Human Rituals
Harry Potter
(3 Years, 5 Months Since Arrival)
Twilight led me happily into one of the large halls of Castle Friendship. It was only ever really used for formal events like Hearth’s Warming, but today it was the host of one of her experiments. And guess who the subject was? I’ll give ya three guesses. Spike followed, smiling sympathetically. “Okay boys, have a look at THIS beauty!” She threw the doors open to reveal a large, standing purple crystal.
“…it’s a rock,” Spike and I said as one.
“It’s not a rock! It’s a magic nullifier!” Twilight said, scolding us both as she danced up to it. It was propped up with a series of metallic claws, resting it’s impossible weight upright with a few measuring computers around it. I felt a tickle of old Dr. Who on the back of my neck. Arranged like that, it looked like the TARDIS console. Hah!
“And what will we be doing with the big rock today?” I teased.
“I wanna measure your magical potential!” Twilight said.
“I can’t do magic, I’ve told you that,” I pointed out. “No human can. Most of my species doesn’t even believe in magic.”
“Yet here you are!” Twilight said gaily, too busy nerding out. Spike exchanged a shrug with me, then went to sit a safe distance away.
“We haven’t established I got grabbed or sent by magic, Twilight. It’s not good science to assume,” I folded my arms at her.
“Just hold this,” she grumped at what a party pooper I was being. She handed me what at first I thought was a toy. It was a thin wooden wand with a candy-colored star ontop. “Magic nullifiers are not easy to come by, I’ll have you know. They’re forbidden to all but a few ponies out there. Banks, museums, some government buildings— they can be rough stuff when they’re calibrated properly.”
“I don’t understand,” I told her.
“Well imagine if I set up one of these in the street and suddenly everypony forgot how to walk?” she said. The implication was a bit scary. “Or, if everypony within a hundred gallops suddenly lost the ability to fly or use magic? Innate magic is what it can target, when done right.”
“And you want to see if it affects me at all?” I rattled the toy she’d given me a little. She swatted at me to make me stop and I snickered at her.
“I’m going to have you try using magic using this foal’s practice wand,” Twilight said. “If there’s even a slight fluxuation in your natural magical field, the crystal will react!” she smiled and made a squeaky sound.
I stared at Twilight for a long time while she ran about making adjustments and checking the wiggly lines the computer was spitting out on a mile-long ream of paper. “Go stand over there, yes there,” she gestured. I obeyed, looking over my shoulder at Spike for help. He shrugged again. Twilight squee’d, doing her tippy-tappy-hoofy dance in place as the whole thing started to whir to life. I shrank back a little. “Don’t worry! It’s no different than an X-Ray machine!” Twilight said.
“I demand a plate for my balls, then!” I said rudely.
“Okay bad analogy, it’s no different than a camera!” she corrected. I squinted at her, and she assured me several times my jewels would be safe. “Think of yourself like a sponge, Peaches. Remember how bad everybody thought you smelled when you first arrived here?”
“A little…” I said acidly.
“And then a few days later, eating our food and such the smell was gone? Your body took in things from Equestria and adapted!” Twilight said. “So, in theory, what if having absolutely no magic to speak of changed too? Like a dry sponge getting thrown in a lake?”
There was a long silence, and I looked down at the practice wand I was holding. I looked up at her, “If I blow myself up I’m going to be very upset.” I looked over at Spike. “Spike, if I die run to Applejack and make sure she avenges me.”
“Are you guys talking again?” Spike wondered.
“Not the point,” I said quickly. “She’s the most reliable.”
“Focus, boys!” Twilight clop-clopped her steepled hooves to bring attention back to herself. “Okay, Peaches, give it your best shot!”
Widening my stance, I swung the wand! “Hocus Pocus!” I shouted. Nothing. Twilight stared at me for a good, long five or six seconds before facehoofing. Spike was positively rolling with laughter. The purple princess opened her mouth to correct me, “No!” I said, pointing at her. “Human magic words first! Then pony stuff!” I was gonna have fun with this, or not do it at all. Twilight’s mouth went agape. HUMAN magic words! She positively flailed for ink and paper. “Jiggery Pokery! Squiggily Wiggily!” I was a big Harry Potter nerd at one point, so I rattled down all the spells I could remember hoping for something. “Alohamora! Lumos Maximus! Oculous Totalis!” Twilight’s quill scratched wildly, I was too busy giggling.
