//------------------------------//
// Chapter 82 
// Story: The Accidental Invasion 
// by computerneek 
//------------------------------//

“Alright, so now that this year of Roller Coaster Hogwarts is over,” Hailey began.  It was the final Student Instructor Program Management Team Meeting of the year, timed on the morning of the Leaving Feast and indeed the Hogwarts Express back to King’s Cross.
“ ‘Roller Coaster Hogwarts’?” Bonbon asked.
“Well yeah,” Hailey answered immediately.  “This has been a very eventful year- but I daresay it’s also a bit crazy.  So how about:  Very beginning of the Student Instructor Program.  Incidentally also my first year at Hogwarts.
“I turned myself into a girl every day by whacking myself in the face.  Hermione successfully figured out exactly what was causing it, which was magics that most fully-trained wizards do not understand even now, about a month after she first learned that magic existed.  Tell me that’s normal.”
“A month?” Bonbon asked, looking at Hermione, seated two seats to Hailey’s right.  “You should have told us you were that impressive!”
Hermione blushed.  “It’s nothing,” she muttered.
“Then she invented the Papa Tango a month or so after that, in time to successfully cast it on Halloween,” Hailey continued.
Bonbon blinked.  “That’s…  That’s seriously inhuman.  Are you sure it was within a couple months of the first time she’d learned of magic?”
Hermione nodded.  “It was.”
Hailey chuckled.  “And even Harmonia thought it impossible.  Two months!  There’s a reason Hermione ascended basically the moment her own Papa Tango finished.  But of course.
“Angelina Johnson…  was revealed as a Phoenix-born.  Then we went to protect the Stone from Quirrell, and it was only after the fact that I realized it would actually have been safer if we just camped the entrance.  It was our presence that made it possible for him to get it in the first place, after all.
“Second year.  The Chamber of Secrets.  Ariel.  Ginny.  Polyjuice Potion, which was way overkill.  Lockhart.  Dueling club, in which I demonstrated eighty percent of all non-lethal duel-suitable charms there are on Lockhart, without even facing him, by having Snape bounce them back at him in a mock duel.  He demonstrated the other twenty percent.”
A wave of laughter swept around the room.
“I mean seriously.  The Goddess of Reports.  Even I don’t know where I found the paper for that!  Then we went into the Chamber of Secrets to play a quick game of Dungeons and Basilisks, demolishing all of the Chamber’s support structures in the process.  It’s now full of dirt, rock, and lakewater, by the way.
“Year Three.  Goddess of Patroni.  Enough said.”
The laughter was stronger this time.
“And the whole Sirius Black scare was a game to you, because you’d already met him and already knew it all,” Bonbon observed.  “Why didn’t you end it early?”
“I still ask myself that,” Hailey sighed.  “I knew everything I needed to know before I ever went to the Castle- I could have had Pettigrew captured and Black declared innocent before Sadarina ever woke up in the Hospital Wing.
“So.  Summer.  We killed Draco by pushing a fake down the stairs.  I learned about menstrual cycles.”
Bonbon raised an eyebrow.  “What’s that?”
Hailey shared a look with Hermione, then sighed.  “A natural part of how human girls’ bodies work,” she sighed.  “And if you don’t know about it…  Whatever.  We’ll explain later.
“Anyways.  Quidditch World Cup happened that summer, and I got declared the Second Coming by muggles everywhere.”  She snorted.  “Still not a true God, though, even now.  So I broke the Triwizard Tournament, and later realized I was never bound by the contract anyways, so it would’ve been no big deal if ‘Harry’ had simply never appeared, leaving us with just three Champions.”
“But Silver was a Champion too…?” Hermione asked.
Hailey shrugged.  “She wasn’t bound by the Contract either, but nobody thought to check.  Bit stupid, considering how thoroughly each and every one of us are trained to do exactly that, isn’t it?”
Everyone nodded.
“But of course, I was playing with time,” Hailey went on, “so I broke the Tournament, then got on the train to Hogwarts.  Went there, my parents were resurrected younger than me.  They…  kinda disappeared, didn’t they?”
“Almost like we’re living in a badly-written novel,” Bonbon agreed.
“Exactly.  Then we…  randomly turned into ponies at the Welcoming Feast and started feeding each other.  What in the world possessed me to do that in public, privacy spell or not?”
She looked around the room, but nobody answered.
