Chapter Twenty
Celebration
"And that's how we got here," Bill concluded his story. "Now. I think there is a party to be had?"
"Quite right," Mrs. Weasley agreed as she carried a large cake out of the kitchen. Ten candles sat prominently atop it.
From there, the celebrations went more or less by the book. Ginny managed to blow out all the candles at once, everyone had a piece of the cake, and from there the various guests began to mingle. Bill and Charlie spent most of their time telling the others what they had been up to and were, in turn, caught up to what had happened at the Burrow.
Seeing Sunset transform into a tiny, candy-colored unicorn was quite the shock for them. Seeing Ginny snatch her up and begin petting her amused them greatly. Seeing Luna, Ginny's childhood friend sit down beside her and do the same only made it better.
"You're right Ginny," Luna said absently, "this is nice." She smiled when the amber unicorn curled up in her lap, smiling contently. "I wonder what I'd look like as a pony?"
"Thestral probably," Sunset mumbled, too relaxed to speak clearly.
"Pardon?" Ginny turned to her amber friend in confusion.
Sunset shook her head slightly and turned to the girl petting her. "Luna, could you stop the ear scratches for a moment, I want to be able to speak clearly."
"Okay." Luna smiled happily and moved her hand to stroke the little unicorn's back instead.
"Thanks. I said you'd probably a thestral. A pretty rare, mostly nocturnal tribe of ponies. You strike me as the type. If you do end up one, we'll probably have to find another to teach you how to use their shadow magic, they're pretty secretive."
"Shadow magic?" Ginny seemed to be somewhere between worried and intrigued.
Sunset chuckled. "You might want to call it dark magic. But in this case 'dark' doesn't mean evil, but actually dark. Mind you, those two are not mutually exclusive, but most shadow magic isn't any more evil than what most wizards and witches use here. It's just unfortunate that thestrals like to call their shadow magic 'the dark arts' as well.
"Anyway, a good bit of unicorn magic is actually derived from their shadow magic. They were actually the first ones to figure out invisibility and teleportation. More or less the entire field of arcane phase theory is derived from their techniques. Not to mention a good chunk of illusions as well."
"So ..." Ginny tentatively spoke up. "You're not all unicorns then?"
"What? Oh no. Unicorns are one of the three great tribes, pegasi and earth ponies are the other two. I'll go into more detail tomorrow."
"Well okay then." Ginny shrugged and went back to petting the still sleeping Hermione. "And what colors would you think?"
Sunset shrugged. "Not sure, if I had to take a guess, I'd go with dark gray coat and light blonde mane and tail, but that's just a guess."
Ginny inclined her head slightly. "Hmm, I'll go with orange."
"Orange? Why orange?" Sunset stared at Ginny from Luna's lap, Luna herself also seemed to be mildly interested.
"I don't know ... she just seems orange to me."
"Well," Sunset smirked, "shall we find out?"
"Find out? How?"
"I don't think they'll mind if we're gone for a few minutes. Philomena?"
Philomena gave a trill from where she had perched herself on the backrest of the bench they were sitting on. After a brief flash of flame, the party had three young girls, a unicorn and a phoenix fewer.
Sunset took a deep breath as she looked around. Her tower suite was just as she remembered it. She had suspected that the palace staff would have done nothing but keep the room clean, but it was reassuring to have confirmation. She turned around and smiled a seeing Hermione's pony form again. It had been over a week since she'd last seen it.
Then she noticed the two others. She smirked. Ginny and her had both been right in a way. The charcoal gray thestral with a practically white mane and tail could only be Luna. She had to admit that the two orange stripes cutting the girl's white locks into three parts, twisting and turning as they did, suited her style quite nicely.
Ginny meanwhile, had kept her Weasley red hair for mane and tail, though now intermixed with streaks of a pale red, almost pink really, and a deep cherry red. The overall picture suited her quite well and matched rather nicely with her snow white coat and wings.