“Stop! Stop! STOP!” Twilight said. “You’re going too fast!” I stopped after a time, huffing and puffing at my own theatrics. “What were all those?” Twilight insisted I name each one in turn. Unlocking, Big Light, Fix Glasses, and so on. Then there was a twenty-minute conversation about just who this ‘Harry Potter’ fellow was that I was drawing from. “So you’re just flailing with out of context spells,” Twilight’s muzzle scrunched. “Here, try this instead.” She gave me a paper. I waited patiently for the Equestrian runes to swim into view. They were very simple diagrams, but instead of a pony they had a human drawn in them.
“Hup… hooo… hwahh!” I tried the motion. Nothing.
“Again!” Twilight made some adjustments.
“Heep… huh… hyah!” I tried once more. Then again. Then a dozen times more.
“You’re as dry as a cracker,” Twilight said, stuffing her muzzle into a long line of paperwork. The needle hadn’t so much as quivered at anything I’d done. “Not a single magi-jule of output.” Her brow furrowed. “There must be something. You’re not IMMUNE to magic so there must be some in your body.”
“Huh?” I said, letting my arm fall.
“Well look,” she lit her horn and gently lifted me up by the waist. Then she set me down again. “If my magic couldn’t grasp at you, you’d be immune from magic. Only things like lead are magic proof.” She started into a tirade about magical immunity levels, but I tried to reel her back in with a circular motion of the hand. “But if you’re not repelling it, it means there’s just a little bit inside you. Being in Equestria, your body’s had plenty of time to absorb ambient magic. We saw your moment of Harmony when when we got off the train last year,” she said, tapping her chin with a hoof. “Lemme scan you again,” she turned for a moment to find the right paper.
“Accio,” I said to her back, the Harry Potter ‘summoning’ spell. Nothing. She snorted at me, but I wouldn’t tell her that one. When she came back, Twilight put a sticky piece of paper on my chest and scanned it down with the glow of her horn.
“No reaction or coloring…” she turned it over and over. “This is supposed to color according to a pony’s inner magicks.”
“Maybe I don’t have any,” I said innocently again.
“I’m sure you do, it must just be very faint…” she trailed off a moment. “Even if it’s in something as simple as your blood or your spit.” I knew I’d be giving her new samples of those by the end of the day, but not just yet. “Let’s try kenetic magic instead.” She pulled my long shirt sleeves over my hands and tied them into knots. Then she had me try to pick up objects and manipulate things with just my nubs. “Don’t use your fingers, make a fist!” she insisted. Nothing seemed to work. She sighed in frustrating, trying over and over with different objects and themes. Anypony could hold or grab something with the flat bottom of their hooves. It was no different than static electricity cling or something like that. Just, much stronger. Ponies learned it instinctively, so Twilight couldn’t really put into words how I was supposed to do it. She showed me several times, but it was no good.
“Any particular reason that you want me to be able to use magic, Twilight?” I asked conversationally, leaning on her contraption. The crystal flickered and began to tilt. Twilight’s head snapped up as the impossible weight began to tilt her way. “LOOK OUT!” I shouted, grabbing her and yanking her to my chest. Coiling my legs I flung us backward as hard as I could. The crystal smashed into the ground without so much as a crack. One of Twilight’s computers met its end though, sparking and fizzling.
Twilight quickly righted herself. “I don’t believe it,” she said slowly, staring at me. She wiggled free, running over to her measuring needle. “A spike in kenetics!” Sure enough there was a single, tiny spike in the endless straight line. Only for a moment, a tiny moment, I’d used the brunt of my fists and knuckles… like pony hooves? A manic, panicked look rose over Twilight’s face and she fell into the massive piles of papers to make a snow pony with all her limbs. “I knew it, I knew it!” she yammered over and over. Then she sat up, looking puzzled and tapping her chin again. “But this means you’ve a penchant for Earth Pony magic! I’ve been treating you like a unicorn all day!”
