After a day and a half in the hospital, Sunset was getting restless. She was still appreciative of the plain and simple concept of not being in Faery any longer, but the only book they had on hoof was an old, tattered, hand-scribed copy of filly-stories—though apparently the humans called them fairy tales, which was a terrifying statement about how early in life children needed to be aware of the dangers of their dimensional neighbors.
As interesting as a read as the book was as an insight into the dangers of both fairy and wizard kind, though, it was still only one book and Sunset was nothing if not a voracious consumer of knowledge.
"I don't get it," Sunset said, flipping idly through the book for the third time, turning the pages with the sparkling teal glow of her magic. "I mean, I don't get a lot of the things in this book, but it's the book in general I don't get."
Luna, who was in the process of doing a pencil drawing of Sunset which was coming out quite well, looked up from her work in silent question.
"I mean," Sunset continued, not really needing further input to have a conversation on her own. "You have a printing press, right? In color, even?"
Again, Luna didn't need to answer; it was rhetorical. The Quibbler had been one of the ongoing topics in the Lovegood home, even in the short time since she'd been there.
"So where are all the printed books?" she asked, gesturing at the levitating book expressively with both of her hooves. "Hospitals and doctor's offices aren't known for their quality literature, but they are known for having literature—or at least they are back home. "This thing was copied with a quill, which makes no sense even if you do it by magic."
Luna finally had a reason to interject herself in Sunset's solo conversation. "How many books do you need that it's worth setting up the plates for the press?" she asked.
Sunset stopped mid-rant, not having been prepared to answer that kind of question. "...Well, I don't know how many books a book run is; thousands? Tens of thousands?"
"Wow!" Luna exclaimed in naked awe. "I saw a delivery come in at Flourish & Blotts once and I don't think it was more than twenty books!"
"Well, sure," Sunset said, dismissing it as not too unusual for a small bookstore. "But that's just one bookstore."
Luna gave Sunset a blank look over the top of her sketchbook, then her eyes widened in joyous realization. "That's right! There must also be a book store in Hogsmeade!"
Now it was Sunset's turn to stare blankly as she processed that. "You mean... there are only two bookstores?"
"Well," Luna said, thinking hard. "There must be more on the continent, I suppose—and elsewhere in the world too—but that's it for here, I think."
Sunset scrunched up her face, thinking back to the short while she spent in the Floo office back at the ministry. It had been difficult to get a real idea of the magic-using population since so many of the floo addresses had been crossed out, but in hindsight, it had still only been one book, even if it had been a big one. The pins of floo locations on the map had told a clearer story and she'd thought they seemed sparse at the time, but she hadn't really thought about the scale of it when the two communities didn't interact at all.
Sunset shook her head, trying to wrap her head around the idea. "So that means there's less of you on this entire island than there are ponies in Canterlot alone?" That didn't seem so crazy, except for the fact that Sunset had seen the non-wizarding parts of the maps, and they'd given her the impression of densely-packed industrialization on the level of Manehattan back home.
That was... quite the disparity.
"Wait," Sunset said, having made a connection that explained an incongruity that had surprised her. "The printing press—and that shotgun—were those 'muggle' inventions?"
"Yep!" Luna briefly beamed with pride, though it was short-lived as the exact nature of the subject matter dragged down the conversation. "Daddy spent a lot of time in the muggle world after we lost mommy because they're so much better at making things with iron. He promised that it'd all be worth it if anything like that happened again..."
Sunset winced at having brought that up. Without prompting, she sighed, got up and walked over to Luna's side, where she set herself down, hoping to avoid another of the sudden bouts of crying that had been coming and going for the past day. It didn't really get in the way of her thinking, so she didn't mind overmuch.
'The muggle world,' huh? It wasn't the first time the phrase had been used around her, but she hadn't realized just how true it was. Sunset's initial thought had been that the secretive minority of magic-users were like the nobility back home, setting themselves above the rest because they were better, but the truth seemed to be a bit more benign, at least on the surface.
Oh, it certainly was anything but equitable, but the two really did seem to be as separate as two worlds could be while occupying the same space, if only the eccentric actually took advantage of the muggles' industriousness and did so without actually taking advantage of them. No doubt, if you went digging, the crimes of those with access to memory spells would hardly be called harmless, but compared to some of the stand-outs in equestrian history like Sombra, not being a tyrannical dystopian empire was more than she had come to expect.
That did beg the question, though: was there anything in the muggle world that she could take advantage of? She wasn't too keen on those mechanical carriages—and not just because she'd been hit by one. She had wings, after all, and she could teleport, which pretty much covered all the methods of transportation that she needed.
On the other hoof—and still not related to being hit by a metal death machine—it might not be a terrible idea to stock up on iron weapons just in case the fair folk came calling, since they did seem to be capable of surviving in this world for a time, according to the stories. Sure, Queen Titania had pretty much let them go with her blessing, if you could call a knife in the back a blessing, but if there was anything she'd learned throughout the whole ordeal, it was not to trust their mood from one moment to the next. Really, not trusting them at all was a fine option.
Oh, and Xenophilius could be coming home any day now with his wife and a fae army on his heels, so there was that possibility too.
There was probably more than that that the muggle world had to offer, but she didn't have much to go on but that it was industrialized without the use of magic. With only herself and Luna in the household, it may be that the muggle world would have better access to some of the comforts and necessities that they would need to get by, but other than that, it wasn't as if a place without magic would help at all at getting her home.
...Except, that wasn't true, was it? The statue where the portal had been anchored had been on one of those mechanized carriages, meaning that it, in particular, was in the muggle world, and at the moment it was her only surefire way home—if she could find it.
...
It was then that Sunset realized that she really did not want to go into the muggle world just then, and she didn't know if she wanted to blame being hit by a carriage, the uneasy way the magicless population had reacted to her being hit by a carriage or her most recent bad experience with going to other worlds where she didn't know what the rules were.