“So we continue on.  Treated fake-Moody like a chew toy and, despite knowing exactly where Voldemort was and having an alternate method to kill him perfectly available, I had to follow the Gods’ plan to resurrect him to death.  I was already a couple orders of magnitude stronger than those real gods!  So we kicked Moody around.  Turned that into a game.  Life isn’t a game!  Unless of course, we’re living in a badly written novel.  Or, heavens forbid, living in a badly written game.  Maybe they’re speedrunning us.
“And let’s not forget the sudden and very strange visit that Hermione Gate, Hermione Greeter, and Hermione Impossible made, right around that same time.  And how I ferried them back to Hermione’s Inc.”
Hermione raised an eyebrow.  “Why don’t I know about this?”
“Because you’re not the only Hermione in the Multiverse,” she answered.  “I can introduce you, if you want.”
She tilted her head.  “True.  And it’ll be a few chapters before I appear again, so I don’t even have to worry about that.”
Twilight blinked at her.  “Chapters…?”
Hailey ignored it.  “Anyways, Crabbe and Goyle suddenly became super-human for a single scene for some strange reason, and promptly lost that power.  And guess-who gave Parkinson an insane amount of detention for throwing Silver’s name in…  when it didn’t actually mean anything.  What the hell?”
Morning blushed.  “Sorry, I wasn’t thinking.”
Hailey shrugged.  “It was over five chapters ago, so it doesn’t really matter any more.  Anyways.  Next up, I showed Hermione around Ponyville a little.  That took a couple chapters.  Ran into Angelina there, and Rarity made a few dresses.  Not sure why that was important, it’s one of the few things everyone knows.”
“What are you talking about?” Starlight asked.
“Then the Tournament actually started, and we had to get Righteous Fury imprisoned for some reason,” Hailey continued, not even noticing Starlight’s question.  “Or did he get that death sentence?  Doesn’t matter, he was a one-off anyways.
“Few days later, Norberta came with the other dragons.  Or was it weeks?  Who knows, it was only the next chapter.  Then I hired Queen Chrysalis, now Queen Crystal, to take Harry’s place during the Yule Ball, while I went out with the same date Harry does in canon:  Parvati Patil.  Am I that unimaginative?
“Then I went to Hogwarts and found a house-elf in my vault.  Who puts elves in vaults, under piles of gold?  It’s like they’re trying to kill someone!”  She sighed.  “Discovered some ancient house.  Restored it with what was effectively a snap of my fingers…  then it seems to have disappeared off the surface of the Earth, because I can’t find either it or Aurelia, the house-elf that was working on repairing it.
“So after the Yule Ball took three chapters and a particularly creepy look by the imposter, nevermind the ridiculousness that was Ronelda, the Patils got Papa Tangoed and became water elementals in plenty of time for the second Task…  all so Harry could knock himself out against the statue.  Let’s not forget the highly contrived event of those Slytherins throwing Fleur’s golden egg out onto the lake explicitly so Parvati would dive in to retrieve it and discover her Elemental powers.”
A series of snorts sounded around the room.
“That accident, of course, seemed to make Fleur super-smart all of the sudden.  Just a couple chapters after that, she learned seven years of Runes and Arithmancy in just a month or two, all so she could make an auto-solver for the Third Task.  Yet, apparently super-smart isn’t actually all that smart, because there’s nothing in the rules to stop any of the Champions from…  summoning a broomstick and flying over the hedges!  That task could have been a broom race instead of a challenge, and nobody thought of it!
“Then…  the Graveyard.  Whoever thought of killing and resurrecting Silver was an idiot because it makes no narrative sense, and it makes no sense for the deities to have the identities mentioned- they were shoehorned into those identities.  Then Fleur reforming Voldemort by imprinting him-!  And Voldemort turning out to be transfeminine as well, as the reason for him to become a Dark Lord!?  Insane, I tell you!  What’s next, is Fleur going to ascend for making pancakes?”
“Yes, next week,” Bonbon answered suddenly.
“Later this chapter,” Hermione nodded calmly.
Hailey shook her head sadly.  “I was trying to be facetious,” she moaned.
“So what’s all this about ‘chapters’ and ‘scenes’?” Twilight asked.
Hailey looked up.  “It’s…?” she began.
“I think you’re getting a little too violent with the Fourth Wall again, Hailey,” Hermione informed her.  “Nobody else is going to understand.”