Both of them were lying on the ground as if asleep, but they were both stirring. The moment they turned to her, Sunset could see their eyes. Luna had kept her pale silvery eyes, but, of course, they were now the slitted eyes of a thestral, a fact that the color almost seemed to be made for. She was squinting her now much more sensitive eyes in the bright midday sun. Ginny, meanwhile, had her hazel eyes turn a bright amber, almost perfectly matching Sunset's coat.
Hermione stepped up next to Sunset, looking at the pegasus and thestral before them. "Well. You both came out rather nicely, didn't you?"
Both of them looked at their hooves, Ginny at a pearl white one, Luna at a charcoal gray one. Both of them shrugged. Sunset giggled. "One moment." With that she walked over to the bathroom, returning a moment later with a small hoof mirror held in her magic. She held it out to them so they could study their reflections.
"Hmm. I like those eyes. I can work with this."
"Yeah, I think I'm fine with this." They both tried to turn to one another, only to promptly fall, unfamiliar with the feeling of walking on four legs.
Hermione giggled. "Take it slow you two, just try walking slowly at first, it comes natural after a while."
The two followed her advice and carefully got up again. Both unicorns lit their horns, ready to catch their friends if they fell, but the two managed to stay on their hooves. Their walking was slow and unstable, but they managed it without falling.
While Luna sat down at a window, enjoying the panoramic view of Canterlot and beyond, Hermione refocused her efforts towards changing forms at will. After having made significant inroads towards that goal from the human side, she found it much easier to complete the process from the opposite end.
Sunset, meanwhile, placed her glowing horn on Ginny's forehead and told her to focus on the feeling of her magic. After training with the others for a few days, Ginny could feel Sunset's magic interfering with her own. She was confused for a few seconds until Sunset's magic reached a part of her essence she instinctively understood to be connected to her current form.
"You feel that?"
"Yeah. That's to do with this form, isn't it?"
"It is. Now hold onto that while I try to find the part of your essence that's connected to your human form."
Ginny did as asked and focused on the indicated part of her essence while she felt Sunset's magic move on to search once again. It wasn't long before Sunset found what she was looking for.
"There. Now focus on planning out a pathway between the two. Once you have that you can stop focusing without loosing any progress."
"So I'm basically planning a tunnel?"
"More or less. Actually that analogy works pretty well. The different aspect you're trying to connect are basically like caves in a mountain and you're trying to dig a tunnel between them."
Having finished her planning, Ginny opened her eyes. "So getting used to our new bodies when we first came here was basically cave exploration?"
"Basically, yes."
"And what happens when the tunnel is done?"
Both of them and Luna turned towards the bright green light that suddenly filled the room. Hermione's form was glowing and changing. She was floating off the ground and slowly returned to her human form. Suddenly, the light exploded away from her and she landed easily on the floor. "That."
With a giggle, Sunset turned to help Luna as well.
The gathered party goers turned as a flash of flame once more lit up the edge of the party. Hermione and Philomena appeared as they had left, but Sunset was once more in Human form and Ginny and Luna displayed subtle differences. Recognizing the symptoms, Emma, Dan and Harry simply rolled their eyes. The Weasleys, however, had never seen Hermione before her trip to Equestria and, in their, shock didn't immediately put the pieces together.
"What happened? Are you alright?"
"We're fine mom," Ginny groaned, annoyance shining in her brilliant amber eyes. "We just took a quick trip to Equestria. Turns out that has some side effects. We'll got pony forms as well, but we're still working on keeping them over here."
"What kind of pony forms?" Ron asked, curiously.
"A pegasus and a thestral," Hermione helpfully supplied, prompting everyone to turn and look at where her and Sunset had once more assumed pony form.
"Does that mean they can fly?" Charlie asked, locking onto Sunset as the most likely source of an answer.
Sunset merely chuckled. "No. It just means they can learn it. They don't magically know how to fly from having wings. Once they figure out how to transform, they can get to that."