Perhaps it was all three.
That didn't matter, though. She'd have to get over it. There were just too many potential resources in the muggle world to ignore it completely. She just... didn't need to do it right away. Not without research and preparation. Not again.
She'd learned that lesson.
Sunset Shimmer was good at learning lessons.
***
The knock that came a short while later was somehow different from the knocks that Sunset and Luna had gotten used to announcing the visits of healers and apprentices. It was, if such a description could be ascribed to a knock, crisp and deliberate, and unlike some of the healers, actually waited for a response before coming barging in.
Judging Luna to still be a bit melancholy, Sunset took the initiative to invite the knocker in with a casual, "Come in."
The woman who entered was tall for a human female, Sunset thought, though maybe it was simply that she stood straighter than the rest and had about her an air of dignity and propriety, with rectangular eyeglasses perched upon her nose and her silver-gray hair tied in a tight bun under something like a stereotypical pointed wizard's hat in black, though the bells had been left off which Sunset thought was an improvement. Her robe, on the other hoof, was a slightly muted forest green with a subtle pattern to it, which would have come off quite stately and refined, Sunset thought, if it didn't remind her quite so much of Oberon, the king of the summer court, who had a very similar look about him.
"Miss Lovegood, I presume?" the woman asked not unkindly, though with a bit of an accent that Sunset hadn't heard from the humans before, like something from the Sheepland Isles.
Luna, for her part, seemed to have perked up, but only warily. "Yes, ma'am," she responded. "Are you...?"
"Minerva McGonagall," the woman introduced herself with a small inclination of her head, though a brief shadow of confusion passed over her face for the barest of moments and her eyes subtly scanned the room, though they glossed right over Sunset. "Deputy Headmistress of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry."
At this, Luna came fully alive, hope and wonderment sparkling in her eyes, though it was shortly tempered by concern. "There isn't anything wrong with my application, is there?"
"No, Miss Lovegood," she assured Luna, setting her at ease. "Your name showed up in the book of admissions the same as all the others, and it has never been wrong. It is a bit of a surprise, I admit, since I do believe that until a few days ago you weren't due for Hogwarts until next year.
"There is, however, the matter of your... Crumple-horned Snorkack, which you have registered as your familiar." She did her best to say the phrase with dignity, but it was clearly a challenge. "As Crumple-horned Snorcacks are not something that anyone on staff at Hogwarts has any experience with, I felt it would be prudent to perform a visit and ascertain whether or not any particular accommodations needed to be made."
Luna considered this for a moment. "Well, we know they're not fond of lemons, I remember that," she offered, lost in thought as it had been an entire year for her since the two of them had met. "Oh—but they do like mangoes, no matter how much they shouldn't have them."
Sunset was torn between exasperation and indignance. "Okay, for one," she said enumerating her objections. "I told you I like lemons in food just fine; I just don't like having whole, raw lemons shoved in my mouth! And second, that totally wasn't my fault! Mangos, in any sensible, rightways world do not normally enslave you for all eternity! And besides—it was a seedless mango! The damn things are, like, half seed normally!"
"The mango did not enslave you," Luna informed her quite simply. "That was you giving up your name. The mango just trapped you there."
Sunset rolled her eyes. "Yes, I know, I was there," she insisted. "But that's not the point. The point is that I can eat normal mangoes just fine—though you still shouldn't shove the whole fruit in my mouth. I'm pretty sure that if you did that with a mango, I'd die."
The back-and-forth between Sunset and Luna was interrupted when Sunset was hit by something not unlike a failsafe spell which had, of course, come from the only person in the room that wasn't arguing about the appropriate consumption of fruit.
Both Sunset and Luna turned to look at the deputy headmistress in sync.
"Okay, for one, that was rude," Sunset informed the adult. "And two—I am not enchanted, transformed, potioned, or otherwise under the effect of any magic, malign or otherwise. This is just how I look, thank you very much."
"What do you call gaining wings, then?" Luna questioned, throwing off the certainty of Sunset's declaration with her curiosity.
"I ascended!" Sunset hotly insisted, her wings ruffing, full as they were of indignation.
"So you metamorphosed?" Luna suggested.
Well... "...Something like that," Sunset begrudgingly allowed.
Luna hmmed. "Well, with the wings and all, this form must be the Crumple-horned Snorkack's imago, then. I take it that before that, you were a pupa?" She started to get excited. "Oh! Oh! Did the horn come in when you grew out of your larval stage?"
Sunset resented being compared to an insect, not the least because she didn't want to foster any kind of comparison to the faeries as interpreted by her physicality, but she was interrupted once more in her objection by the deputy headmistress clearing her throat. "Am I to understand that the two of you have been to Faery?" she asked, cocking one eyebrow.
Sunset lit her horn with her teal magic and retrieved the shirt that they'd won from Titania, with the words 'I tried to bargain with the faerie queen and all I got was this lousy t-shirt' on the front, followed by '...and stabbed in the back' on the back. The shirt was once more a pristine white thanks to one of the healer's apprentices and the knife had gone back to being a simple image, thanks to fae bullshit.
The shirt was, if nothing else, very useful in that it was entirely self-explanatory and served to summarize the situation quite well all on its own.
There was a sharp intake of breath from the deputy headmistress, and her eyes widened a bit before looking back to Luna with concern. Sunset couldn't help but compare the woman to Princess Celestia at that moment, though the princess was much better at schooling her features than even the aged witch, which could be put down to their relative ages and levels of experience, considering the princess was thousands of years old and a politician to boot.
McGonagall's actual response, though, was not what either Sunset or Luna had been expecting.