“Is this because I slept with Applejack?” I said without thinking.
“You WHAT?!” Twilight’s train of thought crashed and she tangled then fell into a mountain of papers and graphs that had been made through the day. I covered my mouth with both hands, wincing. I glanced at Spike. He was deep in a comic book, thank Celestia, when he saw no one had been crushed. Twilight lowered her voice into an angry whisper, “You slept with Applejack?! You wouldn’t even tell me about human mating rituals and she got the whole she-bang?!”
Oh, uh-hhh w-well you knew we were dating and… and stuff…” I spluttered as Twilight leaned at me aggressively.
“What if you had some other-dimensional disease or something?! What if you weren’t compatible?!” Twilight whispered fiercely so Spike wouldn’t hear. “What if you WERE compatible and she had some sort of half-hyooman-half-pony foal?!”
“What if you minded your own goddamn business?!” I whispered back, getting angry. How dare she think I was diseased or something. “I’m not some monster to be studied and quarantined, y’know! We love each other. Loved. Er…” I fell silent very suddenly, and I could feel the heat in my face. Twilight’s expression softened.
“…I-I’m sorry,” she said. “B-but no, you… ‘being’ with Applejack— no you wouldn’t acquire magic like that.” She cleared her throat a little, then made herself very busy straightening her feathers. There was a long and awkward silence as we straightened papers and she used her magic to set the crystal back up. I promised not to lean on anything anymore. I kept trying to meet her gaze as she cleaned up the mess. “N-no,” she seemed to read my thoughts. “Nice girls like Applejack don’t kiss and tell. I had no idea.”
“I see,” I said slowly, scratching the back of my head. Awk-warrrd…
“But!” Twilight said, regaining some energy. “We’ve learned something! If you can demonstrate basic end-of-limb kenetic magic, it means my sponge theory was right! However tiny, you’ve got magic!”
“Are you gonna teach me magic spells?” I said, grinning ear to ear in excitement.
“What?” Twilight paused. “Oh no no, nothing like that.” She saw me deflate, then giggled a little apologetically. “Today’s experiment was seeing if you could do anything at all. I wouldn’t teach you magic, that would be unethical!”
“What? Why?” I whined.
“W-well you’re not related to me, and I’m not a teacher. Legal stuff,” Twilight said. I grumbled at her. “You would need an earth pony teacher at the very most. And even then, I don’t think it would be worth your time,” she said gently. I deflated further. “Sorry, Peaches,” she rubbed my back a couple of times to comfort me.
I sighed at her. It was a thought at least. I could’a been like Harry Potter in Ponyland. But that would’ve been a silly combination, like a messed up fan fiction. Pfft.
*_*_*_*_*
Twilight spent the next several weeks seeing if I had any latent talent in alchemy, magic, thought-propelled flight, mind-powers and all number of other impossible things that humans couldn’t do (or had forgotten how to do). The purple pony tried to argue that cooking was alchemy, but I hit her with the fruitcake argument. “What’s the fruitcake argument?” she wanted to know.
“I knew a comedian that spelled it out for me once,” I said, gesturing to the radio that sat in my room. “Fruit, good. Cake, great. Fruitcake, nasty crap.” Twilight burst into laughter, quickly stifling herself so Spike wouldn’t hear us. “I’m just saying things aren’t always the sum of their parts.”
“Why do you think I study you so thoroughly, Peaches?” she agreed, smiling. “More than you appear.”
I stopped a moment, flattered. “W-well, I’m not a chariot or a boat, so… I’m just me.” I turned on the radio, hearing a band I recognized from Manehatten. “Oh hey I like this one!” I said, turning it up a bit.
“Well I have more data to compile, I’ll see you later,” she left my ‘science participation payment’ on my desk, the usual small bag of bits. I put it in with my glass jar of rent money, so it would just go straight back to her. I know she was a Princess and all but she really did pay too much sometimes.