She rolled her eyes.  “Right, yeah.  I do that a lot, don’t I?  Just…  not on camera.”





“Come in,” Hailey sighed, looking up from her desk.  Someone had knocked on her office door, even though the Leaving Feast was due to start in just a couple minutes.
The door opened, and Crystal stepped in.  “Uh- Hi, Hailey,” she muttered, closing the door behind her.
Hailey turned fully towards her, and raised an eyebrow.  “You’re uncharacteristically nervous today,” she observed.
Crystal flinched, then let out a nervous chuckle.  “Well…  Yes.  The thing is, a lot of changelings were making noises about wanting to come here, so I polled the Hive a few minutes ago.”
She nodded calmly.  “Okay.  How many new students can we expect next year?”
She winced.  “All of them.  I’m not sure how I can tell them no, though.”
She tilted her head.  “Isn’t your word absolute?”
“Well yes, it is, and they’re even magically compelled to comply, but if I can’t justify it to myself, I’m going to feel guilty about it, and-!”
“So we’ll have a lot of changelings next year,” Hailey interrupted, nodding.  “We’ll want to restrict the numbers, but beyond that, it should be a problem.  If I estimate from what happened this year, we should be able to handle as many as…”  She paused, then nodded.  “Seven hundred thousand or thereabouts, without taking the Hivemind into account.”
Crystal baulked.  “That-  That’s a third of the Hive!”
She shrugged.  “And it’ll be fun to manage at that number, but that’s beside the point.  I don’t see why we can’t let them come, so long as they aren’t abandoning duties back in Equestria.  I can name quite a few ponies that have done that.”  She tilted her head.  “Though I have to ask, why so many so quickly?”
Crystal’s gaze fell.  “They heard about Morning.”
“About…  Morning?  Isn’t she just a drone?”
“No, she’s a Jewel.  She’s also really good with the whole disguise thing- even I didn’t realize she was a changeling until Diggory came back with the news Silver was dead.”
“A jewel,” Hailey repeated.
“Jewel,” Crystal corrected.  “Capital J Jewel.”  She sighed.  “Jewels are indistinguishable from drones to anything but another changeling, and are an extremely valuable resource for the Hive, so they’re a secret class to the outside, never used in invasions or whatever.”  She paused.  “Hmm.  You know how we, uh, eat emotions to survive, right?”
Hailey nodded.  “I do.”
“Well…”  She sighed.  “There’s a few different ways we can absorb emotional energy.
“The first is ambient absorption.  Picking the energy we need out of the air and absorbing it.  Absolutely no risk to anything- except there isn’t a location in Equestria where that’s enough to permanently sustain a changeling.  Hogwarts is a different story, but that’s beside the point.
“The second is the active drain, where we drain a pony of their emotional energy.  It makes them exhausted, and if we go too far, we can cripple or even kill them.  Unfortunately, that’s the main method the Hive uses to survive, even now- we don’t really have a choice.
“The third…  If a changeling manages to enter into a true, loving relationship with a pony…  The freely offered love carries many times the energy we could have extracted from that same pony, and doesn’t exhaust them to give.  That…  That’s what we call Jewels.  There’s actually a physical evolution to them as well, but as I said, it doesn’t change much- they just live about three times as long, to match the pony lifespan of three hundred of your years, and can store much more energy within themselves.  We call the pony they bonded to their Facet- and since a single Jewel living with their Facet can support a good fifty thousand changelings all on their own, both of them are considered treasures of the Hive, even though the Facets very carefully never find out about the Hive- and harm to either one will be avenged.”
“And…  someone hurt Morning?” Hailey guessed.
She shook her head.  “No.  I realized she was a changeling when I recognized the emotional thunderstorm of a Jewel finding out her Facet had been killed.”  She sighed.  “Not counting Morning, there are exactly three Jewels in the Hive right now… and only one of them still has her Facet.”
“Ahh,” Hailey nodded.  “So, they want to kill Yaxley for killing one of Morning’s Facets, even if she was promptly resurrected.”
Crystal nodded.  “Yes.”  Then she blinked.  “Wait, Facets?  She has multiple?”
She smiled.  “She does.”