"Och," she cursed, her accent coming through in that moment. "I dinnae ken what it means that Mab knows muggle jokes, but I canny expect it's anything good."
Both Sunset and Luna cringed visibly at the misattribution and Sunset in particular checked the room to make sure that the seelie queen wasn't inexplicably present as had happened while they were debating solutions at the Faery-side portal site. Luna seemed comparatively unperturbed in her stillness until one remembered that she had sight out of one of Sunset's eyes and having the both of them spinning their heads in different directions like meerkats probably wouldn't do her any favors.
Fortunately, the seelie queen was not, in fact, present, but that didn't mean that Sunset was happy about the scare and decided to express it in the only way she knew how: acerbically. "If you're going to tempt fate, you could at least use the right name," she rebuked rather snappishly. "I got the impression that the two of them aren't exactly on friendly terms."
To McGonagall's credit, she seemed properly contrite and apologized, and this time when Luna ran her fingers through Sunset's mane, she got the impression that it wasn't for the girl's benefit.
Well... okay then. Good. Sunset calmed herself, mollified, and decided to change the subject, to an extent. Using her magic, she retrieved the t-shirt from the floor where she'd dropped it in her panic. "You're saying this is a muggle joke, then?" she prompted.
McGonagall took the change of subject gracefully and nodded, returning to her more precise diction and look of slight bemusement, as if there was something that she was trying to puzzle out. "Oh, yes. That is a distinctly muggle style of shirt, and the printing is something that they do, as is the phrase."
Sunset hmmed, taking that in as she folded the shirt and put it away. She was having the beginning of a thought, but McGonagall had paused for only half a breath before asking, "Pardon, but if you do not recognize it one way or the other, and you insist that you are not transformed, then are you fae?"
"Oh, hay no," Sunset said with a complex mix of abhorrence, disdain and incredulity. Fortunately, she had the presence of mind to smoothly declare, "I'm a completely norma—I mean, a completely exceptional Crumple-horned Snorkack, and any bits or aspects that one or both of us may have traded to the seelie queen constitutes privileged, private, protected personal medical information."
McGonagall looked quite unconvinced at the claim. "And you purport to be Miss Lovegood's familiar?" she asked.
"That's what the paperwork says," Sunset confidently declared, quite aware that she wasn't being entirely convincing, but also relatively certain that the deputy headmistress favored the proper way of doing things and that the letter of the law would support her leaning on it.
"Quite," McGonagall neutrally agreed, though as it turned out, she wasn't to be entirely dissuaded. "And may I ask, simply as a matter of clarification, of course, what form your familiar bond takes?" she asked, one brow raised in curiosity.
Sunset hmmed appreciatively. That was a good question, since it was quite likely that a young child and a talking animal would be entirely ignorant about what actually constituted a familiar bond—especially since that was, in fact, the case. Nonetheless, Sunset did have a strategy that she was rather confident in.
Strangely enough, that strategy was to tell the truth.
"Well, I'm pretty sure some part of me is inside her and she can see through my eyes," Sunset offered, and received a light chiding from Luna for it.
"Don't lie," Luna primly instructed her.
Sunset rolled her eyes, which she was acutely aware Luna could see her doing, given the subject matter. "At least I can lie," she groused good naturedly, then looked back up at McGonagall. "Sorry, she can see through one of my eyes," she clarified, with Luna nodding along.
Ironically, she hadn't actually been being cagey with her answer, just generalizing. It might seem odd that she would be so free with what could have been an advantage if it were kept secret, but that would, of course, require the eleven-year-old Luna to keep it a secret, which pretty much said it all. Sunset was fairly sure she'd already written it down on her registration form anyway, and securing her legal identity and status as a familiar was a practical enough way to spend the information.
McGonagall made note of that—literally, she wrote it down on the scroll she was carrying, which was a feat since there didn't seem to be any magic involved—and left it at that, not feeling the need to press for a demonstration.
"Yes, well... while it won't be the first time a child has come to Hogwarts with a pet that they can talk to, I must say it has been a while since we have had one that could talk back quite so plainly," the deputy headmistress informed them. "And while the rules do state that familiars are an exception to the list of species that we accept at Hogwarts, an exception can be made for that exception, as had been done for particularly ornery Jarvey in the past."
Both Sunset and Luna nodded dutifully in response, and didn't think that they were meant to hear the muttered, "...Which is all of them," that followed, but she made a mental note to look up Jarvey when she had the chance.
Mentions of interesting species aside, Sunset was quite glad to take the opportunity to steer the conversation away from her status as a familiar for the moment, and she knew just the direction she wanted to steer it in. "Miss McGonagall—" she prompted, though she was quickly corrected.
"It's missus, actually, though you should refer to me as 'professor McGonagall," she instructed.
Sunset nodded, filing that information away, and took a moment to ask, "Are you also a teacher, then?"
Professor McGonagall nodded in return. "Yes, in addition to being the Deputy Headmistress, I am also the sole Transfiguration professor, and also the head of house for Gryffindor."
Sunset blinked. She wanted to ask what 'Gryffindor' was since she was sure that she'd heard the word before but couldn't remember where. It wasn't in her discussions with the Lovegoods about Hogwarts, she didn't think. Nevertheless, she didn't want to get distracted.
"That sounds like a lot of work," she commented, failing completely at not getting distracted.
"It is," Professor McGonagall agreed, seeming both proud and burdened by the fact. "And yet, somehow, the Headmaster has managed to find himself with even more on his plate—but that's not a subject I should be talking to students about. You had a question?"
Sunset didn't miss that she'd been indirectly referred to as a student, but as reassuring as that was, in a way, she had complicated feelings about the appellation, and she really did have a question.
"Yes, sorry, I was just wondering, since you mentioned the t-shirts—do you have a lot of experience with the muggle world?" Her intentions on bringing up the matter were quite vague, but so long as she was taking steps to understand the world where her portal home was located, it would quiet a little of the background worry she had over her situation.
