curse to kill a god, after all.”
He blinked.  “He’s a god?”
She nodded.  “One of them.  He let himself get captured by Barty with the express purpose of making Voldemort vulnerable again- it’s a plan by the Gods that I was made aware of shortly after I got here this year.”  She smiled.  “So anyways, I gave Barty a detention on Monday for putting Harry’s name in.  It would’ve been more than a single day, but if I did that, I’m pretty sure he’d get revealed too quickly; I’ve been deliberately picking the timeslot he’s been using to brew Polyjuice Potion for his detentions.  On top of that, I’m not sure he even knows where my office is to begin with.”  She chuckled.  “In any case, I’ve got a pretty big trial planned with Sadarina and her family for the day of the Third Task- you can be sure he’s not going to get away with it.”
He scowled.  “What about the Ministry?  A legal trial needs a representative of the DMLE at least.”
She smiled.  “Amelia has offered to bring the, ahh, what did she call it?”  She tapped her chin.  “Right, yes, the kissing brigade.  Especially after Sadarina sent her the experience of meeting him last night.”  She chuckled at his expression; he was allowing his confusion to show, hoping she’d elaborate.  “Ever since her injury last year, Amelia is part of Sadarina’s family too.  Which also means that Sadarina is a representative of the DMLE as well if ever we need her to be- but I don’t expect we will.  After all, Amelia will be there- and as I recall, they’re working on finding a way to get both Fudge and Celestia present too.”
He took a deep breath, and let it out, taking the time to process the revelations.  “That’s going to be…”  He paused.  “Interesting,” he decided.
Hailey laughed.





Hermione looked up when the Portrait Hole opened, and stood quickly as Hailey stepped through it.  “So,” she began, walking briskly forwards.
“So,” Hailey repeated back to her.  They’d gotten dressed and gone straight to the Student Instructor Program Management Team Meeting, after which Hailey had gone alone to take the report to Dumbledore.  Normally, she went with Sadarina…  but Sadarina was having fun protecting the Goblet of Fire; Hermione was going to have to ask the girl, at some point, how she’d managed to make the air so breakable.
She reached over and pecked Hailey on the cheek, trying to ignore the way her face was heating up.  “You said you had something to show me,” she told Hailey- and realized that Hailey was blushing too this time.  Not much, but she was.
“I did,” Hailey agreed.  “Are you ready?”
“Ready?”  She glanced down at herself, then back up.  “Ready as I’ll ever be.”
“Alright,” Hailey smiled, taking her hand.  “This way.”  She turned, and tugged her- gently- out of the room.
Hermione followed.  She’d left all her stuff upstairs, in the dormitory, so she didn’t have to put anything away before vacating the Common Room.
Hailey led her quietly for a couple minutes, before reaching up to the wall.  She knocked twice quickly, slapped it with her palm, then knocked a third time.
She tilted her head, looking around.  “What’s that do?”
“That triggers the privacy spell,” Hailey told her, as they started walking again.  “I set the enchantment, so it’s basically unbreachable- but it means nobody’s about to walk in and realize what we’re doing.  Which is to say, we’re going to walk up and down this part of the corridor a few times thinking about how much we need a fireplace.”
“We need a fireplace?” Hermione asked, looking at her.
She nodded.  “Yes, we do.  The one in Gryffindor Tower wouldn’t work because there’s too many people about to notice when around eighty percent of the school’s population vanishes into it every weekend.”
“Eighty percent?”
“More or less,” Hailey nodded.  “A vast majority of the Equestrians are actually working members of their society, and while they’ve been able to shuffle their schedules around to a quite alarming degree in some cases, they still do need their time off.  I’m working on integrating a Subjective Time Sleeping Chamber into the Room of Requirement to make things easier for them- especially those like Princess Luna, who ‘works’ in Equestria at night, every night.”
Hermione shuddered at the thought of being completely unable to get decent sleep, nevermind lack of study time.  “So…  Why the fireplace?”
“Well,” Hailey said, stopping suddenly and gesturing towards the wall.  “You may have noticed there’s a door here that wasn’t here a minute ago.”
She blinked.  Hailey was right.  There was a door there.
She looked up and down the passage…  There most definitely had not been a minute ago.  “How…  Did you teleport us somewhere?”
She smiled.  “Nope.  Instead, This…”  She pushed the door open, revealing a cavernous room filled with large fireplaces with roaring fires in them, large cauldrons heaped with gleaming powder next to each one.  “Is the Room of Requirement,” Hailey finished.
“...  Wow,” Hermione muttered, gazing around.  It was a magnificent room- and the magic matrix connecting it to the Castle was…  complicated.  Finally, she looked at Hailey again.  “So what do we need a fireplace for again?”
Hailey chuckled, and guided her inside, closing the door behind them.
“Ahh, Hailey!  You busy?”
“A little,” Hailey answered, turning to the girl that had called her name.  The girl’s hair was dark blue, and waved much like Hailey’s did, as she stepped out of a fireplace.  “Do you need something, Rain?”
“Bonbon said she’s gotten the hang of the gabbleblotchits,” she told her.  “She said she’d like some extra help with the lurgid whenever you’re available.”
Hermione could almost hear Hailey raising an eyebrow.  “And she didn’t come here to tell me herself?”
Rain shrugged.  “She’s on a quick mission.  Manehattan again.”
Hailey rolled her eyes.  “You’d think they’d be on their best behavior with half of the city’s regular law enforcement taking time off for Hogwarts, but noooo,” she sighed.  “Tell Charlie I expect to have the STS ready in another week or so, please?  We should be able to start making those guards do their jobs in addition to attending Hogwarts.”
Rain nodded.  “Roger.”  She turned around on the balls of her feet.
“Anyways,” Hailey told Hermione, walking towards one of the other fireplaces.  “This can be a little tricky sometimes, but…”  She shrugged.  “It is what it is, you know.”  She took a pinch of the powder from one of the cauldrons and flung it into the fire…  which promptly turned bright green and roared at least six feet tall.
“Nice,” Hermione observed.
Hailey smiled.  “You’re going to want to tuck your elbows in and close your eyes for this,” Hailey told her, pulling her into the fire.
Hermione gasped when the fire licked her skin…  and it didn’t feel hot at all.  As a matter of fact, it was more of a tickling sensation.  “What…?”  She asked.
Then she was in.  Hailey wrapped her arms around Hermione, holding her close, then-
“Diagon Alley.”
Then they were spinning.