“...  Oh.  Well…”  She paused.  “If…  If a Changeling ever manages to acquire multiple Facets simultaneously…”  She sighed.  “The interplay of love between them has a massive multiplicative effect on how much energy they can produce, making them even more valuable.  And conveniently, achieving two at once causes them to evolve into a broodmother- boosting their lifespan to a thousand years or so, and giving them the ability to lay eggs.”  She paused to look down at her hands.  “The Hive has one broodmother right now, but one of her Facets is still alive, though on her deathbed, so she hasn’t been serving in that capacity.
“Once upon a time, I myself had four Facets.  I was incredibly lucky, yet also unlucky; one of them died just weeks after I met the fourth one and evolved into the immortal Queen I am now.”  She sighed, and closed her eyes.  “Naturally, they’re all long gone by now- but for those two weeks, I collected enough to feed the entire current Hive five times over.”  She paused, then opened her eyes and looked up at Hailey.  “So…  May I ask how many Morning has, if you know…?”
Hailey paused, then started counting on her fingers.  “Um…  Not counting Morning herself?  Eight, I think.”
Crystal didn’t move for several seconds.  “Eight?” she asked.
Hailey nodded.  “Eight.”
“Eight,” Crystal muttered.  “Eight is the last threshold Chrysanthemum told me about.  Noling has ever achieved it- not even her, she was only a Broodmother, having gotten her fourth facet the day after her first died.  It…  That would make her a Changeling Princess, evolution effects unknown since none have ever existed, and senior even to me in the Hive.”  She sighed.  “No wonder it took so long for me to recognize her for what she is.”
“Princess, huh?” Hailey muttered, rubbing her chin.  “Well…  Her Facets include two alicorns, two pegasi that have done something very interesting and don’t realize it yet, an earth pony, a crystal earth pony, a dementor, and, er, whatever I’ve become, so it kinda makes sense.”  She tilted her head.  “I’m aware that drones, broodmothers, and Queens all look different, and that the higher up they are, the more pony-like they look- to the point of Queens actually having manes.”  She looked at Crystal, who nodded.  “Makes me wonder if her True Form actually looks like a pony, or if she’s still recognizably changeling?”
“That’s a good question,” she mused, then sighed.  “So…  You really want to let the Hive just come here?”
Hailey shrugged.  “Like I said, I don’t see a reason not to, as long as it’s in manageable numbers.  Just, um, it would be helpful to make sure they’re going after Yaxley, who did the deed, not Voldemort, because the only reason he ordered it was because he felt like he had to.  He explained it to me after the Third Task- he views the Dark Lord Voldemort as the biggest mistake he’s ever made, and has been looking for a way to end it for a very long time now.”  She sighed.  “One of the things that makes it difficult is that he has to destroy his legacy first- if he doesn’t, someone else will take over and be even worse than he ever was.”  She paused.  “Which means it technically wasn’t even Yaxley but the legacy of Lord Voldemort that killed her.”
Crystal nodded slowly.  “Alright, I think I can pull that one,” she said.  “So, we’re going to be rescuing Voldemort from the social monster that is the Dark Lord Voldemort while we kill the same monster?”
Hailey nodded.  “Yup.”  She paused.  “It’ll probably be ideal if Morning never finds out about it; she’s still afraid of running into the Changeling Queen.  Anyways, I wonder how much longer we can wait before she realizes what she is?”  She chuckled.  “Anyways, Yaxley will be going on trial for next week, theoretically- but there’s a better-than-even chance he’ll just go into hiding instead, to serve the Dark Lord and eventually get killed by aurors, the Order of the Phoenix, or a changeling, whoever gets to him first.”  She tilted her head.  “Speaking of the Order, if you want to drop by the Dursleys’ sometime this summer in an adult form, I can probably get you invited to it; that would give you access to their information networks and plans, among other things.”  She chuckled a second time.  “Even Voldemort himself is actually a part of the Order; he’s already aware of a couple double agents, and will be using them to tell us about anything he thinks we should know.”





Three days after she’d gotten home from Beauxbatons, Fleur Delacour dressed quickly while her sister was still grumbling under her blankets, and let out a soft sigh when she finished.
Exactly as she had told Madame Maxime, she was one of five- and even the limited space of the Carriage made her home look roomy.