"Not as much as some, but more than most," Professor McGonagall answered quite openly. "I don't have much personal cause to go there, but I am the one who visits the families of muggleborns over the summer in order to explain and introduce them to the magical world, so I necessarily get a reasonable amount of exposure to their lifestyle and have reason to investigate a few things here and there on my own. In fact, I have an appointment for one such introduction this afternoon, after which I'll be taking the girl and her parents to Diagon Alley to get their supplies for the upcoming year."
Sunset hadn't been particularly melancholy up till then, but she brightened up considerably at the news nonetheless. It was a bit faster than she was comfortable with, but she never let that stop her. "You're doing one today?" she asked, quite eager, hardly able to believe her luck. "I don't suppose Luna and I could tag along?" she asked, making a show of looking to Luna with concern—and it wasn't even entirely feigned. Sunset certainly had little to go on aside from saying 'Diagon Alley' and jumping in a fireplace, and a girl being alone with her unique and uniquely colorful familiar probably wasn't the safest situation to be in. Sunset hadn't even wanted to come to the hospital when Luna was bleeding out.
Professor McGonagall, of course, had none of this information, so she was quite confused. "That... would be quite difficult," she said, looking Sunset up and down, which, admittedly, required very little movement of her head, given Sunset's stature. "And quite irregular. May I ask why? I can't imagine that Xenophilius is any less enthusiastic to take his daughter to get her first wand than any other parent. In fact, I'd wager that he'd be more than most."
Luna didn't react overly much to the subject of her father, but she still buried her fingers anew in Sunset's mane, searching for reassurance.
"He's not in the picture," Sunset informed the deputy headmistress as bluntly as she could manage out of a small amount of vindictiveness for bringing the subject up, no matter how necessary. "Let's just say he was more enthusiastic about chasing after Oberon and his wife." Sunset paused, hearing what she'd just said as she'd said it. "Sorry. His wife. Xenophilius' wife. Not Oberon's wife, though she was there too. Look, I'll just call them Pandora and She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named—"
"Do not," Professor McGonagall insisted with an unexpectedly stern glare that stopped Sunset cold. Once she was sure that Sunset had gotten the message, whatever that was, she took a long, hissing breath in through her nose, and relaxed.
Slightly.
"Are you saying that Xenophilius went to Faery and has not returned?" she asked, distinctly uneasy at the idea and looking to Luna with kind concern.
Sunset opened her mouth to answer flippantly, then reconsidered and went with a simple, "Yes." Technically, they hadn't been back to the house since their return, but given that Luna had bled all over the couch, she sure hoped that the first thing Xenophilius would have done would be to check in at the hospital if he had come home.
Of course, there was always the possibility that Xenophilius and Pandora had required hospitalization of their own after returning and they were on another floor, or even just in the room next door without them knowing it, but Sunset had the miraculous sense not to mention the idea with Luna still on the knife's edge of breaking down.
After maybe too long of a pause, Sunset decided to lay it on a bit thicker. "It's really quite difficult for us to be in this situation," she said, letting some of her honest helplessness with the situation through. "I hope Xenophilius returns with his wife—I do—but it's left us both all on our own. Luna's just escaped after spending a year locked up by the winter court, and I don't really know my way around either of your worlds. I can make a grilled cheese sandwich, but that's about it and I don't even know where you go to buy bread around here. Now we have this whole school thing and while it'll be a relief to have a place to go when the time comes, we still have more than a month until then and we'll be all alone in that house—I hope I can get the blood out of the couch... and the rug... and the floorboards—it just seems like the perfect chance to get her out a bit and meet another girl her age—her new age, I mean."
Professor McGonagall listened to Sunset's strung-on, meandering plea with the stony face of the strict disciplinarian she was, but though she had no doubt listened to similar excessively doleful entreaties from students on subjects ranging from confiscated contraband to their most recent report card, there was enough truth in what Sunset was saying to soften her eyes a bit.
"Oh, very well," Professor McGonagall conceded. "It would not be the first time I've taken more than one family to Diagon, and I suppose you're as good an example of magic for the Grangers as any, though I've already put the permit through regardless."
"Permit?" Sunset asked. She didn't like the sound of that, if it involved proving that magic existed.
Professor McGonagall nodded and casually confirmed Sunset's fears. "Yes; given the statute of secrecy which went into effect in the 17ᵗʰ century, we have also had the Degree for Reasonable Restriction of Underage Sorcery since the late 19ᵗʰ century which prohibits those under the age of seventeen from casting any spells unless they are in a registered exclusion zone, such as Hogwarts.
That was... well, exactly the sort of thing that she would have expected from the government behind the things that she'd seen in the ministry of magic. Having been pleasantly surprised about their hoofs-off approach to muggles, it was about time she found out about another equine-rights violation—but that wasn't the only thing that came to mind.
"...How does that work, though?" she asked, thinking out loud as she worked through the problem as she might have while sitting at Princess Celestia's side. "I suppose the relative dearth of magic in most places here might allow some sort of monitoring network—but that isn't the case everywhere. I doubt you'd get any sort of sign of any normal amount of magic going on from outside the Rookery, and that's ignoring the logistical problems. You said you have to have a permit, and if that's not just bureaucratic red tape, then it means that it's not just a spell on the individual children to detect when they do magic—but parents have to be able to use magic in their own homes, so... this only applies to muggleborns, doesn't it?"
Professor McGonagall was momentarily taken aback at the quick and accurate breakdown of the situation, but she wasn't one to deny the truth when it came out. "Yes, I'm afraid that that is the end result of the laws as they have been implemented," she admitted.