I went about my usual evening ritual of teeth brushing and the like before turning down my sheets. Deciding on a cold drink before turning in, I left my room to hit the kitchen. Twilight’s study door was opening, and I could hear her dictating one of her letters to a magic quill and parchment. It was late, and I leaned to scold her to maybe get some rest and do it tomorrow. “—something else entirely.” I gave pause. “After experiencing his first moment of Harmony over a year ago I began to suspect that our world is doing something to him.” I leaned back and away so I could listen, frowning. “In this battery of tests, Peaches has demonstrated that he has the capacity for basic, pony-like kenetic touch. Foals learn it instinctively, picking up things with the flat of their hooves. He’s never had to try, but one accident and it came instinctively to pull me to safety. He is changing. He is evolving. Slowly but surely he’s turning into—!” Twilight jerked towards the doorway. I didn’t have time to dodge out of the way and hide. We stared at each other, both of us busted.
“Into…?” I asked slowly, softly. Twilight meeped, setting her tape-recorder down and clicking the button off. “Twilight?” I whispered. “Is something happening to me?” I looked about the room of her ‘human studies’ work space. But, I couldn’t make heads or tails of all the madness that was piled around her.
“I—I didn’t want to tell you anything until I was sure!” she blurted, coming close. I sat on my legs so we could be eye to eye. “It’s like turning egg salad into fruit salad!”
“I—what?” I said.
Twilight threw her arms around me and the plush of her chest and belly shivered with stress. “You’re changing!” she suddenly wailed. “You’re changing and I don’t know why or how!” she told me. “I’m afraid Equestria is going to hurt you! You’re from another world I don’t know if you’re just gonna wake up bleeding one day for no reason, or get magically saturated and explode or-!”
“S-slow down, Twi!” I begged, trying not to get sucked into her panic. “Breathe, breathe now. There you go. Breathe again, good.” I ran my hands through her mane over and over, which she leaned into. “Slower this time.”
“I… here look,” she said. Twilight went to a pair of pull-down charts to show me. “This is you when you arrived, about three and a half years ago.” The outline of my body was colored in brown, black and other dark splotchy colours. “And this is you in the past month,” she slowly pulled the next one down. I thought I was looking at a heat-filter picture of myself. All different colours, centered around my heart and belly and brain.
“What are these colors, then?”
“Your molecular make-up,” she said slowly. “It’s what you’re made of. It used to be completely foreign. Now you’re… you’re like a color-changing lizard or something.” She gestured vaguely. “I don’t know how or why, but you’re adapting to Equestria on an atomic level!”
“Is this back to that magic sponge thing?” I asked. “Why is this so scary?” I had to know.
“If you keep absorbing magic like this, becoming more like us you might… change,” Twilight whispered. “Not all at once maybe. Or maybe all at once, I don’t know,” she scrubbed at her mane. “Your pones have shifted a half-centimeter, like they’re getting ready to do something. Like a baby getting ready to be born. At this rate, your physical make-up could change entirely!” she gestured wildly to dozens of charts and wavey lines. “I didn’t want to freak out, but now you have weak kenetic magic! Something that foals have!”
“Are you saying I’m-?!”
“Turning into one of us,” Twilight said slowly, eyes glistening.
I felt my mouth go agape, but no sound came out. “I… I don’t understand,” I whispered.
“I-It’s magic, it’s hard to understand. You’re the first of a kind! The only of a kind! B-but soon, i-if my projections are right you’ll be—!” She pulled down a third, shoddily made chart. It looked like an evolutionary chart with me on the left and--!
“None of a kind,” I whispered as we pulled each other into a hug. “I’m turning into a pony.”
Ahh. So the plot thickens.
...wait, this thing has a plot now?
I leave for a minute and this gets 26 more views??? Wow. Holy shit a plot too. Wowie.
Well, time to work on those mana crystals!
7819115 Now I always thought it was 'mistress of the household' hence mRs. huh, more research then.
Bloody Hell, Aegis! Stop updating so much, my mind isn't conditioned for such an amazing update rate!
Well then. Holy shit.
2 things:
1) Two chapters in one day? WHAT IS THIS SORCERY?!
2) So he's turning into a pony huh?.......
At least he'll retain his personality,right?
.........Right?
there are a species of half human and half pony in greek myth, it wouldn't be a stretch to see a result of that sort of breeding.