She didn’t have a room to herself.  Nobody did, in her house; she shared a room with her oldest sister, the youngest three shared a room, and her parents shared the third room.  Then of course, since her family firmly believed that any Veela should always keep herself dainty and beautiful, she had decided that it would probably be a bad idea to show them her muscles.  Fortunately, her new Equestrian biology was much happier with mornings than she ever had been before, so it wasn’t that hard to dress with nobody watching.
Possibly even more fortunately, her family knew she’d won a thousand galleons; she’d had Hailey take her to Gringotts a couple days before the end of term, and exchanged a mere twenty of her thousand bars for the galleons her family would be expecting.  She’d also promptly spent some of it on new robes for around the house; after she’d returned her Beauxbatons robes to the school, finishing out a seventh year in a row of wearing borrowed extras, she hadn’t owned any clothes- robes or otherwise- that fit her even remotely well.
And, just like with her wetsuit, Madam Malkin had been happy to custom-build her new robes, which would help mask her muscles.  Apparently, the woman really wanted to be a designer, but just didn’t have the ideas to cut it- so was actually thankful for her challenges.
So she flicked her hair out behind her and, thankful that the Papa Tango had only given it an extra sheen that had made her mother, Apolline, practically glow with pride, left the room.  A glance at the clock in the hall- the only clock in the house- informed her that she had time to make some pancakes for the family to enjoy before her father would need to go to work.
She glanced sideways at the small basket sitting on the counter next to the pantry as she entered, and smiled.  Her family often couldn’t afford much more than a starvation ration, let alone magic wands, so there were only two in the family- her mother’s, and her father’s.  She’d used her mother’s at Beauxbatons; it was her grandmother’s old wand, which the old Veela had possessed the influence to commission from some wandmaker or another.  She’d long forgotten which one Ollivander had said it was during the Weighing of the Wands.
Then, she drew her shiny new wand out of her hair.  It had cost her an amount that would have taken her father two weeks to earn- but against a thousand galleons, much less the fifty thousand that her total winnings were worth, seven or eight galleons was basically nothing, and nobody else was up to see her drawing it from such an unlikely place.
She took a deep breath as she faced the stove, then pointed her wand, concentrated, and cast the spell she’d spent the last few days coming up with.  It was going to be quite power-hungry, so she fed it the same way she fed the hammerspace charm- straight from her wellspring, rather than relying on her wand, even though she was controlling it with the wand.
Exactly as it had when she’d tried it out in a few mock duels with Twilight (who she had beaten every time, despite Twilight being noticeably better each time), her new wand behaved a lot better for her.  It channeled her magic far more efficiently, and was about three times as responsive- which lined up with what Ollivander had told her, about never getting as good of results with another wizard’s wand.
It took her close to a minute to fully cast the spell and tie it off- then she leaned against the wall to watch as it started its work, twirling her wand idly.  She watched as ingredients appeared out of nowhere, mixed themselves into batter in mid-air without a bowl, then finally poured itself onto the air over the suddenly hot stovetop to get cooked into pancakes.  She giggled softly at the spectacle of self-cooking pancakes, stowed her wand, and walked across the kitchen to get some plates while they cooked.
She stopped halfway across the room, though, when she brought her arm back down from stowing her wand; she seemed to have acquired a visible silver aura.
“What in the world…?” she muttered, staring at her hand as the aura intensified.  It was almost like when she had discovered her Unique Talent- except, it wasn’t.  The aura was already much stronger than that, and she wasn’t floating in the air.
Then there was a brilliant flash of silver light…  and she wasn’t in her kitchen.
“Woah!” someone cried in alarm.
She whirled around, still taking in the odd, cloudy landscape, which made it look like thick, ankle-deep fog was rolling across the ground.
There, in front of her, was…
She blinked a couple of times, but it didn’t disappear.  It was a tiny white…  pony.  It had a flowing rainbow mane and tail, tiny white wings, and what looked like a sun stamped on its…  Hips?  Flanks?  Whatever they were.  Its long white horn only barely reached up to her chin, and it seemed to be recovering from a surprise, staring at her with huge purple eyes.
“Uh,” she muttered, taking a step back.  What was going on?  Where was she?  What was this pony creature?
“Oh,” the pony said suddenly, relaxing her stance.  “Sorry about that, I wasn’t expecting…”  She took a deep breath, and let it out, before offering a small bow.  “I’m Princess Celestia of Equestria.  Who might you be?”
She blinked again.  Princess Celestia?  But-!