Continuing, she made her stance clear. "I will, of course, not confirm any of the details surrounding the trace, save to say that while Miss Lovegood may be able to get around it once she gets her wand, I would still recommend in the strongest of terms that she not do so. As unfortunate as the unequal enforcement of the Degree for the Reasonable Restriction of Underage Sorcery can be, it does in most cases loop around to being, as the name suggests, reasonable, as it is vital for children practicing magic to be supervised by adults capable of dealing with any accidents—or non-accidents—that arise. Failing that, access to a floo by which one can seek aid and treatment is just as important."
That... did make sense, actually, Sunset begrudgingly admitted, and if her opinion of the matter was influenced by the fact that the law wouldn't actually be applied to her, well, she was only equine. "We're fine, then."
Professor McGonagall tilted her head down to look at Sunset with dire seriousness over the top of her eyeglasses. "I must emphasize, young girl, that access to a medical facility is in no way a replacement for proper instruction—especially before one has even stepped foot inside a classroom."
"Well, no. Obviously not," Sunset agreed automatically without delay or any particular level of honesty, though it took a moment for her to actually realize what the deputy headmistress was implying. "Oh! No, see, I didn't just mean the floo. I mean, a parent I am not, but I absolutely can handle anything a small child can do with her magic—not that I really intended on teaching her anything." She stopped to think. "Could be interesting, actually, now that you mention it."
Professor McGonagall was, of course, highly skeptical and not at all convinced and she let it show in her expression without reservation. "Miss Shimmer; I have seen that you do have a natural talent of levitation, but—"
Sunset flashed her horn and disappeared in a wisp of flame, reappearing at the foot of Luna's bed, looking balefully up at the professor. "Excuse you! 'A natural talent of levitation?'" she parroted mockingly. "I am a god-damned natural at everything and have spent the last ten years studying magic as the personal student of Princess Celestia before ascending into an alicorn, so I'll thank you not to act like I'm some foal who never even got her cutie mark and might as well be a skinny earth pony with telekinesis."
McGonagall, unfortunately, was the type who responded to truculency with obstinance and she was quite unamused at Sunset's little egotistical diatribe. Worse, she was actually smart and tended to catch onto things, especially when they were yelled up at her face from a small, colorful equine.
Professor McGonagall arched one eyebrow, an expression she seemed well practiced in and got much use out of. "And who, may I ask, is Princess Celestia, and what is 'an' alicorn, since I don't get the impression that you're talking about the material a unicorn's horn is made of?"
Sunset, on realizing that she had said a bit too much, said the first thing that came to mind. "Princess Celestia is the immortal alicorn snorkack ruler from the magical land of... Snorkackia."
Of all the times to actually tell the truth.
Actually, on second thought, the only real danger here was in getting her familiarhood revoked, wasn't it? From Xenophilius's brief primer on the wizarding world's classification of beasts and beings, that seemed unlikely.
Oh, and there was also the possibility of word getting back to the wrong person in the ministry, because her fuzzy memories from just after she'd come through the portal from Equestria did contain some mention of having her put down. Right.
Still, she was pretty sure that the implication that she thought she was some kind of illegal crossbreed between a unicorn and a... cream puff, was it? Biology had never been her best subject, but she was absolutely certain that that wasn't how it worked. Regardless, if that was the case, it would actually be a good thing to get something like the truth out since the truth was significantly less insulting and significantly less dangerous to her continued wellbeing.
"Alicorns are... snorkacks... with the magical qualities of the three tribes of snorkacks, the unification of which makes a greater whole than the sum of its parts. Princess Celestia has ruled Snorkackia for over a thousand years, and has used her magic to raise and lower the sun on schedule every morning and night without fail for that entire time, and being her student was a great honor." A great honor that the princess spat upon when she closed herself off from Sunset and stopped answering her questions. "I would appreciate it if you didn't marginalize the time and effort I have spent on mastering magic."
Professor McGonagall took in Sunset's explanation with an unreadable, stony expression, her lips pressed together into a tight line. "So, since you mentioned 'earth ponies' in your little rant, I take it I am to replace every instance of 'snorkack' in that story with 'pony' in order to arrive at something resembling the truth?" she asked, both unamused and not just a little dubious. "Though how much truth is up for debate, unless you truly expect me to believe that this princess of yours actually raises the sun."
Sunset didn't let the professor's doubt bother her, no matter how inconvenient it was. Instead, she looked Professor McGonagall in the eye quite seriously and said, "Have you ever been to Faery, professor?"
Professor McGonagall seemed almost insulted. "I am not so foolish as that, no."
"Then let me explain," Sunset insisted, demanding the old witch's attention. "In the stories I've read since we came back, Faery is often likened to a mad dream where nothing is real and anything can happen—but to call it a dream or dismiss it as something unreal is a gross misrepresentation that misses the point. Faery is real. Everything there is real. It's not a harmless illusion, or something that you wake up from. It changes from one moment to the next—from one person to the next—but the ground underneath your hooves, the air in your lungs and the sun in the sky, they're all terrifyingly real... at least, for as long as they exist. For as long as you're there to pay attention to them, they're real.
"Can you imagine, from one moment to the next, the sun—those two-nonilion tons of hydrogen and helium—just... winking out because they're not needed? Then, they come back, but that's not the word for it, is it? It's not the same hydrogen and helium; it didn't go away and return. It just... stopped existing, and a new mass of hydrogen and helium took its place, which maybe is a bit smaller or bigger. Maybe it's a binary system now, or maybe it somehow has a smiley-face on it—but that smiley-face isn't just a picture; it's a real pattern of sunspots a million kilometers across.
"Snorkackia isn't like that, thank Celestia... but it's closer than most. Is it that hard to believe that, there, an immortal alicorn has been needed to raise and lower the sun ever since a spirit of chaos broke it? Really?"