Fix Glasses is "Oculus Reparo." Totalis is the second part of the Full Body Bind, "Petrificus Totalus"
… Somehow, I don't think that's what's going to happen.
Ponies aren't the only species on the planet. Who's to say he can't become a different magic-using species? Or what if he just becomes something else entirely?
s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/3d/c8/94/3dc894214305b0a07c3d6bff294410f4.gif
I mean, there's nothing saying pony DNA is 'superior' to human DNA. So, if anything, he could just end up evolving into something… singular and unique.
That or she botched the tests first time around. She already showed she didn't even consider non-unicorn magic. Though the molecular charts at the end seem to belie that.
7819501 I hope he turns into some sort of monkey-man. I don't think I've seen that particular thing in a fanfic before.
....well is that so bad? I mean, it's not like it'll kill him.
7819514
I've seen artwork from non-pony sources that have interesting bases for that kind of thing. A monkey-man with a monkey tail, that is. But, like you said, I don't think I've seen anything remotely like it in a MLP story.
Bang AJ. Turn into a pony. Profit
You know, I'll confess I liked this story more when it was a simple slice of life story. Then it got heavy at moments, but it was a nice change of pace from most slices of life. Now it has a plot, and I'm not sure I like where this is going. But it's clear you have a plan, and I make it a point to judge stories by their ending, so for now I'll wait and see if I like this direction.
7819392 the plot is revealed, you mean.
Well there was the twist we where expecting. Now will he completely change before he goes home or only partially?
It occurs to me that from a scientific point of view, this is entirely correct. 98% of the atoms in the human body are replaced every year. That means, if the atoms, somehow, had magical properties in Equestria but not from Earth, then a year later, someone would be almost entirely made up of magical atoms, even if they started with none.
I hope he and AJ get back together.
Every cell in your body has a lifespan and needs to be replaced with new material from the food you eat when they die. Some cells have a pretty fast turnover (red blood cells, skin cells) and some take a long time or are never replaced (heart cells, brain stem cells). If your diet consists of magic-infused material, then, naturally, your body will start becoming slightly magical.
But, that's a looooooooong way from doing some sort of pony metamorphosis. At the end of this road, the most that could possibly happen is he becomes Gandalf.
He could be metamorphosing into a cartoon...
Or maybe he'll end up like the dude from The Fly.
You forgot "Higitus Figitus Zomba-Ka-Zee!"
From Harry to..
Link?
Why is it that so many of these stories end up with the human being transformed into a pony? It rarely turns out well.
7819800 I'm happy someone else commented this before I could. x3
7819637
Unless the magical material in his body isnt just replicating his DNA. Normally our body takes the base elements we need and convert them into copies of the dyeing cells, but waht if magic changes the code of DNA. Like radiation but insted of just damaging the DNA magic changes it to better fit into the environment. The question then becomes, why would magic want him to be a pony? A magical human could fit into magic just as well as a pony or Griffon. I think it has to do with intent. One major plot point is this story is his difficulty fiting in. As much as he has been accepting of being the odd human, many of his struggles relate to him not quite belonging. So I think magic has taken his desire to fit in and is making it a reality. Thus is the nature of magic making a wish into reality.
7819954 Well I will give this story credit in that this is the first story I have read where the person NATURALLY turns into a pony.
7819954 'specially one with no knowledge in magic/way of being able to fix it or learn or express it. Different mindset and all that. Ah well, he'll be fine.
Maybe.
On one hand, nature abhors a vacuum and who is to say magic isn't the same? On the other, Twilight's theory about him becoming an earth pony is inconclusive until he starts growing hair in oddly visible amounts in unusual areas, like the underside of his upper arm excluding his arm pit region. Or he could become a magical monkey, oh wait.
Turning from comedy to horror out of nowhere
Peaches should sit down and think, becoming a pony might be the best thing that could happen to him!
Also what happend with AJ didn't she liked the human belly2belly thing? Cause its pretty kinky for ponies?! XD
7820250 And lose his humanity? No thanks, I'd rather be a dead human then some commie horse.
#BetterDeadThanRed
Huh. Was not expecting that.