She took a deep breath.  Princess Celestia.  The woman that had sent the thousand bars to replace the thousand galleons from the Ministry.  And, incidentally, the ruler of Equestria.  She let out her breath, then bent down and knelt on the ground, so they were more or less on the same level.  “Fleur,” she told the mare.  “Fleur Delacour.”
“Oh, the Triwizard Champion,” Celestia smiled.  “I didn’t think anyone was going to be ascending around now.”
“Ascending?” she asked, scowling at her knees.  That couldn’t be it- she was making pancakes, not doing something powerful or miraculous or whatever.  “I’m not sure how I can be.  But…”  She looked up.  “May I ask why you’re here?”
“Oh, I thought I’d visit Harmonia,” Celestia told her, then chuckled.  “Now that I’ve learned all the techniques I’ll need to do so.  Then you came along, and…”  She paused.  “I must say, it’s really interesting to see the scale difference between our worlds exposed so blatantly.  I must be too used to being bigger than everypony around me.”  She chuckled again.
“Ah, heh heh, yeah,” Fleur muttered, trying to imagine a world populated by ponies.  Were they all waist-high or something?  Or was it just that humans were big?
“Anyways, I’m curious what you did to earn your ascension?”
“I was making pancakes,” she muttered.
“Making…  pancakes?” Celestia asked.  “Huh.  There’s probably more to it than that, but…”  She sighed.  “Harmonia probably knows.  Oh, and it looks like you’re about done.”
Fleur blinked.  “I am?”  She looked down at herself, and paused.  She had that visible silver aura once more.  There were even bits of silver light flickering about her.  “Oh.  Um- it won’t hurt, will it?”
Celestia laughed.  “No, it won’t.  You might be a little different when you get back, though.”
The magic intensified, gradually lifting her into the air until she couldn’t touch the ground…  Then, in a brilliant flash of silver light, she was back in her kitchen.  She dropped about a foot to the floor, stumbled, and caught herself on the counter, breathing heavily.  Finally, she straightened up, and looked around.  She was still alone in the kitchen, though she could hear the noises of the rest of her family getting ready for the day.
And she seemed to have two extra appendages on her back- probably wings.  She was tempted to unfurl one to make sure, but decided against it.  If her family saw them, they would start asking questions- questions that would reveal how different she was.  She shivered, and looked back at her pancakes.
There was a large stack of pancakes floating in the air in front of the stove, waiting for a plate to land on- and it looked like there was enough batter still floating in the air to make another batch or so.
So she plucked some dishes from the cupboards, and started setting them out.  When she placed a plate in the middle of the table, the stack of pancakes flew over and landed on it.
Then she drew her wand again and cast a second spell, causing various toppings to appear, floating in the air, and land on their serving dishes around the table.  Finally, she put her wand away and walked around the table to her seat while some fresh pancakes joined the serving platter and the last of the batter divided itself onto the air over the stove.
“Oooh, pancakes!”
She looked up at Gabrielle’s excited announcement, and smiled.  “Yeah.  I figured I had the time, you know?”
Gabrielle giggled, and ran to her chair.
Appoline was next to appear in the door.  “That looks expensive,” she muttered, looking across the table.
Fleur grinned.  “Not when it’s made so entirely with magic,” she told her.  “I didn’t use any ingredients, just magic.”
Her father appeared next.  “Magic can do that?”
She nodded.  “Yes, magic can do that.”
He sighed, and shook his head, before walking towards his place at the table.
“Where did you learn to do that?” Appoline asked for him.
She grinned.  “Hogwarts,” she answered.  “After I very nearly got killed or severely injured in both the first two tasks, I studied anything and everything I could get my hands on- and their Student Instructor program was more than willing to oblige.  One of them had even combined Arithmancy and Ancient Runes to create a…  language of sorts that I can use to tell magic exactly what I want it to do.”  She grinned.
“And…  I hope it was useful, then?”
She nodded.  “Oh, it was.  I wrote a spell to make magic solve the Third Task’s maze for me- and would’ve been stunned by an imposter if an alert spell I’d set hadn’t warned me that he was attacking!”  She didn’t like labeling it an ‘alert spell’, but it was close enough- even though she hadn’t known about the anticipatory magic sense of a Raeth at the time.  Hailey had explained it to her later, when she’d asked how she had been able to dodge spells that she couldn’t possibly have seen coming.