Professor McGonagall was, for some reason, not entirely reassured. "...You paint a vivid picture," she eventually stated noncommittally. After taking a moment to process it, she admitted, "No, I suppose not... and I suppose that I have all the answers that I need for the moment."
Sunset thought that there was an implied 'or ever,' in there, but it might have been just her.
"I believe, then, that we should address the more mundane issues," she said, changing the subject and addressing Luna. "If you're to accompany me to Diagon, we shall need to run it past the healers and, your health permitting, get you checked out..."
***
Getting Luna checked out did not go how Sunset had expected—not because there was anything still wrong with Luna but for how quickly the process went. There wasn't really much paperwork involved and the healer's final assessment of her health came down to a couple of questions before shooing them off.
She was surprised, too, when gold changed hands at the front desk on their way out. In hindsight, no part of the wizarding world gave her the impression that things like medical insurance existed, but at least the cost was subsidized by donations from wealthy philanthropists—not that the young woman at the front desk seemed to think very highly of the fact.
The fact that McGonagall was the one who paid, on the other hoof, was reassuring about her character, and also in the fact that Sunset had no idea what the state of the Lovegood's finances were or how to access them. Luna certainly hadn't brought anything to the hospital but the shirt on her back, and she wasn't even wearing it out for obvious reasons.
Strangely, no one seemed concerned with the fact that a child was walking out of the hospital with a shirt that stabs you in the back, but Professor McGonagall had, at least, conjured a plain black robe for her to wear on the way out, which they would immediately be replacing with a real one if the professor had anything to say about it; something about pranksters casting finite at random strangers, the idea of which was simple enough to understand just from the context.
The conjuration itself was more interesting than the humans' ongoing obsession with fashion, though, and an interesting trick. 'Conjuring' implied pulling something either out of nothing or from somewhere else, but the feeling of magic that washed over her likely permanently-sharpened horn was definitely one of transformation, which fit in with Professor McGonagall teaching what she'd called transfiguration.
As for what, exactly, was being transfigured, Sunset couldn't say. Her first assumption was that it was the air being turned into the object being transfigured, but that likely would have involved a great rush of air to make up the difference in mass. Probably. Perhaps. Maybe.
Magic could be weird when it came to conservation of mass.
The important thing was that she wasn't stealing the dreams of innocents, leaving them dull, monotonous shells of who they once were in order to produce items in the physical world, or something like that. Sunset was beginning to feel that the Ministry of Magic and its Department of Mysteries had not been the best, most representative introduction she could have had to the world of humans, which, following from Equestria and Faery, she would refer to as 'Human' until such time as she had a chance to ask what variation on the term they actually used.
Such a time as right now, just as they were about to go through the floo to the Lovegood home.
Sunset got her answer, realized what that answer was, then followed the professor through the floo in a distracted daze.
"Earth?" Sunset asked incredulously as she stepped out of the floo. "You named your world after dirt?" Here she had thought that calling one of the tribes 'earth ponies' was kind of insulting, but they at least worked the land so it was actually relevant.
Professor McGonagall, however, was not in the mood to elucidate as she stood there, ashen-faced, staring at the mess that was the Lovegood home's ground floor. End tables had been overturned, items were strewn on the floor, and the blood... There was a lot of blood, crusty and dry on the couch, rusty red hoofprints scrambling this way and that and a long smear that...
No matter how much Sunset shimmer insisted that she was a mature mare who would do anything for her own not-so-enlightened self-interest, the sight of it all was enough to turn her stomach. She blanched and looked away, not wanting to admit the effect it had on her. She knew, logically, that it couldn't be that much blood since Luna was standing next to her just fine, but—
Sunset blinked.
Luna was standing next to her just fine, seemingly not bothered at all by the ground floor of her house looking like the crime scene of a murder mystery, or maybe the first act of a horror film.
Then, after only a short pause to take the scene in, the young girl walked forward and started righting the end tables, stacking things back up on them and frowning at the dark spots and stains on one of the books.
There was something very wrong with that girl, Sunset thought... though maybe that should be expected after a year of imprisonment and off-and-on isolation.
It was Professor McGonagall who recovered from the shock first. "Ah, Miss Lovegood?"
"Yes, professor?" the young girl asked, looking up from where she was draped over the back of the vividly stained couch, reaching for something on the floor behind it.
Rather than state any of the myriad problems that any sensible person would have with the situation, the professor simply held up her wand, giving the girl an expectant look.
"Oh! Right!" Luna exclaimed in full cheer. Standing up on the stained upholstery, she hopped off the couch, landing carelessly on one leg and using the momentum to hop back over to where Sunset and Professor McGonagall stood. "Magic away!"
Nonplussed, McGonagall nonetheless did as she was prompted and waved her wand, stating, "Sanguis Evanesco."
Like the conjuring, the incantation of the spell didn't quite match up with the effect, which was much the same as conjuration, but in reverse, feeling much like another transformation—or transfiguration to use the local terminology.
Regardless, the spell certainly made a good show of looking like a proper blood vanishing spell, and the stains on the floor were cleanly wiped out of existence, shrinking from the outside in like a puddle going dry.
It was a bit childish of her, but seeing the mess disappear as if it had never existed did do a little to calm Sunset's stomach. The professor wasn't done, though, and with a second, wordless wave of her wand, all the spilled bric-a-brac leapt up like they were being spilled in reverse, setting the entire room back to rights.
That... she was begrudgingly impressed by, begrudging not just because it was human magic, but because in all of its impressiveness of having to have some way to find out how the things had been arranged in the first place—and she didn't believe there was any time magic involved, certainly—it was, in the end pretty much just a housekeeping spell; exactly the sort of thing that she would have scoffed at while she was busy learning another big, flashy spell to show off.