Not sure if you meant to spell it the way you did, but kinetic is spelt with only one E. Although I suppose kenetic has some merit in context, what with "ken" meaning knowledge.
I'd rather he not turn into "just" a pony. Not only would that feel like a copout of the highest level, it implies there is something fundamentally inferior about being human. sorta like "YOU ARE NOT HARMONIOUS ENOUGH, HERE: BECOME SUPERIOR CARTOON HORSE, THEY ARE BETTER AND CAN DO MAGIC". Him changing is fine, but I really dislike the done to death human to pony thing. Not only that, it runs against the crux of the fic which is about different people and cultures understanding each other... well it was originally, the last few chapters stumbled into HiE shenanigans.
Use your imagination, pull up a mythical creature similar enough to humans that he might turn into, Like any sort of Fey, or Youkai or something. the Gandalf analogy works, but you just made a chapter talking about how he won't be a wizard, so he has to pick from the DPS or Tank classes.
This is a Silly direction. Sure he is changing i am ok with that. It just seems shoehorned to make him become a pony. I mean, he could grow a horn or fir or something but straight pony? Not even considering that there are other species out there he could have became.
7819501 Draconequus?
...second "human in Equestria" story I follow where the human ends up turning into a pone. Not sure if it's a tendency or if I'm simply a jinx. Seriously, will there EVER be a story where the human is turned into something else? A griffin, a donkey, or even a centaur?
7820268
You clearly don't know what makes humans humans, go watch more cliché Disney and Pixar movies you bit greedy capitalistic griffon pig!
It doesn't matter what you are, it matters what you do.
I hope that was just good fun.
Still it's just two more years befor the crystal is charged again, given the rate of change...
Oh and learning earthpony magic with Apple Jack and Pinky Pie sounds like fun for Peachy hahaha
7820443 I've seen a few others including one where the human turned into a dragon, but they all died after a few chapters so I never got to see if they realized their promise. I've seen a bit more progress made on some human-to-changeling fics, but the only one I can think of that was good (if strange) died after getting a decent way into the story.
7820398 That would be fun, and it might just be interesting enough to make up for the fact that he's changing at all because I'm definitely not thrilled about the possible pony-to-human transformation. Also, turning him into a Draconequus would also solve the shape change stupidity since he could look like whatever he wanted whenever he wanted, assuming he didn't just sprout discord-like powers in his own body.
static.fjcdn.com/pictures/Noooooo+he+won+t+be+back_9e3cb5_3752427.jpg
In completely normal circumstances nearly all atoms in the body are replaced over the period of about 7 years or so, including in the brain - cells themselves exchange and replace their atoms, while still being the same cells. This is pretty much expected.
7819800
HIGITUS FIGITUS ZUMBA KAZING
I WANT YOUR ATTENTION EVERYTHING
We're packing to leave; come on let's go
No, no not you; books are always first, you know
HOCKETY WOCKETY POCKETY WACK
ABRA CABRA DABRA NACK
SHRINK IN SIZE VERY SMALL
WE'VE GOT TO SAVE ENOUGH ROOM FOR ALL
HIGITUS FIGITUS MIGITUS MUM
PRESTDIGiTARIUM
ALICA FEZ BALICA ZEZ
MALCIA MEZ PERIDPIDEZ
HOCKETY POCKETY WOCKETY WACK
ODDS AND ENDS AND BRIC A BRAC
DUM DOODLY DOODLY DUM
HIGITUS FIGITUS MIGITUS MUM
PRESTEDIGITARIUM
HIGITUS FIGITUS MIGITUS MUM
PRESTEDIGITARIUM
lh3.googleusercontent.com/-nDRA-2Fs6po/VVXeG2iT9NI/AAAAAAAB_zY/GwXPJOlN7tg/w800-h800/viernes.gif
Please don't go there, my dude.
How does "I'm getting magical" turn into "I'm turning into a pony"? The show insinuates that pretty much every species in equestria is magical, so why pony?
7819729 ooh, I like that theory
Eh, I wouldn't mind becoming a pony... but only if it was a last resort sort of thing or I could transform at will or some shit like that.
but alas.
Nice work
7819501 He's been around ponies the most but could really become anything.