While the others were distracted, Sunset took the opportunity to take a closer look at the two younger girls. Like Hermione they had kept their new hair colors. Ginny had also kept her new eye color. Luna's eye color, of course, hadn't changed to begin with, but her pupils had returned to their original, rounded shape.
Once everyone had settled again, the party guests got back to mingling while Luna and Ginny got back to petting ponies, relishing the fact that they didn't have to share any more.
Looking at the sea green unicorn curled up in her lap, Ginny smiled. "You know, I could get used to this."
"This is fun." Luna agreed, turning to look at her friend. "Also I think you still have presents to open." She casually pointed a finger at a table at the edge of the party, where a small stack of presents lay unattended.
"Oh my, I can't believe we forgot about those," Mrs. Weasley called out, drawing her wand. "Acchio." The stack of presents floated over and neatly landed next to Ginny who set Hermione down to join Sunset beside Luna and got up.
It didn't take much to get Ginny started on unwrapping presents. Most of the presents were small items from the Weasleys' various distant relatives. Two stood out. The first was from her own parents, a pair of small silvery earrings, each studded with a single sparkling stone. Sunset, being familiar with various precious materials from the Palace in Canterlot, could easily recognize that they were made of comparatively cheap materials, but they were pretty regardless, their warm green stones nicely contrasting her hair. If anything the new range of colors only made the contrast better.
The other was a set of exercise clothes from the Grangers Ginny immediately recognized as matching those she had seen Sunset and Hermione wear during their Parkour training. Feeling the magic woven into the fabric, she immediately understood that it had the same protective charms as theirs.
When they had been practicing before, Sunset and Hermione had applied those charms to her manually. Now they wouldn't need to anymore. That way she could practice even when they weren't around.
Looking over the stack of presents and her gathered friends and family, Ginny grinned. This was her best birthday yet. The fact that Sunset, Hermione and Luna would be staying over for the night only made her happier.
Interesting. I certainly can't complain about bat ponies, bat ponies are amazing.
9543099
Indeed. Severely underrated.
Ahhh.... Luna's name is going to be in the book as well.
BTW... nice recovery on the last chapter.
I know that it's been done before, but it's still always nice to see lonely children brought together to make friends with each other.
Shoot... This is slowly starting to disinterest me.
I wouldn't mind them being able to learn pony magic, or even being able to see their pony forms. But them retaining the ability is slowly wearing on me...
Edit: It wouldn't even be a MAJOR rewrite, and it would make the story much less cringy... This is only one part though and I'll try and continue to read, but it is getting a bit harder to do so.
I have to ask...is this gonna be a "Girls, HELL YA!" story or is Ron and Harry going to get some more screen time? I ask becuase part of the Draw of HP crossovers for me is that they improve Harry in someway...and i think he would make a great younger brother type for Sunset and Twilight.
Please don't turn Harry and a bunch of others (ie the rest of the Weasleys, and everyone else) into ponies. I'm rooting for you.
A second set of double quotes belongs around that passage, right...? It reads like a continuation of Luna's speech, not narration.
This makes me think "Achoo-io". Pretty sure there was no H (for "Accio") in the Harry Potter books.
9543248
I'm afraid that half the comments tell me to give them pony forms and the other half tell me not to ... I can't make everyone happy ...at least not without writing two versions of the story ... and I'm not doing that ...
But I can tell you that they will be doing a much better job hiding their pony forms once they arrive at Hogwarts than they do in the other stories, so the effect those forms have on the plot will be respectively reduced.
9543246
Harry will certainly see some changes from canon, just by circumstance. I'm afraid I won't be able to even hint at most of them at this point, at least not until tomorrow's chapter, but he will gain some new skills as well ... all in due time ... as far as Ron goes ... we'll see if I can't give him some love too ...
I don't care. I love fluffy pony rainbow plushies.
0U0This just keeps getting better and better. Love the extra care you took in the rewrite of the previous chapter.