Well, those big, flashy spells weren't helping her much now, and she'd be damned if a spell like that wouldn't have been really nice to have at the end of the day when she was levitating everything back where it belonged by horn, one-by-one.
Sunset took a moment to take in the neat and tidy chaos of the restored room, trying to fix in her mind its current state rather than how it had been moments before, when Professor McGonagall spoke. "Miss Shimmer."
Sunset turned her head to look at the professor and realized then that the two of them were nominally alone, Luna having been sent upstairs to change into some real clothes. "You don't have to call me that. We don't really have set-in-stone family names like that; it does happen that you get families with names all on a theme, but it's almost as common to share the first word in a name rather than the second, or to have just a single word in a name."
For her part, Professor McGonagall did seem interested in Sunset's explanation, but said, "Even so, if it's not incorrect, I'd prefer not to give others the impression that I'm being too familiar with a student—or, well, too familiar with a familiar, I suppose; pun not intended." The way in which she stated that last part said just how convinced she was that Sunset was 'just' a familiar.
"It's fine," Sunset informed her, unconcerned. Ponies called others 'missus' and 'mister' too, sometimes, but it was less regimented than humans, or even some of the other races of Equestria. Really it was just that the way Professor McGonagall said it reminded her of some of the castle staff back in Canterlot, which was not something that Sunset wanted to think about right now.
"Miss Shimmer," McGonagall repeated, starting over. "I will ask Miss Lovegood regardless of your answer, but after that... behavior... I am concerned about her."
"You weren't concerned when you found out she'd been stabbed in the back or imprisoned in Faery for a year?" Sunset asked, doing her best at the raised eyebrow that the professor was so good at.
Professor McGonagall took the chastisement without offense. "I was, but she seemed only a bit quiet and withdrawn. It is something else to see a real example of how it has affected her; I don't even understand the reaction—or lack thereof. I have seen children pretend that nothing is amiss, and I don't think that's what that was."
"Well, you're not wrong," Sunset said, at a loss of what she was supposed to say. "You said you had a question."
"Yes," Professor McGonagall said, seeming glad to have the conversation back on track. "I do believe that the Weasley family lives not too far from here and the two families are acquainted; the youngest, Ginevra, was Miss Lovegood's age before all this. I thought I might inform them of the situation so that they might make themselves available for support."
That... wasn't the kind of thing Sunset had any clue about and she said so. "Look... I don't say this often, but I have no idea. She hasn't mentioned them to me, and maybe that says it all—or not. I never had friends, no matter how much my teachers thought I did and insisted on grouping me up with a certain clique of fillies I despised. I studied magic, not people."
Professor McGonagall hmmed, mulling over Sunset's response. "A pity, given your coloring is the red and gold of Gryffindor, I'd suppose that you're more suited to Ravenclaw or Slytherin."
"Gryffindor?" Sunset asked, recalling that she'd heard it mentioned a couple of times now. The other two were completely new, though. "Ravenclaw? Slytherin?"
"Students at Hogwarts are sorted into one of four houses based on the values which each of those houses espouse. Each house has their own communal areas, dormitories and schedules. Those houses are Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw and Slytherin. Gryffindor for the brave and the bold, Hufflepuff for the loyal and hardworking, Ravenclaw for the clever and studious and Slytherin for the Cunning and Ambitious. Red and Gold are the colors of Gryffindor."
Sunset considered that for a moment. "I don't think that Princess Celestia would have gone for that," she mused, thinking aloud. "On one hoof, it seems like it would be nice to be able to separate problem students from one another, but they usually do that anyway without painting such a blatant target on a quarter of the school."
Professor McGonagall gave Sunset a look of appraisal, and she got the idea that she had impressed her a bit. "What target is that?" she asked, though she clearly had an idea.
"Well," Sunset said, thinking of how to put it. Then she remembered she didn't really care and said what she was thinking. "Having an entire house like that that's just a catch-all for those who aren't good enough for the other houses—I can't imagine that works very well in practice. It's rather blatant."
Professor McGonagall looked... rather disappointed with Sunset's answer, but she was just stating the obvious. She'd no doubt seen it in her own classes and didn't like being reminded of the ugly side of the system.
"I mean, really," Sunset continued. "You've got the smart house, the clever house and the hard working house, which are all normal things that are applicable in a school environment," she said, listing the houses that made sense to her. "And then there's the 'brave' house? What's with that? It's a school, not the filly scouts! Bravery isn't going to help you write an essay! Boldness isn't going to teach you to cast a spell! I mean, willpower helps you cast a spell, obviously, but that's a stretch. If one of the houses is going to be 'Bravery,' then the others should be things like, 'Honor,' 'Leadership' and 'Empathy'—or, you know, not that since I just thought of it off the top of my head, but still; it just doesn't fit."
At some point, Professor McGonagall had gone from disappointed to bemused. "That is... an interesting take on the matter, Miss Shimmer," she said. "Though you may be taking the short one-or-two word descriptions a little too seriously. People, as I'm sure you're aware, are more nuanced than that, and the houses are each modeled after one of the four founders of Hogwarts from which they take their names; Godric Gryffindor, Helga Hufflepuff, Rowena Ravenclaw and Salazar Slytherin, who would each select students to give additional instruction, somewhat between an apprenticeship and the classrooms of today. I am certain that, should you wish, you could come up with a more rigorous set of descriptions for the houses."
Well... Okay, so maybe she had assumed a bit much based on just a few words. "I guess you have a point," she admitted. "If you actually had an entire house where you put all of the loud, rowdy, boisterous kids with no drive, ability or desire to study, then I'd feel sorry for whoever was in charge of that lot."
There was a moment of awkward silence, within which Sunset remembered something. "Oh! Right! That's where I last heard the name 'Gryffindor.' I mean, I heard it before sometime that I still can't recall, but when you introduced yourself, you said you were the head of house?"