Sunset is beginning to reach Mary Sue levels, which is starting to knock my enjoyment. I can see how this will be a major plot diversion later in the story, but, at the same time... it is just getting 'meh?'.
Don't get me wrong, I do love the idea and am still reading the chapters when they drop, but... it is kinda starting to get stale. At least, being this OP. If it weren't Sunset, I probably would have dropped it by now. But I absolutely love Sunset, so i'll still continually read it.
At this point it's not even entertaining anymore. Next chapter Harry will probably get a pony form. Then Ron. Then all the Weasleys. Hell, throw Dumbledore in too while you're at it. And since Sunset is just such a great people person, throw in a reformed year one Malfoy as well.
Sunset is a prodigy, some Mary Sue comes with the territory. I like the story the way its being written.
9543772
Now I may be wrong ... but I think he meant this Railgun
9543853
Yeah, but mine was funnier. XD
9544010
well now you've got my imagination going ... which part of the railgun would be magical? the power source? the rails? the bullet? the magnetism? enchanted magnetism ... sure ... why not ... comes right after enchanted gravity ...
9544061
Lol, I meant the whole thing. Like she just made one out of magic and shot her wand out of it. But, if you wanna get into magitech.....PM me for ideas. XD
9544065
All in due time ...
So in your mind ... she used her wand to conjure a railgun ... and then used the railgun to fire her wand at the dragon?
9544082
Yeah. It was just a funny thought I had when I saw ‘she railgunned him from the cliff’ in a comment. And I invisioned her using her regular magic to make the gun. Then just shoot the wand. Maybe even charge it with an explosive spell or something fun like that.
Ugh. Honestly, more ponies isn't a bad thing, but I'm honestly a little annoyed that now Luna and Ginny are ponies. Is everyone going to end up being ponies?
This was actually part of the reason I didn't like that other story I mentioned in an earlier comment, because everyone was able to turn into ponies and back freely.
...although thestrals are cute. I realised recently how thin those pupils of theirs could get, when I was looking at my kitten. He was looking at the window, and I freaked for a moment 'cause I couldn't see his pupils, only to realise they were as thin as a thread, it was freaky af. Though, that does explain how cats and other animals with slitted eyes don't squint. Doubtless Thestrals are the same, not needing to squint.
9544425
That is pretty neat ...
I kinda have to agree that its seeming a little mary sue ish for some of the chairs, Sunset and the other as starters, but, to be kinda blunt, both of them are prodagys in there own rights. That being said, I am still giving a wait and see where things go. I do kinda enjoy the wizards into ponys thing, and the fact that Sunset has started to teach some of the girls pony magic too. Even if she was being rather self serving, having the girls indebted to her would mostly only help her, less she did something stupid. I am unsure that its a good idea to alow others to know about the pony magic, specialy anyone in the ministry, as in the books 99 percent of the ministry people make lemmings seem smart, and strong willed.
Humm, actualy, I would have to ask if anyone taken to equestria going to end up something other than a pony? I could totaly see Harry ending up a hippogryph, and Ron as a gryphon. Twins would be changlings I expect, all the better to mess with peoples minds.
As you can see, the secret to flying is to throw yourself at the ground and miss. Probably why Stormtroopers make such good pilots
9556721
Hopefully they don't forget their towels when hitchhiking.
I have a question:
May I pet pony Sunset?
I would like to mention that keeping her thestral eyes probably wouldn't change her overall weirdness level.
(I also hope that you can give Luna some good moments in this fic. She is hard to write for.)
That's got to be an error of some sort.
9833521
It's not. Sleeping ponies around humans cause awkward phrasing ...
I lov that ginny is a Pegasus
9556721
This one cracked me up
9543099
9543103
You know, the entire show the ONLY mention of bat ponies is pulling Luna's chariot in Luna Eclipsed.
You COULD argue they don't exist, it was just a costume.
On the other hand there DOES seem to be ninjas......
So um... was hermione a pony in this bit, cause I thought she couldn't turn into one until later in the chapter, if that is the case... um... just um....