"I am."
"So then—"
"Yes."
"...My condolences."
***
Being the prideful mare she was, Sunset wasn't beyond spending a significant amount of time primping and preening in front of the mirror in the morning, but even so, Luna seemed to have been upstairs for quite a long time when all she was supposed to be doing was changing her clothes, so Sunset figured she'd go see what was taking her so long. Professor McGonagall, too, was impatient, but her sense of propriety insisted that she leave the matter to Sunset so as to avoid intruding on her private space.
Sunset, of course, had no sense of 'private space' and barged right in to find Luna sitting on her bed half-dressed and staring off into space.
To Sunset's credit, her first reaction was some level of concern, which she'd gotten in the habit of over the past few days. The particular glazed look in her eyes rather spoiled it, because she recognized that look, and it wasn't melancholy, despondence or any of the other numerous things that were worth worrying about.
With a huff, Sunset lifted the white summer dress that was sitting on Luna's lap with her magic and threw it at her face. "If you're done eavesdropping, we'd like to get going," she said, making an effort to roll her eyes in an exaggerated way that would be clear to the other person looking through it.
Luna hmmed, thoughtful. "Is it still eavesdropping if I can't hear anything?" she asked, her voice muffled by the dress hanging off of her. Belatedly, she removed the garment from her face and looked at it, turning it in her hands to orient it properly. Without prompting, she announced, "I should learn to read lips."
Shaking her head, Sunset left Luna to her own devices and went back down the stairs. Professor McGonagall pretended that she hadn't overheard the conversation, but she nonetheless had a slightly amused air about her. Her disciplinarian act was very good, but Sunset had been interpreting Princess Celestia's muted reactions for the better part of her life and the two were not dissimilar at times, even across the species divide. The fact that the woman did have a sense of humor, no matter how well hidden it was, did make her seem more like a person than some of the instructors she'd had in the past. Even if Sunset maybe resented just a little bit every time something reminded her of Princess Celestia, given how her mentor had turned away from her, it was still familiar ground.
"What time is your visit with the muggles, if it's that precise?" Sunset asked, thinking. "And for that matter, how do you tell time? I haven't seen a clock since I got here."
"The appointment is for one o'clock," Professor McGonagall informed her. "And the spell that we use is—" She waved her wand in front of herself. "Tempus."
A puff of white smoke came from the tip of her wand, taking the shape of a typical wall clock with both hands near to the top with an impressive level of clarity for something not at all solid. After a moment of churning inside that space, the magic holding the smoke together faded, and the smoke dissipated into an indistinct wisp which was shortly gone.
"Nearly noon," the professor announced. "We have an hour, which should be enough time for lunch, assuming Miss Lovegood ever manages to dress herself.
Sunset, who was quite familiar with only needing to leave moments before she arrived thanks to teleportation, dismissed the time as not an immediate issue. She did, however, step closer, head cocked to the side, and say, "Do that again."
Professor McGonagall didn't seem to quite understand what the fascination was, but as a teacher she was quite used to repeating spells for the sake of instruction. Not outwardly questioning it, she waved her wand with almost mechanical precision and repeated the incantation, producing another smoke effigy of a clock.
"Okay, I can feel how the smoke bit works—of course I do, since fire is kind of my thing—but I'm not getting how it actually gets the time since it's not something the caster knows. Can you explain..."
***
It wasn't too long before Sunset was able to produce a proper tempus of her own, though her first success came out just at the tip of her horn and no further, leaving her hacking and coughing at the result. She would have to work on that, but it was only a matter of visualization and therefore practice—harder than one might think, having seen and studied Professor McGonagall's casting of it closely enough that the expectation of the result was already firmly in her mind, but not something that putting in a bit of time and effort wouldn't overcome.
What was more interesting was what she had learned about how it was done—which she didn't have time to mull over as Luna finally came down the stairs wearing an airy white dress that went down to her ankles. What was odd was the rubber eraser hanging from her neck. Admittedly, it was a cute yellow one in a fat and rounded star shape, but one of the legs of the star had been used for its intended purpose and was shorter than the rest, sporting a smudge of graphite.
On closer inspection, though, Sunset realized that she'd been distracted by the eraser when the real takeaway was that the necklace itself was made of paperclips like her old one.
The one she'd wielded against the Seelie Queen with such frightening effectiveness, stealing back Sunset's name and giving her the opportunity to make off with her ascension.
You know what? Sunset was going to pretend that was the finest damn necklace that money could buy and no one was going to stop her.
Professor McGonagall, of course, didn't understand the significance, but she'd mastered the art of keeping her opinions about children entirely to herself, so said nothing. Indeed, her nod seemed satisfied that the child had managed to dress herself at all, which, given the time it had taken and the state that she had been in when Sunset had gone to check on her, wasn't entirely unreasonable.
Professor McGonagall made her way to the floo, then paused. Turning, she looked Sunset over once more and warned her, "We will be heading to the Leaky Cauldron for lunch; a rather noisy establishment, but as something of a meeting place for Diagon Alley, your appearance there should not cause too much commotion."
Sunset frowned, eyeing the floo with unease and imagining the scene that would greet her on the other side. She still wasn't comfortable with exposing herself to the public, no matter how blasé the hospital staff had been about her appearance. Professor McGonagall didn't know that Sunset had escaped from a cage in the Department of Mysteries, after all, and she wanted to keep it that way. Come to think of it, neither did Luna, for that matter.
Still, it wasn't actually a bad idea. She'd seen for herself the effect that simply showing up at a donut shop on the regular could have on a reputation, and though she'd resented it at the time, right now she wanted to be—well, not approachable since she didn't want to be approached, but she'd settle for benign.
Either way, she wasn't going to let that stop her.
...
But that didn't make her a Gryffindor, damn it.